Washington's contradictory goals of implementing Caesar's law

After six years of legislative deliberations in Congress and discussions within two departments, the administration of former Democratic President Barack Obama and the administration of the current Republican President Donald Trump, the "Caesar" law came into effect yesterday.

The reality now inside Damascus and inside Washington differs from that last December when Trump signed the bill known as the “Caesar Law to Protect Syrian Civilians,” but what has not changed is the continued support of the Republican and Democratic parties.

The legislation imposes penalties on governments, companies, or individuals who deal or work directly or indirectly with the Bashar al-Assad regime, either militarily or economically.

In the first days of Caesar’s implementation, the US Department of State’s Foreign Assets Control Office announced sanctions against 24 people and entities who support the Syrian regime’s reconstruction efforts.

"Today's ratings are the first steps the Treasury is taking to impose sanctions under the Caesar Act to protect civilians in Syria for 2019," a Foreign Ministry statement said.

Tougher penalties

Over the course of nine years, Washington, its sanctions and direct and indirect military intervention have failed to target the Assad regime directly, as a result of Damascus's widespread dependence on Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah's support, and at the same time these three entities are unable to provide the financial or diplomatic support necessary to support reconstruction.

Washington aims to implement Caesar's law to achieve two goals of severe pressure on the Assad regime: the first is to break its alliance with Iran, and this is an important US interest, and the second relates to the possibility that severe sanctions will lead to the collapse of the ruling regime in Syria, according to experts in Washington.

The researchers, Dana Stroll and Catherine Power, of the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, see in a study seen by Al Jazeera Net that the importance of the new penal law stems from the signals that Washington sends and its willingness to impose sanctions even on companies or governments that have good relations with the United States.

Washington wants to keep Syria closed to reconstruction or business in light of the current conditions inside it, and Caesar's law pushes with a serious message and determination from Washington to deter countries and parties seeking to take advantage of Syria's reconstruction activities.

And a US State Department official confirmed that Washington's main goal is to force Assad to seriously enter the path of a political solution, in what is considered a abandonment of an old American goal of toppling the Assad regime.

For his part, a Western diplomat working in Washington confirmed that the Trump administration "saw that there is an increasing international laxity and tolerance towards the Assad regime, which threatens the desire to lift the international sanctions imposed on Damascus, so it decided to expose its teeth by this strict law."

Speaking to Al Jazeera Net, the diplomat, who declined to be named, stressed that "the new law will not differentiate between companies that have military activities and those specialized in construction, civil engineering or technology companies, where severe penalties will be imposed on everyone under the Caesar Law."

Not for personal profit

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, the military expert David de Roche pointed to several goals for Washington from applying the Caesar Law, on top of which is "to assert that the leaders of the Syrian regime will not profit in their personal capacity from the ethnic cleansing operations that they carried out with the assistance of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah."

De Roche, who also lectures at the Center for Near East and South Asia at the US National Defense University, added, "Washington does not want to see relatives of President Assad buy one of their English football clubs after 10 years, for example."

De Roche pointed out that "the importance of Syria has declined among the administration's priorities in recent months, but it remains a candidate for internal tensions and instability or in the surrounding countries, which are more important to Washington's interests such as Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey."

Absence of a clear strategy

"Washington clearly knows what it does not want in Syria, it does not want to have a foothold for ISIS or any other terrorist groups inside Syria, it does not want Syria to become a country controlled by Hezbollah, nor to become a foothold for Iran that it uses to attack Israel, and does not want For millions of Syrian refugees crawling through Turkey to European countries, "de Roche says.

He added that his country "neither wants to abandon the Kurds nor that Syria becomes a source of instability in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq."

He believes that "avoiding the disadvantages and knowing what we do not want does not build an integrated strategy for Washington toward Syria," and that there is no clear American strategy towards Syria that can be achieved or applied to serve Washington's national interests, especially with the limited military tools that the United States wants to use in relation to the crisis in Syria .

Washington will continue to rely on applying sanctions against Syria and targeting the regime's allies together, "knowing the nature of the authoritarian regime in Syria and the nature of its Iranian, Russian and Hezbollah allies, perhaps these are the best alternatives to deal with Syria," de Roch affirmed to Al Jazeera Net.

While the Washington Institute’s study indicated that America aims “outwardly to end the war in Syria through a political process led by it leading to the formation of a representative and inclusive government in Damascus. The Trump administration no longer insists on the need for Assad to come out of office, but it stresses changing the behavior of his regime.” Through some provisions of Caesar's law.