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So apparently Syria is collapsing. Jihadists are near the capital and Assad is nowhere to be found. It looks to be so over for the Assad region.
Since this is the culture war thread, here's what Donald Trump had to say on X.
Cicero he ain't but I'm glad that this viewpoint represents the new foreign policy thinking. The U.S. doesn't need to have a finger in every pie. The international reputation of the United States was never higher than before WWII when we were mostly an isolationist country. In the decades since, we've spent trillions on our foreign misadventures and have only enmity to show for it. The Middle East is not "strategically important" anymore either, and we don't need to "contain" Russia or Iran in that area. Most countries are neither our friends nor our enemies so we should just stay out of their affairs.
Is it realistic to hope that this can/will open a path to the repatriation of Syrian refugees/“refugees” currently in Europe? Like presumably a great many Syrians who fled the country did so because they were either direct opponents of the Assad regime or were otherwise threatened by Assad’s rule specifically. With a rebel Sunni-led government transitioning into power, will this be seen as plausibly obviating those asylees’ original claims?
Obviously no because the Syrian refugees in Europe are economic migrants. European countries are not even deporting rapists and other criminals. Why would they deport people because of a regime change in their home country? Those Syrian refugees and their descendants are there for good. Future anthropologists will study the demographic transition which is very similar to how Corded Ware culture replaced Bell Beaker culture - except that this latest demographic replacement happened more quickly.
Asylum was just a fig leaf in the first place. Refugees are supposed to go to the first safe country, not the place with the most generous welfare benefits and strongest pro-outgroup bias.
The more relevant migrant flows wouldn't be from Europe to Syria, but Turkey to Syria, in turn enabling Europe to Turkey (which already occurs in substantial amounts).
Turkey not only has the far greater number of Syrian refugees, but those who did just go to the first safe country. These are a electoral burden, and facilitating their return was a policy goal of Turkish-Syrian relations for a good part of the last year, and Assad's refusal to engage on that was part of the Turkish support for the coalition that just took most of the major cities in Syria.
If/when Turkey pressures its recent partners to accept back Turkish-based refugees in exchange for continued reconstruction / reconsolidation / resist-other-rivals aid, that will create two opportunities for the Europeans. One is leverage the opening for their own aid-for-reacceptance bargains (as countries being willing to accept deportees is one of the big obstacles Europe has to deportation), and another is to make renewed deals with the Turks to accept the European-reached migrants, a deal more possible when Turkey has reduced its own refugee burden.
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