The US and Syria After the Election
A test firing of a Patriot missile. (Photo: US Government)
The day after President Obama’s re-election, one foreign policy issue is crying out for attention: the civil war in Syria.
In a sign of growing international concern, Turkey on Wednesday announced that NATO is to deploy Patriot missiles along the Turkish border with Syria.
It’s not clear yet if they will be crewed by Americans.
But Steven Cook, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says there is an intense reluctance to get more involved in Syria among officials at the Department of Defense, the State Department and the White House.
The deployment, he says, probably just indicates US and NATO support for Turkey, which is concerned about violence and refugees spilling over the border.
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