[Peace] Brett McGurk: unless Trump has new lawyers, Syrian oil belongs to Syria

[Robert Naiman]

I love how the NYT takes Trump at his word in this article. Trump says
we're going to take and keep the Syrian oil. Could we actually do that? No,
the NYT concludes, we couldn't actually do that. It would be too blatantly
illegal, because it's open and shut in international law that the oil
belongs to the Syrian government. Because it would be too blatantly
illegal, too risky, too difficult, not profitable enough anyway, no U.S.
oil company is going to touch that oil. How are you going to enforce that
claim? How are you going to enforce that contract? Not even the World
Bank's investor-to-state dispute resolution mechanism could enforce that
contract. Not even oil industry guy Rex Tillerson could figure out how to
do it.

Note that purported "adult in the room" *Lindsey Graham* is reported to be
a key driver and enthusiastic supporter of this "keep the oil" gambit.

Perhaps Trump is inadvertently [*?*] helping us by failing to "translate"
U.S. foreign military policy it into appropriate American Exceptionalism
fairy tales for U.S. pundit consumption, the way a "normal" U.S. President
is supposed to. How many more blows can American Exceptionalism take from
Trump before it collapses into the dustbin of history?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/us/politics/trump-syria-oil-fields.html

‘Keep the Oil’: Trump Revives Charged Slogan for New Syria Troop Mission
After dismissing Syria as a land of “sand and death,” Mr. Trump is
redeploying American troops around its oil fields. *But how the U.S. might
benefit from them is unclear.*

By Michael Crowley
Oct. 26, 2019

[...]
But in recent days, Mr. Trump has settled on Syria’s oil reserves as a new
rationale for appearing to reverse course and deploy hundreds of additional
troops to the war-ravaged country. He has declared that the United States
has “secured” oil fields in the country’s chaotic northeast and suggested
that the seizure of the country’s main natural resource justifies America
further extending its military presence there.
[...]
Trump’s message is puzzling to *former government officials* and Middle
East analysts who say that controlling Syria’s oil fields — *which are the
legal property of the Syrian government* — poses numerous practical, legal
and political obstacles. They also warn that Mr. Trump’s discourse, which
revives language he often used during the 2016 campaign to widespread
condemnation, could confirm the world’s worst suspicions about American
motives in the region. [*Oh no!*] A Russian Defense Ministry official on
Saturday denounced Mr. Trump’s action as “state banditry.”
[...]
Pentagon officials said on Friday that the United States would deploy
several hundred troops to guard oil fields in eastern Syria, despite Mr.
Trump’s repeated boasts that he is bringing American soldiers home from
Syria. *Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper* said that the United States
would “*maintain
a reduced presence in Syria to deny ISIS access to oil revenue*,” leaving
what military officials said would be about 500 troops in the country, down
from about 2,000 a year ago. [*What Trump is "supposed" to be saying.*]
[...]
His change in thinking follows multiple conversations with *Senator Lindsey
Graham*, Republican of South Carolina, who talks frequently with the
president and has *long pushed for a greater American presence in Syria*,
for reasons like fighting the Islamic State in the region and checking the
influence of Russia and Iran. [*Kudos to NYT for use of the phrase "for
reasons like" in this sentence. We're not really sure what Lindsey Graham's
true motivations are.]*

Mr. Trump has also consulted on the subject with the *former Army vice
chief of staff, Jack Keane*, [*google "Jack Keane MEK"*] who visited the
White House in mid-October and showed the president a map of Syria
illustrating that *70 percent of the country’s oil fields are in areas in
the northeast that have been under American control*. [*What a happy
coincidence! God loves us!*] Mr. Keane, who declined to comment, has also
warned that the oil fields risk falling into the hands of Iranian proxies
in the region.

Mr. Graham, too, contends that American control of the oil fields would
“deny Iran and Assad a monetary windfall,” as he put it in a statement last
week.

But *Mr. Graham has taken the argument a step further, to suggest that
Syrian oil could go into American coffers*, as Mr. Trump once implied for
Iraq. *“We can also use some of the revenue from oil sales to pay for our
military commitment in Syria,” Mr. Graham added.*

Last week, Mr. Trump offered a variation on that idea, saying that “we’ll
work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, they have
some cash flow.” He added that he might “get one of our big oil companies
to go in and do it properly.”

