"If it will be an operation against terrorist forces in Idlib, that would certainly be within the spirit of our agreements with Turkey.

But if it is about an operation against legitimate Syrian armed forces, that would certainly be the worst case scenario.

"We were satisfied with the agreements that were reached in Sochi over a year ago, and the satisfaction was mutual. We were absolutely not satisfied after militants and terrorist groups started launching attacks from Idlib territory against the Syrian armed forces and Russian military sites. That is when our satisfaction ended."

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The Americans came on strong. Defense Secretary Mark Esper warned America's allies at the Munich Security Conference that it was time to "wake up" to the Chinese threat. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that the West was "winning" the conflict with China. And a senior Trump administration official said Europe was "missing the point" if it did not see China through an "us against them" lens.

The Europeans also heard from a Republican member of the U.S. Congress that the raging coronavirus was an "opportunity" to turn the Chinese people against their government. And they listened as Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the Chinese telecommunications group Huawei as an "insidious form of aggression."

But most of these warnings fell on deaf ears at the three-day gathering, which ended Sunday and, as it does each year, brought leaders, diplomats, and the world's top foreign-policy thinkers to a crammed hotel in the Bavarian capital for frank debates about global challenges. What all the panels, breakfast meetings, and side discussions about China revealed most was that Washington and Europe are speaking a completely different language when it comes to China. And so long as they do, developing a trans-Atlantic agenda to respond to China's rise will be very difficult, perhaps impossible.

In the coming months, U.S. President Donald Trump could single-handedly torpedo prospects for such cooperation if he follows through on his long-standing threat to impose tariffs on European cars. This goes to the heart of another major obstacle to a common agenda: the vanishing sense in Europe that it can rely on what the U.S. administration says and does.

Trans-Atlantic trust has steadily eroded since Trump came into office and pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord and Iran nuclear deal. His decision last October to abruptly withdraw U.S. troops from Syria without alerting allies first deeply unsettled European capitals. And his repeated assertions that Europe is far worse than China are hard to reconcile with Pompeo's reassurances that all is well in the West and Esper's demands that Europe join forces with the United States against China.

In Munich, the sense of U.S. policy disarray was reinforced when U.S. officials effectively admitted that they had been bluffing with their repeated threats to rein in intelligence sharing with Britain and other European countries that choose Huawei for their 5G networks. Implausibly, they also denied ever having issued such threats. "We've learned that you can't believe everything, or possibly anything, they say," a European diplomat said.

The hosts listened to the U.S. warnings about China politely. But even the conference host, Wolfgang Ischinger, a veteran German diplomat, couldn't help but push back against the American torrent, reminding the audience gathered in the Bayerischer Hof that China was in the midst of tackling the coronavirus, an epidemic of historic proportions, with implications for the entire world.

"I think China deserves some compassion, cooperation, some words of support, and encouragement rather than only criticism," he said.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier kicked off the conference by lumping the United States together with China and Russia as major challenges for Europe. "Our closest ally, the United States of America, under the current administration, rejects the very concept of the international community," he said.

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Self-styled political "superforecaster" Andrew Sabisky tended his resignation on Monday over the series of controversial remarks, maintaining he did not want to be a "distraction" to Johnson's government.

"The media hysteria about my old stuff online is mad but I wanted to help [Her Majesty's Government] not be a distraction. Accordingly I've decided to resign as a contractor," Sabisky said in a tweet announcing the move, adding that he was a victim of "selective quoting" and a media "character assassination."

Syria's government is considering suing the United States in an international court over what a senior advisor to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad referred to as the 'stealing' of Syria's oil.

"Syria is looking into the possibility of filing an international lawsuit against the United States, due to the fact that they steal Syrian oil," Bouthaina Shaaban, Syrian Presidential Adviser, told Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV in an interview, carried by Iran's Fars news agency.

[...]

In a separate interview, with NBC News, Assad's advisor Shaaban said that the United States had no right to Syria's oil, warning of "popular opposition and operations against the American occupiers of our oil."

The Kurdish SDF forces control most of Syria's oil. Before the war, Syria was producing 387,000 barrels of oil per day, of which 140,000 bpd were exported.