SALVAGING SYRIA
The instability that currently plagues the Middle East is best understood as a combination of clashes arising from the particular political, economic, and security dysfunctions of each country coupled with a set of overarching conflicts that span the region's borders. One of those transnational sources of entropy is spillover from the Middle East's many civil wars, some of which have gone viral, as the problems of one society spread to its neighbors and spark new conflicts.
The current epicenter of this outbreak is the conflict in Syria, which has strewn the region with refugees and terrorists, radicalized neighboring populations, and inflamed secessionist ambitions in several countries. The war has undermined many of the region's economies and threatens to drag in and drag down all of Syria's neighbors. Jordan and Turkey have struggled to deal with the burden of some two million Syrian refugees. Sunni extremists from Syria have taken refuge in Iraq and are threatening to rekindle the Iraqi civil war. And the conflict in Syria has become the most deadly battleground in the proxy war between Iran, which backs the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and the Sunni states of the Arab Middle East, which are frantically trying to limit Shiite Iran's influence without also empowering the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.
The nature of the conflict in Syria makes it difficult for any outside power to address it quickly or easily, which is one reason why the war-weary United States has refrained from getting too deeply involved. The limited efforts of the Obama administration have had little impact, except to befuddle U.S. allies. And the options proposed by many of the administration's critics, such as providing more advanced weapons to the opposition, are less than appealing, because they are likely only to make the fighting more lethal without bringing it any closer to a resolution.
Yet doing next to nothing seems more and more dangerous. Without a force that can tip the balance, peace is unlikely to come to Syria for a long time. The conflict will keep tearing at the rest of the region and may pull down other states, too -- countries that affect vital U.S. interests in ways that Syria does not. As long as the Assad regime can rely on a steady influx of Russian arms, Iranian funds, and Hezbollah troops, there is no reason to believe that it is set to crumble. For now, the morale of Assad's forces is high, whereas the fragmented opposition is suffering from internecine conflict and inadequate external patronage. The image of the Syrian tyrant earning international acclaim for dismantling chemical weapons he was not supposed to have, much less use, has not helped, either.