| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
If Washington's Syria policy succeeds, it will crystallise efforts to privilege diplomacy over the use of force and create a precedent other powers will be apt to follow. The United States' present Syria policy is perhaps the most vivid, and discomfiting, example of the Obama administration's realism. Its military forbearance, even in the face of a burgeoning humanitarian crisis (over 150,000 Syrians have died in just over three years) and the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons, has been resolute. Its focus on using diplomacy instead of military power has been firm, if vexing. These traits suggest three strategic clean breaks from the George W. Bush administration's post-9/11 policy. Firstly, they imply recognition by the US that major wars remain possible and cannot be subordinated to 'small wars' of choice. Secondly, they indicate that the counter-insurgency tools developed for expeditionary deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have been rejected as instruments of policy. Thirdly, they subsume a determined effort at rapprochement with Iran and, more broadly, an approach to Middle Eastern affairs that is substantially less confrontational and heavy-handed.
|