Grading Obama’s Middle East Strategy (Sensibly): Part II: Syria
... intervention. Qaddafi, alone and isolated and ruling over a far smaller population, was a relatively easy target. Compared to Qaddafi’s regime, Assad’s military was much stronger and, unlike Qaddafi’s, had strong patrons in Russia and Iran who would complicate and increase the costs of any Western intervention and made the prospects of any success for the Syrian people on their own quite dim. Some powers talked of intervening in Syria, but with the U.S. signaling no appetite for direct ...