President Joe Biden is blowing a fleeting U.S. opportunity to shape the direction of post-Bashar al-Assad Syria in the U.S. national interest.

Assad was responsible for the mass starvation of and repeated chemical weapons attacks against the Syrian people. His regime killed many hundreds of thousands between 2011 and 2024. Assad was also a close ally of Iran, allowing Tehran to move increasingly potent weapons through Iraq, then Syria, and finally into the hands of the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran’s own forces in southern Syria. Similarly relying on Vladimir Putin to militarily intervene in his support in 2015, Assad then provided Putin with unprecedented military freedom of movement from Syria. This earned Putin significant strategic dividends across the Middle East at a cost to American interests.

BIDEN’S ‘TRUMP-PROOFING’ FOREIGN POLICY REVOLVES AROUND UKRAINE AND NATO

Syria is now ruled by Islamist rebels under Abu Mohammad al-Jolani’s HTS group. While Jolani has recently presented a more moderate stance and says he wants cordial relations with the international community, his jihadist credentials cannot be ignored. HTS originated as an Al Qaeda syndicate.

Neither, however, can Jolani’s victory be ignored.

But that’s exactly what Biden is doing. While other nations such as Turkey are moving rapidly to advance their interests in post-war Syria, the U.S. foreign policy response sees defined by placid social media posts that seem designed to say the minimum possible of note. The Biden administration can’t even figure out whether to talk openly with Jolani even though he has sought that engagement. This impotence is allowing others to fill the gap of America’s absence at America’s cost.

Russia, for example, appears set to secure an otherwise implausible victory in Syria. Bloomberg reports that Moscow is nearing a deal with Jolani to retain access to its naval base at Tartus and air base at Khmeimim. These are keystone Russian strategic assets without which Russia’s means of power projection across the Middle East, the Mediterranean Sea, and into the Indian Ocean would be greatly jeopardized.

WHAT TRUMP HAS PROMISED TO DO ON DAY 1 IN THE OVAL OFFICE

But considering that Russia has been using these same bases to inflict absolute misery against the very same rebels — and countless innocent Syrian families — who now hold power in Syria, it should be a no-brainer for Jolani to respond to Russia’s base entreaties with a one-fingered salute. Russian offenses against Syrian civilians between 2015-2024 include the destruction of entire neighborhoods, surgical hospitals, and thousands of other civilian interests such as aid convoys. It bears emphasizing that Russia has repeatedly targeted civilian hospitals in Syria.

This legacy of death should offer Biden ample moral ammunition with which to persuade Jolani and his partners that they should punish rather than placate Russia over what it has done to them since 2015.

It is manifestly in the U.S. interest that Russia be isolated from post-war Syria. After all, Russia’s military footprint in Syria undermines NATO’s southern flank, threatens America’s Sunni Arab and Kurdish partners in northeastern Syria, and provides Russia with means of advancing its anti-American foreign policy in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

The U.S. has major sticks and carrots to wield here. Jolani needs a lot of aid and foreign investment. He also needs international legitimacy. And while the U.S. can provide its own aid, Washington, is also the de facto gatekeeper for Syria’s access to aid from international fora such as the IMF and World Bank. Requiring Syria to isolate jihadist expansionists alongside its isolation of Russia in return for diplomatic relations and aid flows should not be a heavy ask. Especially if Biden both threatened to close the door to future aid and impose crippling secondary sanctions, which deterred other nations from providing aid.

Instead, Biden sits idle as Russia laughs its way into the acquiescence of those it has brutalized.

BIDEN MISHANDLING OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS LOOMS OVER PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION

This concern extends to another brewing failure by Biden in Syria. Namely, his apparent unwillingness to protect America’s Kurdish and Sunni-Arab partners from Turkish offensive action in northern Syria.

These partners were critical to the infiltration and defeat of ISIS. Their combat and intelligence-related action repeatedly helped to prevent more November 2015 Paris style atrocities against the West, including against America. Their presence in Syria today acts both as an obstruction to Iranian malfeasance and ISIS’s reconstitution. It greatly reduces the need for American boots on the ground. But Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan views the Kurds as an ethnic and political enemy that must be crushed. And Erdogan plainly doesn’t believe that Biden has the will to stop him from acting in kind.

As Fox News’s Jennifer Griffin reports, Turkey is continuing with air and artillery strikes against the Kurds in contravention of a Biden administration-negotiated cease fire. This is what Erdogan does when he believes America is weak. Erdogan is no American friend. Treating his NATO membership with disdain, Erdogan buys flawed Russian missile defense systems, sucks up to Putin, and tolerates attacks on U.S. military personnel visiting his country.

Yet while Turkey’s support for the rebels who now hold power means that Ankara has strong influence in Damascus, its economic vulnerability means its leverage can be corralled to U.S. interests. In turn, if Turkish strikes against America’s Kurdish allies continue and if, as appears likely, Turkey assists Russian efforts to secure retained Syrian bases, the U.S. should retaliate economically against Ankara.

That might easily entail new tariffs or sanctions, things Erdogan is desperate to avoid alongside Turkey’s struggling economy. This needn’t mean Turkey’s legitimate concerns over the PKK Kurdish terrorist group and its tentacles into the U.S.-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces deserve Washington’s disdain. Instead, Biden should be making clear to its Kurdish partners that if they view American support as an excuse to go after Turkey, the U.S. will allow Turkey to go after them. But the U.S. should also simultaneously make clear to Turkey that blanket action against the Kurds, in Russia’s favor, or against U.S. interests, will result in very painful American countermeasures.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The problem is that Biden doesn’t appear to be doing anything at all. Rather than leaving office as the “strong and trusted partner for peace, progress, and security” that he pledged to be in his inaugural address, Biden is leaving office without actually appearing to be in office.

And in Syria, as globally, the consequences of his slumber are not in America’s favor. This is a time ripe for stark warnings and decisive practice of American power. It is not a time for a president who seems perpetually waiting for his next nap.