The new cold fight in Syria
The author is a PhD claimant and coordinator of a South Asia Study Group during a University of Sydney
If it was truly about Syria or defeating a ISIS, a disaster that we see in a segment currently would have been solved comparatively easier. The maturation of new events, including a US vital bombing to ‘save’ tellurian lives, is a classical Cold War epoch character of politics and delay of substitute wars all over again. We have seen this too many times before, during a Cold War in Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam and Latin America.
What started as a transformation for democracy in Syria behind in 2011 became caught into informal energy politics between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel on one end, opposite Iran, Assad regime and Hezbollah on a other. Fast brazen to 2017, a tellurian superpowers, a US, Europe and Russia, are all densely concerned in subsidy their proxies.
If it was about defeating ISIS, how prolonged would it have taken for these tellurian powers and Nato, with a troops bill value trillions of dollars, to clean off untrained and ill-equipped ISIS fighters? The problem is not defeating ISIS, a tellurian powers are sealed down into an corner over post-ISIS energy structure in a region, duration permitting time to ISIS to benefit momentum, control propaganda, partisan militants and conflict Western cities.
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The tellurian energy ‘politics’ or hypocrisy is such that underneath a tag of ‘fighting’ ISIS, informal powers have been putting their possess interests first. Turkey, for instance, has been some-more prone on bombing Kurdish army instead of targeting ISIS fighters. Saudis have been assisting ISIS indirectly to frustrate off flourishing Iranian change in a region. Americans, on a other hand, are presumably fighting opposite ISIS, nonetheless ancillary a Saudis during a same time.
The confidence puncture that a hazard of ISIS has supposing is assisting both informal and tellurian powers to reframe a post-ISIS energy structure in their possess favour. The tragedy for Syria and a people is that it is a nation where tellurian superpowers have unfortunately come in approach fight to one another over their ‘national interests’.
The events in Syria exhibit a lot about a tellurian energy structure and a general order. First, they denote that notwithstanding all a enrichment and swell of tellurian society, a tellurian South continues to sojourn underneath a omnipotence of a North. Despite a whole tongue over decolonisation given a final Great War, a fact is that a Middle East and countless other former colonies have remained underneath a shade of superpowers’ ‘national interests’.
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Post-WWII, a superpowers didn’t have colonies, instead only their ‘national interests’ in regions as distant as Afghanistan or Syria. Naturally, any transformation for self-determination or opposite a foreign-sponsored rulers in those regions in a 21st century will be a approach hazard to a ‘national security’ of such powers. The fight as we see in Syria is, thus, unequivocally a fight of unfamiliar ‘national interests’ colliding with one another.
Second, a continued predicament in Syria reveals that a priority of tellurian powers isn’t to better a ISIS though to safeguard that a ‘right’ energy setup is organised during a post-ISIS informal order. This securitisation of unfamiliar process has authorised quick boost in troops and counterclaim spending underneath a tag of ‘threat from a ISIS’. The trusting taxpayers have small idea that it’s not their ‘security’ that is during risk though a confidence of ‘national interest’ somewhere in a farming Middle East that is underneath threat.
Third and really critical is a apparent doctrine that contingency be learnt, weakening down of institutions and governance setup by unfamiliar occupation, bombing and drop allows space to multiply belligerent organisations. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and now Syria all paint how a foolishness of superpowers have broken institutional structures, giving space for belligerent organisations, such as a ISIS to seize control.
As prolonged as a predicament in Syria is not distant from thick Cold War politics, priorities not staid and ‘national interests’ of a unfamiliar powers continue to browbeat a plan and discourse, Syria is going to step a trail of destruction, and on a approach might even trigger a wider fight that might not only be fought in a Middle East, though also on a streets of grown countries as we saw in Paris.
Published in The Express Tribune, Apr 30th, 2017.
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Article source: https://tribune.com.pk/story/1397070/new-cold-war-syria/