The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion is con­sid­er­ing a plan to fur­ther arm the Kurds — whom many in Wash­ing­ton call ​“our most effec­tive part­ner on the ground” in Syr­ia — in order to incen­tivize Kur­dish par­tic­i­pa­tion in an upcom­ing offen­sive against ISIS in Raqqa. Two weeks ago, the Chica­go Tri­bune pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al endors­ing this plan — the head­line pro­claimed this as ​“Step One” for ​“Fix­ing Syr­ia.” And in pres­i­den­tial debates, includ­ing last night’s, Hillary Clin­ton has advo­cat­ed a sim­i­lar plan.

Not only would Turkey be unhappy if the Kurds received more U.S. weaponry, but there’s no evidence the Kurds want to take the deal either.

Expelling ISIS from Raqqa, the largest Syr­i­an city under the group’s con­trol and its self-declared cap­i­tal, has been a pri­ma­ry U.S. mil­i­tary objec­tive in Syr­ia since the begin­ning of its inter­ven­tion in 2014. Raqqa now car­ries (in the minds of U.S. polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary lead­ers, at least) great sym­bol­ic impor­tance in the war on ISIS. So it’s no sur­prise when the Tri­bune declares that the many com­pli­ca­tions and dan­gers of send­ing even more arms to the Kurds can be brushed aside: ​“What’s impor­tant now is the ouster of the Islam­ic State from Raqqa.”

But in call­ing for more ship­ments of weapons to Syr­ia with­out any sem­blance of a plan for a polit­i­cal solu­tion to the 5‑year con­flict — nor the even longer con­flict between Turkey and the Kurds — the Tri­bune is rein­forc­ing the worst aspects of U.S. pol­i­cy in the region. This pol­i­cy remains over­ly focused on achiev­ing short-term mil­i­tary vic­to­ries at the expense of longer-term polit­i­cal set­tle­ments, with­out which a last­ing peace is impos­si­ble. What’s more, this pol­i­cy will almost cer­tain­ly fail to achieve even the lim­it­ed goals it has set out for itself, name­ly the cap­ture of Raqqa.

What’s need­ed is dia­logue around Kur­dish demands for a fed­er­al sys­tem in Syr­ia (with local auton­o­my for Kurds and oth­er minori­ties); with­out this, sim­ply deliv­er­ing weapons will priv­i­lege a mil­i­tary solu­tion over a diplo­mat­ic one. It will like­ly strength­en the most mil­i­tant and hard­line fac­tions among the Kur­dish lead­er­ship while con­tin­u­ing to side­line many of the polit­i­cal and civ­il soci­ety lead­ers most respon­si­ble for the ongo­ing exper­i­ments in rad­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy that have inspired admi­ra­tion from West­ern Left­ists and lib­er­als alike.

Aldar Xelil, a mem­ber of the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee of TEV-DEM (an umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion coor­di­nat­ing civ­il soci­ety groups in Roja­va), made a sim­i­lar point in a recent inter­view . When asked about Clinton’s pledge dur­ing the debates to arm America’s Arab and Kur­dish allies in Syr­ia, Xelil respond­ed, ​“Of course it is impor­tant to give sup­port to Kur­dish forces. How­ev­er, this sup­port can­not be lim­it­ed to mil­i­tary aid. Any sup­port that will be forth­com­ing must be pro­vid­ed in all areas; that is to say it must be polit­i­cal, diplo­mat­ic, eco­nom­ic and social sup­port as well.”

Xelil cites the con­sis­tent exclu­sion of the PYD — the dom­i­nant Kur­dish par­ty in Roja­va — from the Gene­va peace talks on Syr­ia as one area in par­tic­u­lar where the U.S. has failed its declared part­ner. An increas­ing­ly com­mon per­cep­tion in Roja­va is that Amer­i­ca has repeat­ed­ly blocked the PYD’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in these talks out of def­er­ence to its NATO ally Turkey. (The PYD is a close ally of the Kur­dis­tan Work­ers’ Par­ty (PKK), which has fought a three-decade insur­gency against the Turk­ish state in the country’s Kur­dish-major­i­ty Southeast.)

In late August, the U.S. gave its sup­port to Turkey’s cross-bor­der incur­sion into Syr­ia, to go after ISIS as far south as Jarab­u­lus. How­ev­er, it is wide­ly acknowl­edged (includ­ing by Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan him­self) that the Kurds and their autonomous can­tons in Roja­va were also a pri­ma­ry tar­get. Thus it was hard­ly a sur­prise to any­one that with­in days of Turkey’s inter­ven­tion, the Kur­dish-led Syr­i­an Demo­c­ra­t­ic Forces (SDF) were fight­ing with Turk­ish sol­diers south of Jarabulus.

