Proxy
War in Syria?
As
many of us in the Political Science community are aware, there has been a civil
war ongoing in Syria since 2011. At
first there were two clear sides to the war.
The Syrian side that supported the Assad government was one. The second was the rebels that opposed the
government that was currently in place.
This turned into a sort of debacle early on. The United States did not seem to want to get
too involved. Rightly so many people
might say. We were just getting
ourselves out of the Iraq conflict and trying to bring the actions in
Afghanistan to a close as well.
Things got worse in Syria however. ISIS was formed, taking parts of northern
Syria and Iraq as part of its territory.
The government in Syria began using chemical weapons against its own
civilians, killing a lot of people. It
became an international political nightmare.
The United States has relatively been pretty hands off in its approach
to the situation.
The level of aid that we have been involved with has been
quite low considering what the options are that are on the table. The United States could have put boots on
the ground. Although, this would not
have gone over very well with the public opinion of the people of the United
States. As we have discussed, public
opinion does seem to affect policy to some extent. Public opinion is very important when you
bring a war or military conflict involving the use of United States soldiers. In turn, the United States sent some weapons
to the rebel forces and has conducted some air raids.
Fast forward to today, Russia has now put its hand into
the Syrian cookie jar. Russia has a
naval base located in Syria. This is
important for Russia because they do not have many military bases outside of
Russia. Therefore, it is in their best
interest to keep a Russian sympathetic government in place in Syria so as to
maintain their global reach in the Middle East.
The reason that Russia says it is there is to aid in eliminating ISIS
from the Middle East. As we have heard
reports of the last couple weeks though is that Russia has been bombing the
rebel forces that oppose the Assad lead government.
So you can imagine the debacle that is now forming. The United States on one side supporting the
rebels who oppose the current government.
Russia on the other hand, is supporting the Syrian government. So now we have these two global super powers
not directly battling each other, but indirectly conducting military actions
against the other.
I see this as a means of going backwards from the
progress that we have worked so hard to create.
Russia and the United States have not always gotten along. To be blunt, they have a long history of
being arch rivals. The Soviet Union
collapsed and that relationship has gotten better from where it used to
be. However, under Putin, the tensions
have slowly begun to rise between these two great nations. I get the sense that this is the start of a
new cold war all over again between the United States and Russia. The difference this time, is that China is
now entering the mix as an up-and-coming global super power. We currently are trying to establish a
working relationship with the Chinese. This
all remains to be seen however.
Syria, the next battle ground of the second cold
war? The answer to this question will
come over the next weeks, months, and years.
I do not think that we will see this fully come to blossom for many
years to come. Russia continually goes
unchecked for all of its aggression. I
believe that there must be a unanimous force of global support for the
opposition to the actions taken by Russia.
Right now, we do not see many countries that want to take the Russian monster
head on. When is enough, enough? The world is on the teetering balance of
things getting really nasty. I think
that is why Obama is pulling back a lot support in Syria because he is trying
to prevent it blowing up into something bigger.
All in all though, this story is not yet over.
Zackary Ledlow
No comments:
Post a Comment