Natalie Armbruster
CONTRIBUTING FELLOW
Areas of expertise: Middle East policy, Syria, diplomacy, sanctions
Natalie Armbruster is a contributing fellow at Defense Priorities and a Middle East and North Africa Intelligence Researcher at a global risk intelligence and threat analytics firm in Washington, D.C. Previously, she was a Research Associate at Defense Priorities, focusing on Syria, the Middle East, and U.S. quasi-alliances in the region. She earned a BA with honors in Political Science and Arabic Language and Literature from the University of Notre Dame.
Research and writing
The United States is obligated by treaty to defend 51 countries with military force. Beyond its formal allies, the United States also has several quasi-allies, or states the U.S. is not explicitly committed to defend but to which it provides substantial amounts of military and political support. While many experts assume more allies means the United States is more secure, quasi-allies present clear dangers for U.S. interests. The United States should be wary of the risks quasi-allies pose and avoid loose talk and policy that may commit it to a quasi-ally’s defense.
The United States should apply the lessons learned in Afghanistan to Syria and pull out its ground forces. President Biden noted two key reasons for exiting Afghanistan: military missions should have achievable objectives and strikes and raids from afar, instead of permanent occupation, are sufficient to thwart foreign terrorism against United States. Both conditions also apply to Syria, where the original mission to dismantle ISIS’s territorial caliphate, once achieved, morphed into an open-ended campaign with murky objectives divorced from U.S. security and from counterterrorism.
