Outlaw,

I cannot think of a period when the American mainstream media didn’t “get it wrong”. Their audience are the laity who prefer to be entertained rather than informed, and whose interest is piqued by controversy and shock. Complex and interconnected events unbounded by time, geography or interpretation must be distilled into short, simple and moral stories. Moreover, the American media has often seemed to collude with the government when intervention is being justified and has ignored those crises where the government desires no involvement.

As I have stated previously, I am not going to wade into the sewer of U.S. presidential politics. Your objections to the current president have been duly noted. I can go on at length about Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton and Obama, but this is the SWC thread on Syria. Would you rather tangle with me on Disqus?

The Syrian Civil War is not a key national interest of the U.S. in and of itself, except insofar as it overlaps with the ongoing containment and attrition of anti-Western Islamist terrorists. Note that the ongoing civil wars in D.R. Congo/Burundi, Sudan, South Sudan, Myanmar, Central African Republic and Turkey have received no significant U.S. attention; those in Nigeria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen have received very little. This lack of action and interest can be attributed to any previous presidential administration. In the case of Lebanon, Western involvement was intended to counter the Soviets, Iranians and Syrians; in the case of Yugoslavia, action was intended to preserve the Western alliance.

Despite riding high on the commodity boom as Australia, Brazil, Canada and other countries did, Russia is still for all intents and purposes, “Upper Volta with rockets”. Aside from its nuclear deterrent, very limited power projection capabilities and handful of defense products, Russia is not even a near-peer competitor to the U.S. The primary American rival and potential future adversary is in fact China. If history does indeed rhyme, Russia will eventually become an ally of the West as part of a coalition to contain Chinese aggression.

Your personal biases cause you to focus on Russia exclusively and to ignore China, when it comes to American grand strategy, even though Russia too desires: “to be on the world’s political stage as an equal co-speaker”.

Note that since securing mainland China after World War II, the Chinese Communist Party has:

  • Murdered roughly 10% of the Chinese population to consolidate power
  • Invaded South Korea
  • Attacked the Soviet Union
  • Invaded Vietnam
  • Supported the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia that murdered 25% of its population
  • Supported the Kim dynasty in North Korea that murdered 10% of its population
  • Attacked and threatened Taiwan
  • Developed nuclear weapons
  • Improved and increased its nuclear arsenal specifically to target the U.S.
  • Developed offensive weaponry to specifically target the U.S. and its allies
  • Imprisoned, tortured and murdered dissidents, and continues to do so
  • Maintained the largest slave labor force of any country
  • Executed more people per year, legally and extra-judicially than any other country
  • Partnered with countries hostile to the U.S., including Russia, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua and Pakistan


These facts should place the PRC in the proper perspective, despite my digression from the topic of Syria. The PRC was never reconstructed in the way that the Soviet Union was partially in 1956, 1987 and 1991.

In the end, the civil wars in Iraq and Syria revolve around Sunni-Shia relations, Arab-Kurdish relations and the Iranian bid for mastery in the Middle East. Certainly, Russia has played spoiler to American initiatives in Syria and has gained some much needed combat experience there. The Damascus-Teheran plan to reduce the Sunni Arab population, and thereby the pool of opponents to Assad, will continue whether Russia is deployed in Syria or not.