This article, by CiConsulta GeoPolitical Advisor Matthew Bugeja appeared first on The CorporateDispatch.Com Week edition published on October 26th by CorporateDispatch ePublishing.
The article was written before the media reports of the killing of Islamic’s State Leader Al-Baghdadi following a US raid.
In my view, the war in Syria has been to global politics what the fall of the Berlin wall was to the Cold War – a landmark event which serves as an earthquake to the global order. Admittedly, some historical purists may see this statement as mere hyperbole, and I will be the first to admit that there are some imperfections in this type of comparison. That being said, the war in Syria has illustrated one thing very plainly – the United States, by a combination of a juvenile mix of complacency and poor choices, a lack of a long term strategy and the rise of more serious rivals, has seen its global power and influence wane at an unprecedented rate.
When the U.S. entered the war in Syria under the Obama administration, it was originally intended to support Kurdish fighters against ISIS, who at the time controlled large swathes of territory in both Iraq and Syria. The U.S. plan then slowly morphed, and sought to also engage Syrian government forces, who themselves were supported by Iran and Russia. When President Obama warned the Syrian government not to use chemical weapons against Syrians after such cases had come to light, as it would constitute a ‘red line’, this warning was ignored, and the US lost a considerable amount of credibility from which it never really recovered.
At one point, the Syrian government was close to collapse, holding only a few major cities and ports along the country’s eastern coastal regions. Syrian Arab rebels and Kurds were close to victory. If the US redoubled its efforts in support of its allies in the country, backed by airstrikes and special forces, the Syrian regime was likely to collapse. The US did not do so, and Russia would send large amounts of men, vehicles and weapons to prop up the Assad regime, with further reinforcements arriving from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard through Iraq. The scale was now irrevocably tipped towards the Syrian government, with the US unwilling to make any effort to counteract Russia and Iran’s influence in the country, or the decline of its Syrian rebel allies. For all intents and purposes, the US had left them to their own devices, and there could be only one real outcome when faced with such overwhelming odds – the rebels were ousted from most of the important metropolitan centres, and thrown back to the smaller towns in the east of the country.
Whilst one could understand the angst of the Syrian and Kurdish rebels, and chide the US for their lack of support, America was also faced with a difficult decision. Besides Russia and Iran, Turkey are also heavily involved (as recent developments in the country have amply shown), as are Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and a number of EU & Western allies to varying degrees. The war in Syria has become a geopolitical proxy war arena, in which various players supported forces on the ground in order to achieve their desired ends. The US was wary of getting too caught up in the conflict, lest it be dragged into another “forever war,” as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have been described. As a result of those two interventions, Washington is now wary of military intervention, as it showed under the Obama Administration (both in the cases of Syria and Libya) and now under the Trump Administration (with the gradual withdrawal of US troops from Syria and drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan). Whilst the reluctance of the US to engage in military adventures abroad is seen by many as being a positive thing, that does not preclude others from doing exactly that in America’s absence – and that is what has happened in the past three years or so.
America’s influence is waning considerably. Syria has been the most complex battlefield in at least a generation, and given its track record in the Middle East over the past two decades, the US feared being dragged into a third conflict that would drain resources, put lives at risk, and without serving a definitive strategic purpose. But in its absence, Russia, Iran and Turkey have emerged as the kingmakers in the country. The US had meekly entered the conflict with one foot in, unprepared in any sense of the word to remain in the conflict zone to achieve any objectives, which were initially related to the ouster of ISIS, and then shifted focus to a half-hearted attempt to remove the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. This was unsuccessful. To add insult to injury, the US has now permitted its Turkish NATO ally to conduct an incursion into northern Syria in order to evict Kurdish fighters from the region, who Ankara views as the Syrian proxies of a Kurdish militant group that operates within its borders. This has affected America’s standing in the region, with its previously staunch Kurdish allies pelting US military vehicles with potatoes as they were leaving Syria, en route to Iraq.
After the fall of the Berlin wall, the United States stood alone as the world’s preeminent superpower, able to influence geopolitics along with economics and finance nearly at will. Thirty years later, it has seen the rise of regional powers all across the world, who are now challenging its supremacy. You have China, Japan, India and South Korea seeking to influence their respective corners of Asia. The EU is becoming increasingly distant from Washington’s policies, particularly under the Trump Administration. In South and Central America, Mexico and Brazil are going down a more nationalistic path, which takes them further away from the US sphere of influence than ever. Turkey is seeking to reestablish the old Ottoman sphere of influence across the region, while Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia seek to carve out their own small alliance structures to balance out their opponents. America has not just weakened due to a lack of long-term strategy and foreign policy errors – but some powers are now just about strong enough to challenge the US in their own respective regions. China is the only country currently capable, in the medium term, of challenging the US at a global level. However, that is a story for another time.
If there is one thing that the war in Syria has shown us from a geopolitical standpoint, it is that the American Empire is not on the decline due to one folly or another – but rather, it has been a death by a thousand cuts. Soon enough, the US will no longer be a global juggernaut, and it will face challenges across the globe from a number of actors seeking to shape their corner of the world as they see fit. Syria was simply a harbinger of things to come, and that will make the world we live in a more dangerous place.
