... representative government. Certainly the United States and its western allies hoped that by toppling Saddam and Gaddafi they would bring peace and prosperity to these countries.
If only the "right" people had come to power after the wars in Iraq and Libya these hopes might have been fulfilled.
REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev
Julien Nocetti:
Syria: Moscow’s Risky Bet
Unfortunately, the "right" people did not come to power. The reasons are hotly debated and no one can ever know what might have been. What we do know is that hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives,...
... neighbors, as I predicted in the fall of 2013, are also suffering from an increasingly destabilizing burden as a result of the conflict—none more so than Iraq as ISIS broke off from al-Qaeda and proceeded to shock the world with its march from Syria into Iraq in 2014—and the more than four million registered refugees it has produced.
UNHCR
Still, as mentioned, even before the chemical weapons attacks, the Obama Administration had signaled and had taken steps—albeit very miniscule ones—to ...
... residual force would have been better but that is 100% on Maliki not granting immunity and having already committed to his Iranian allies that he would see our troops out in 2011. We will come to ISIS (and Obama’s mild military reengagement in Iraq) and Syria as separate issues.
Israeli/Palestinian Peace
Here, one may be tempted to make more of the efforts of the Obama Administration than they actually represent, but at the same time we should not minimize them.
To be sure, Obama has publicly ...
... Shia government came to the fore
[2]
.
Events in Syria have become a catalyst for a direct clash of interests between al-Qaeda, the traditional power center of the global jihad movement, and ISIS, which is gathering momentum.
Most of those who left Iraq rushed into Syria, where the “Islamization” of the revolution was well underway. The loss of foreign fighters jeopardized the integrity of Islamic State in Iraq, and its new leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi decided to
establish a branch
in the Syrian theater ...
... distance between the main battle ground and the bases from which the aircraft were scrambled.
From the start of the operation one serious inconvenience for U.S. (and later coalition) aviation was the large distance between the main battle ground (northern Iraq and later northern Syria) and the bases from which the aircraft were scrambled. The distance between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (where most U.S. Air Force planes are based) to northern Iraq is about 1,500 km. The distance from Kuwait to the northern coast of the ...
... Russia, America, and the state of their relationship is the lack of measured and reasoned commentary. Make no mistake, though, the problems between Russia and America are serious and affect a whole host of major issues around the world from wars in Syria and Ukraine to global energy distribution, access, and prices, to space exploration and militarization, just to name a few.
Perhaps this is understandable, given the nature of the history of the most serious, dangerous rivalry the world has ever ...
... decentralization has in many ways been facilitated by the Internet and social media: they provided for the possibility of Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra ideologies to reach the most remote corners of France.
Explaining the popularity of jihad in Syria and Iraq
At least three types of reasons – theological, historical and practical – are useful in explaining the popularity of jihad in Syria and in Iraq. At the theological level, Syria is included in what jihadists call the “country of ...
... strong cases to be made on Iraq confronting Obama: one for intervention, one against intervention, with the Administration considering both.
In the for column, the former al-Qaeda in Iraq/Mesopotamia groups calling themselves first the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/the Levant/al-Sham (ISIS or ISIL) and now just Islamic State (IS) might possibly have been the worst, most brutal, most powerful terrorist organization in the history of the world at that point. The group now controlled huge swaths of Syria and ...
... military spending.
One reason to be optimistic about addressing the IS problem is that there is a 'coaltion of the unwilling' which is nonetheless appearing more assertive than its more 'willing' counterpart back to 2003 in Iraq. No wonder since the threat for other states in the region is formidable. On the other side, the new Iraqi government shall be one of the major pieces of the puzzle since it has to become a better alternative for Iraqi Sunnites. Concentrating power ...
... major energy players to gain access to Iran’s hydrocarbons.
Hence, Russia's assessment of the emerging environment in Iran should not be simplistic. On the one hand, a strong Tehran appears a promising ally in countering the Islamic threat in Syria and Iraq, but on the other, Western appetites for Iranian oil and gas may result in the emergence of a weighty rival in the European gas market.
Hence, Russia is in a position to offer Iran multifaceted military support with the prior coordination of steps ...