The rival candidates trade blows over foreign policy in Syria

Is WW3 around the corner?

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has come out and said his rival Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy directives would start Word War Three over Syria.

Trump said the United States should focus on defeating ISIS, rather than removing Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s brutal President.

No-Fly Zone

This would spell conflict with Russian jets in the region.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Marine General Joseph Dunford told lawmakers a “no-fly zone” in Syria could spell war with Russia.

“For us to control all of the airspace in Syria it would require us to go to war, against Syria and Russia,” General Dunford told the Senate Arms Services Committee. He went on to say, “That’s a pretty fundamental decision that certainly I’m not going to make”.

Clinton has come out, most notably at the final presidential debate, in favour of a no-fly zone. “A no-fly zone can save lives and hasten the end of the conflict,” she said on stage in Nevada on the 20^th of October.

However, in a 2013 speech to Goldman Sachs, Mrs Clinton said that establishing a no-fly zone would “kill a lot of Syrians” – this according to the recently leaked transcript.

WW3

• “You’re going to end up in World War Three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton,” Mr Trump said.
• “You’re not fighting Syria any more, you’re fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, all right? Russia is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk.”

However, the Clinton campaign has pushed back against this dangerous rhetoric.

“National security experts on both sides of the aisle have denounced Donald Trump as dangerously ill-prepared and temperamentally unfit to serve as commander-in-chief,” Clinton spokesman Jesse Lehrich said.

“Once again, he is parroting Putin’s talking points and playing to Americans’ fears, all while refusing to lay out any plans of his own for defeating ISIS or alleviating humanitarian suffering in Syria. Moreover, this incendiary attack is aimed at a policy that his own running mate, Mike Pence, strongly supports.”

As of yet, Trump has not laid out a clear strategy for defeating ISIS, or for easing the conflict in the region.