"Our military presence, while small, is important for overall calculations. So we urge the Congress, the American people, the president to keep these forces on, but again this isn’t Afghanistan, this isn’t Vietnam, this isn’t a quagmire," Jeffrey said during the Hudson Institute video event. "My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians."
He pledged that the United States will continue to deny Russia its presumably most coveted goals in Syria - the international funding of the country’s postwar reconstruction and the recognition of President Bashar Assad’s legitimacy to govern the country.
The US-led coalition has operated in Syria without the approval of the Assad government or any UN Security Council authorizations.