Criticisms of Turkish intervention

In November 2019, Roebuck "criticized the Trump administration for not trying harder to prevent Turkey’s military offensive" in northern Syria.^[8]

In November 2019, the New York Times reported that Ambassador William Roebuck, the senior U.S. diplomat in Syria drafted a memorandum to the U.S. Special Envoy to Syria James Jeffrey that stated directly that the U.S. should have done more to stop the Turkish invasion into Syria. He said "Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria, spearheaded by armed Islamist groups on its payroll, represents an intentioned-laced effort at ethnic cleansing and what can only be described as war crimes and ethnic cleansing."^[9] He also warned that "we — with our local partners — have lost significant leverage and inherited a shrunken, less stable platform to support both our CT efforts and the mission of finding a comprehensive political solution for Syria."^[10]

Exit interview

In an interview with Defense One at the end of his career Roebuck commented on several areas. On Syria he said the damage to the relationship with the Syrian Democratic Forces has been repaired — because Donald Trump "ultimately agreed to keep a military presence in Syria, but we did lose significant leverage" amid the Turkish incursion into Syria, Roebuck said. "If you view our presence in northeast Syria as a source of leverage for some sort of future political solution [in the ongoing civil war in Syria], we pretty much overnight lost half of the territory that we were controlling, along with the SDF."^[11]