The Tri­bune argues that Turkey can be con­soled by a U.S. pledge that ​“the Kurds wouldn’t be get­ting heavy artillery, just small arms and ammu­ni­tion.” This is entire­ly non­sense, and as insult­ing to the intel­li­gence of the Syr­i­an Kurds them­selves as it is to Turkey. More weapons with­out diplo­ma­cy in North­ern Syr­ia risks fur­ther inflam­ing ten­sions in both the Syr­i­an con­flict and Turkey, where the gov­ern­ment has been wag­ing a new ​“ dirty war ” on its own Kur­dish pop­u­la­tion. Tens of thou­sands have been dis­placed and entire neigh­bor­hoods left in ruins while the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment has remained large­ly silent.

The renewed fight­ing in Turkey came after a mul­ti­year peace process between Turkey and the PKK fell apart last sum­mer, in large part due to ten­sions over Kur­dish gains in Syr­ia. This is part­ly the fault of the Unit­ed States, which failed to see how its pol­i­cy of mil­i­tary sup­port for the SDF was desta­bi­liz­ing the peace process in Turkey.

Not only would Turkey be unhap­py if the Kurds received more U.S. weapon­ry, but there’s no evi­dence the Kurds want to take the deal either. As long as the Unit­ed States is unwill­ing to push Turkey toward a com­pre­hen­sive set­tle­ment with Kur­dish par­ties in both Turkey and Syr­ia, it is entire­ly unrea­son­able to expect the Kurds to send their fight­ers into Raqqa (where hun­dreds could be killed) sole­ly in exchange for ​“small arms and ammunition.”

In fact, at the end of August, Asya Abdul­lah, the co-Pres­i­dent of PYD, announced that there would be no Kur­dish-led oper­a­tion against Raqqa as long as Turkey’s incur­sion into Syr­ia continued.

Like­wise, just last month, Polat Can, the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the YPG (the dom­i­nant group with­in the SDF) in Pres­i­dent Obama’s ​“Glob­al Coali­tion to Counter ISIL,” explic­it­ly ruled out the group’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in such an oper­a­tion as long as the U.S. and its West­ern allies con­tin­ued to deny recog­ni­tion to the Kurd’s polit­i­cal project in Roja­va. ​“We are not some para­mil­i­tary group,” he told Wash­ing­ton-based jour­nal­ist Mut­lu Civi­roglu. ​“We can­not say to our peo­ple let us go and fight, sac­ri­fice so many of [our] young men and women [and] then not have the right to speak. Our peo­ple will not accept this and no one would accept this.”

And after a recent vis­it to impris­oned PKK leader Abdul­lah Ocalan — one of the major influ­ences and sym­bol­ic fig­ures behind the recent polit­i­cal devel­op­ments in Roja­va — Ocalan’s broth­er announced that Ocalan thinks cur­rent U.S. pol­i­cy toward Roja­va aims to weak­en both Turkey and the Syr­i­an Kurds by play­ing the two against one another.

“If the Unit­ed States hadn’t want­ed [Turkey] to” go into Syr­ia, Ocalan is report­ed to have said, Turkey ​“would not have gone into Jarab­u­lus.” In Ocalan’s esti­ma­tion (and in the esti­ma­tion of many with­in the Kur­dish lead­er­ship in Roja­va), the U.S. is more than con­tent to use the Kurds as a bar­gain­ing piece in their attempts to con­trol the Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment and strength­en their own posi­tion in Syr­ia, all the while deploy­ing Kur­dish fight­ers to score much need­ed pub­lic­i­ty points in its bat­tle against ISIS.

Regard­less of its real inten­tions, America’s dou­ble-game in Syr­ia isn’t fool­ing any­one. It can­not con­tin­ue to back two war­ring par­ties through a myopic focus on its war on ISIS. If it can­not find a polit­i­cal solu­tion to the Turk­ish-Kur­dish con­flict — a con­flict it has ignored for decades — fur­ther mil­i­tary suc­cess­es against ISIS will become vir­tu­al­ly impossible.

Absent a seri­ous diplo­mat­ic effort to bring Turkey and the PKK back to the nego­ti­at­ing table and real steps toward some form of recog­ni­tion for the Kurds’ polit­i­cal project in Roja­va, the cri­sis in north­ern Syr­ia will only deep­en fur­ther, open­ing the door to an even wider region­al con­fla­gra­tion. The Unit­ed State must not pour more gaso­line on the fire.