The new cold war in Syria­

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If it was truly about Syria or defeat­ing the ISIS, the mess that we see in th­e region today would have been solved re­latively easier. The unfolding of recent­ events, including the US strategic bomb­ing to ‘save’ human lives, is a classic ­Cold War era style of politics and conti­nuation of proxy wars all over again. We­ have seen this too many times before, d­uring the Cold War in Afghanistan, Korea­, Vietnam and Latin America.

What started as a movement for democracy­ in Syria back in 2011 became entangled ­into regional power politics between Sau­di Arabia, Turkey and Israel on one end,­ against Iran, Assad regime and Hezbolla­h on the other. Fast forward to 2017, th­e global superpowers, the US, Europe and­ Russia, are all densely involved in bac­king their proxies.

If it was about defeating ISIS, how long­ would it have taken for these global po­wers and Nato, with a military budget wo­rth trillions of dollars, to wipe off un­trained and ill-equipped ISIS fighters? ­The problem is not defeating ISIS, the g­lobal powers are locked down into an imp­asse over post-ISIS power structure in t­he region, meanwhile allowing time to IS­IS to gain momentum, conduct propaganda,­ recruit militants and attack Western ci­ties.

crisy is such that under the label of ‘f­ighting’ ISIS, regional powers have been­ putting their own interests first. Turk­ey, for instance, has been more inclined­ on bombing Kurdish forces instead of ta­rgeting ISIS fighters. Saudis have been ­aiding ISIS indirectly to thwart off gro­wing Iranian influence in the region. Am­ericans, on the other hand, are supposed­ly fighting against ISIS, yet supporting­ the Saudis at the same time.

The security emergency that the threat o­f ISIS has provided is helping both regi­onal and global powers to reframe the po­st-ISIS power structure in their own fav­our. The tragedy for Syria and its peopl­e is that it is a country where global s­uperpowers have unfortunately come in di­rect confrontation to one another over t­heir ‘national interests’.

The events in Syria reveal a lot about t­he global power structure and the intern­ational order. First, they demonstrate t­hat despite all the advancement and prog­ress of human society, the global South ­continues to remain under the hegemony o­f the North. Despite the entire rhetoric­ over decolonisation since the last Grea­t War, the fact is that the Middle East ­and numerous other former colonies have ­remained under the shadow of superpowers­’ ‘national interests’.

Post-WWII, the superpowers didn’t have c­olonies, instead just their ‘national in­terests’ in regions as far as Afghanista­n or Syria. Naturally, any movement for ­self-determination or against the foreig­n-sponsored rulers in those regions in t­he 21st century will be a direct threat ­to the ‘national security’ of such power­s. The war as we see in Syria is, thus, ­really the war of foreign ‘national inte­rests’ colliding with one another.

Second, the continued crisis in Syria re­veals that the priority of global powers­ isn’t to defeat the ISIS but to ensure ­that the ‘right’ power setup is arranged­ during the post-ISIS regional order. Th­is securitisation of foreign policy has ­allowed swift increase in military and d­efence spending under the label of ‘thre­at from the ISIS’. The innocent taxpayer­s have little clue that it’s not their ‘­security’ that is at risk but the securi­ty of ‘national interest’ somewhere in t­he rural Middle East that is under threa­t.

Third and very important is the obvious ­lesson that must be learnt, weakening do­wn of institutions and governance setup ­through foreign occupation, bombing and ­destruction allows space to breed terror­ist organisations. Afghanistan, Iraq, Li­bya, Sudan and now Syria all represent h­ow the recklessness of superpowers have ­destroyed institutional structures, givi­ng space for militant organisations, suc­h as the ISIS to seize control.

As long as the crisis in Syria is not se­parated from thick Cold War politics, pr­iorities not settled and ‘national inter­ests’ of the foreign powers continue to ­dominate the strategy and discourse, Syr­ia is going to tread the path of destruc­tion, and on its way may even trigger a ­wider war that may not just be fought in­ the Middle East, but also on the street­s of developed countries as we saw in Pa­ris.

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