What are U.S. strategic interests in Syria? Dr. Kim Cragin, director of INSS' Center for Strategic Research, just returned from a trip to the Middle East for her study on U.S. counterterrorism. Read some of Kim's thoughts in this 15 Dec post released by Lawfare: "Taking Stock of the Islamic State."

The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime has reopened the debate on the U.S. military presence in Syria and the wider Middle East. The United States has three primary interests in Syria: averting adversaries’ potential possession of chemical weapon stockpiles, preventing an Islamic State resurgence in the region and accompanying external operations against the West, and limiting regional instability more generally. But the Islamic State’s resurgence has already begun to some extent. Islamic State fighters killed 139 people during an attack on a concert hall in Moscow, Russia, in March 2024. An Islamic State plot shut down Taylor Swift’s concert in Austria in August 2024. Then, in October, the FBI arrested an Afghan man and juvenile for planning an Election Day attack in Oklahoma City. The latter two attacks were halted due to intelligence and law enforcement investigations, but they feel a little too close for comfort.

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