The Syria situation has a good chance to be the root of the next great catastrophe in the world, Paul Sullivan wrote in The Hill.
This may be already in play with the massive movements of refugees to neighboring countries, the EU and even further. Millions have been on the move. Syria also helped spawned the horrors of ISIS. ISIS did not come out of a vacuum.
The hell that has been Syria helped feed that beast. It continues to feed it. ISIS is now a growing ad growling movement that could surprise us all with its reach. Its potential for destabilizing other places should not be discounted.
Syria’s neighbors are facing increased turmoil in this swirling often unpredictable maelstrom of madness, hatred, revenge and hate. When a large part of a region implodes and leaves a vacuum, and nobody good is there to fill it in and take the lead, then expect the worst lot to take advantage of the situation.
Lebanon is increasingly brittle, and its demographics have been thrown off as they were prior to the civil war of the 1990s. Iraq is increasingly in turmoil, especially in the west and the south. ISIS has spread into Iraq, Egypt, Libya and beyond. Yemen is a failed state. Iran is hardly the peacemaker that Assad says it may be. Iran has been a destabilizing factor in the region for decades, and yet we make a nuclear deal with them.
Turkey is facing some of the gravest threats it has had in decades — both internally and externally. Israel may be in the most insecure time in its history. Jordan is at risk internally from economic and other stresses, a huge refugee crisis, and externally from its dangerous neighborhood and neighbors — a mass of extremists who would rather turn this quiet kingdom into a madhouse like they have Syria.
So what has the “West” been doing about this? Effectively? Nothing. Some aid has landed in the region. A few bombs have landed on target. Some extremists have been killed. Lots of words have been spoken. Yet the situation gets worse.
Putin has now bulled his way into this with his Al Capone tactics that have failed him in the recent past — and truly failed his people in the more distant past. (Think Chechnya and Afghanistan.) His movement into Syria will most definitely make the situation far worse. His supporting the “Butcher of Damascus” will inflame the extremists and others even more so. Attacking the opposition to the “president of Syria”, who drops barrel bombs on children, will aid in the recruitment into extremist groups of any moderates who may be left in this nightmare.
Again, where are the strategic and creative leaders who can help turn this around? I see nobody.
Sullivan is professor of Economics at the National Defense University and adjunct professor of Security Studies at Georgetown.