But *energy and security experts say it is unlikely that any American
companies would be interested in the enormous risks and limited profits
such an arrangement would entail. Even at its peak, Syrian oil production
was modest. And any short-term revenue potential is severely limited by
logistical challenges posed by infrastructure damaged by war, pipelines
that run into unfriendly areas and the unusually low grade of the oil
itself.*

Talk of monetizing the Syrian oil also diverges from the message of top
Trump administration officials, including *Mr. Esper, who said last week
that the American mission in Syria was unchanged from its original purpose*
of defeating the Islamic State. [*Got that? Unchanged from its original
purpose under Obama. So says Mr. Esper. Who you gonna believe, me or
your lyin' eyes?*]

But the president has repeatedly boasted that the militant group has
already been defeated. And although ISIS currently controls no territory,
and is *little threat to the oil reserves*, experts warn that it *could*
regenerate. [*"And I'm going to be 40!" "When?" "Someday!"*]

*Framing control of oil as part of the fight against ISIS, however, may
provide cover for an action motivated, at least in part, for reasons that
analysts say have no basis in domestic or international law.* [*Aha! We
found it! The lead paragraph of the article!]*

“Esper is being very careful to say this is about ISIS. *And that’s because
the legality is being framed around ISIS*,” said Aaron Stein, an expert on
Syria and Turkey with the Foreign Policy Research Institute. [*So we have
one story for people who get their news from cable TV, and another story
for the judges and the lawyers.*]

When the Obama administration sent troops to Syria to fight the Islamic
State several years ago, it relied on the authorization of military force
passed by Congress days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which gave the
government broad authority to battle Al Qaeda and affiliated groups. *The
Trump administration has invoked the same authorization for its own
activities in Syria*, despite many critics arguing that *even the previous
administration overreached* in citing it to cover the battle against the
Islamic State in Syria.

Then there is the basic question of the oil’s ownership.

*“Oil, like it or not, is owned by the Syrian state,” Brett H. McGurk, Mr.
Trump’s former envoy to the 70-nation coalition to defeat ISIS, said at a
panel discussion on Syria hosted Monday by the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies.*

Mr. McGurk said that Mr. Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex W. *Tillerson,
had studied the issue and concluded there was no practical way for the
United States to monetize its control over oil-rich areas.* [*Even the oil
industry guy says we can't do it.*]

*“Maybe there are new lawyers now, but it was just illegal for an American
company to go and seize and exploit these assets,” Mr. McGurk said. *

Mr. McGurk said the only legal way to make money from the Syrian oil fields
would be to work with Russia and the government of President Bashar
al-Assad of Syria to place the revenue into an escrow account to help fund
Syria’s postwar reconstruction. But he said Russia had little interest in
the idea, even before America assumed a diminished role in the country this
month. Nor has Mr. Trump expressed any public interest in using the oil to
fund Syria’s reconstruction.

*Mr. Stein said he believed the true goal of some Trump administration
officials and advisers was to keep the oil fields not from ISIS but from
Mr. Assad’s forces, to deny him funds to rebuild his country and thus
ensure that Syria remained a financial burden on its ally, Iran.*

In recent days, hostile foreign governments have seized on Mr. Trump’s
commentary as evidence of America’s sinister motives.

On Saturday, a spokesman for Russia’s Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. Igor
Konashenkov, said that “what Washington is doing now, the seizure and
control of oil fields in eastern Syria under its armed control, is, quite
simply, international state banditry.”

And Iran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency wrote that while Washington
“claims that the move is in the line with its alleged antiterror campaign
in Syria, analysts see it no more than an excuse to impose control over
Syria’s oil revenues.”

[*The sneaky Russians and the sneaky Iranians cleverly seized on the
opportunity to claim that the reporting of the New York Times is true.*]

*Mr. Riedel doubted that the president would wind up insisting on control
of the oil fields.* Beyond the many military, technical and legal
challenges, there are the optics to consider.

“Let’s say he does do it,” Mr. Riedel said. “Let’s say we establish the
precedent that we are in the Middle East to take the oil. The symbolism is
really bad.”

[*Clearly this guy is unfit to be President. He can't even read from the
Blob's teleprompter.*]
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