U.S. to remain in Middle East

The U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford is retiring. As the State Department stated, "Ford helped shape the administration’s position on the crisis in Syria and the support for the Syrian people in the civil war in recent years." Ford was appointed U.S. ambassador to Syria in January 2011, shortly before the outbreak of mass protests against President Bashar al-Assad, which resulted in an armed confrontation between the government and, as they say , the forces of international terrorism, supporting the opposition. Washington has decided to close its embassy in Syria in 2012 due to the civil war. According to "Rossiyskaya Gazeta," since that time Ford had manoeuvred between the United States and Turkey to maintain contacts with the Syrian opposition in Istanbul. Lawrence Silverman has been appointed acting head of the diplomatic mission.

As vice-president of the Institute of Forecasting and Political Conflicts Alexander Kuznetsov believes, the U.S. will soon gradually reduce its presence in the Middle East: "Firstly, it is the geopolitical rivalry with China that comes to the fore. Secondly, direct military presence and military actions that have taken place, for example, in Iraq , in Afghanistan, proved ineffective and most expensive. Therefore the U.S. turns to the strategy of controlled chaos."

According to Kuznetsov, the U.S. will remain in the region, but only at a few fixed points: "First of all, ensuring Israel's security will remain a priority for the U. S. A second reference point is the Persian Gulf and control over oil supply routes. And the third, most likely, is the Suez Canal and what is connected with Egypt. In other regions of the Middle East the strategy of controlled chaos is likely to be implemented, when Sunnis are set against Shiites, some Gulf states are set on Iran and so on."

Kuznetsov believes that "if the U. S. seriously wanted to oust Assad in Syria and bring its people to power, it would have found ways and means to do so. But the strategy is to continue the civil war in Syria and the maximal attenuation of this country. Probably when Syria has nothing left, then there will be real peace negotiations. That is, there is a policy of setting up fights between different religious groups of the Gulf states with Iran and of observing the process, sometimes with encouragement of some trends, or their termination.