... coronavirus pandemic, the oil price crash and the slowdown of world economic growth have eclipsed the armed conflicts in the Middle East, which drop off and flare up from time to time. The temporary disappearance of Syria from front page news and new Russia-Turkey agreements on a ceasefire in Idlib are far from comforting. This is merely a tactical pause that should give serious ... ... territory to the north of the M-4 road by using the anti-Assad militants under its control. In doing so, Turkey wants to ensure the security of its borders and gain more room for the relocation of Syrian refugees. This time, temporary agreements between the ...
... takeover of Crimea and support for separatism in Donbass did not presage a policy of reconquering Eastern Europe, as many in the West feared, but it clearly set Ukraine and other former Soviet republics off limits to any future NATO enlargement. The security buffer was back. If the use of force in Ukraine, from the Kremlin’s standpoint, was essentially defensive, Russia’s intervention in Syria in 2015 was a risky gambit to decide geopolitical outcomes in the Middle East — a famously treacherous area for outsiders vacated by the Soviet Union at the time of the Persian Gulf war of 1991. Since then, the results of the military operation and diplomatic maneuvering have not only confounded early critics but ...
The Syrian Crisis: A Thorny Path from War to Peace
The second decade ... ... 21st century began with a string of explosive protests in the Middle East and North Africa. The region has become a source of ... ... region.
The conflict in Syria unfolded in a historical period when Russia–U.S. relations were slowly, but surely, deteriorating ... ... Iranians regard Syrian territory as a key component of their national security strategy, which is focused on pushing back against Saudi ...
... that Assad is basically a horrible human being. For America, replacing tyrants in the Middle East has become something of a fun pet project (hello Hussein, hello Khaddafi, hello Mubarak, hello Saleh) and Assad fits this model quite well. For Russia, the horror of Islamic State[1] encroachment (which took over pieces of Syrian territory directly because of the state paralysis that occurred due to American... ... amorphous and ambiguous nature of rebel opposition to Assad that posed the biggest security threat and concern to the region according to Russian intelligence analysis...
Media outlets and government circles both cringe and squirm when the subject of Westerners leaving the West to go fight in Syria and Iraq with the Islamic State arises. While acquiring data and calculating accurate numbers wildly diverges from source to source, there is no doubt that ANY number simply makes countries like the United States uncomfortable and perplexed: in ...
The Intelligence Community, regardless of regime type, has famously always tried to co-opt and ultimately adopt advancements and evolutions in technology, especially in terms of media. Newspapers, radio, and television have long been appropriated in order to influence, massage, and outright manipulate messages and events important to the national interest. Often the question is not so much whether a country’s intelligence community engages in such activity but rather how explicit and open will...
