{"id":53834,"date":"2017-01-16T06:26:27","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T06:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=53834"},"modified":"2017-01-17T03:32:26","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T03:32:26","slug":"new-article-up-at-divergent-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=53834","title":{"rendered":"New Article up at Divergent Options"},"content":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski<\/strong> \/ “zen<\/strong>“]<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I have a piece up at Divergent Options<\/strong><\/a>, a new national security site that aims to provoke thought regarding foreign\u00a0policy with a concise template that distills the essence of foreign policy problems and\u00a0provides but does not recommend\u00a0options. As DO<\/strong> describes it:<\/p>\n

What We Do:\u00a0 In 1,000 words or less, Divergent Options provides unbiased, dispassionate, candid articles that describe a national security situation, present multiple options to address the situation, and articulate the risk and gain of each option. \u00a0Please note that while we assess a national security situation and provide options, we never recommend a specific option.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Who We Communicate To:\u00a0 Our intended audience is National Security Practitioners worldwide. \u00a0We keep our articles short and to the point because we know that Practitioners have a limited amount of time and are likely reading our content on a digital device during a commute, a lunch break, or in-between meetings<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My post is an effort to reconnect Syrian policy, widely regarded as a disaster by most foreign policy pundits, back to a coherent grand strategy.<\/p>\n

Syria Options: U.S. Grand\u00a0Strategy<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

[…]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Background:\u00a0 Aleppo has fallen and with it the last shreds of credibility of President Obama\u2019s policy on Syria. \u00a0None of Obama\u2019s policy goals for Syria since the Arab Spring revolt were achieved. \u00a0In Syria, the Assad regime has crushed western-backed opposition fighters with direct Russian and Iranian military ground support; the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) still controls swaths of Syrian territory[1] and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally Turkey has conspired with Iran and Russia to exclude the U.S. and UN[2] from Syrian settlement talks.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Significance: \u00a0While Syria itself is of little strategic value to the U.S. beyond secondary implications for Israeli security, the utter failure of the Obama administration has brought U.S. diplomatic prestige to a nadir reminiscent of the Iranian hostage crisis or the fall of Saigon. \u00a0Worse, defeat in Syria occurred in a broader context of successful Russian aggression in Ukraine, uncontested Russian meddling in an U.S. presidential election, and perceptions of U.S. strategic concessions to Tehran in the Iran nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA[3]). \u00a0Should the next administration want to accomplish more than Obama, it is vital that they \u00a01) address Syria within the context of increased Russian-U.S. competition and 2) seize the initiative in restoring the influence of U.S. leadership with substantive and symbolic policy changes in regard to Syria and Russia.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski \/ “zen“] I have a piece up at Divergent Options, a new national security site that aims to provoke thought regarding foreign\u00a0policy with a concise template that distills the essence of foreign policy problems and\u00a0provides but does not recommend\u00a0options. As DO describes it: What We Do:\u00a0 In 1,000 words or less, Divergent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[360,361,102,1452,87,78,1047,270,88,91,127,440,18],"tags":[1453],"class_list":["post-53834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-america","category-diplomacy","category-divergent-options","category-foreign-policy","category-ideas","category-isis","category-national-security","category-putin","category-russia","category-strategy","category-syria","category-war","tag-divergent-options"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53834"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53837,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53834\/revisions\/53837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}