On the 6th April, 2017, (1) the President Trump has been in power for less than three months and has already returned the American military machine back into Defcon 5(2) with imminent direct contact with not only the Assad Military machine but more importantly a proxy conflict with Russia.
(Al Jazeera)The Cassus Belli for this mobilisation and Tomahawk missile strike upon strategic and tactical military and infrastructural targets within Syria has resulted from the purported Sarin Nerve agent chemical bombing of Idlib, Syria on the 5th April, 2017 (3).
Geo-politically, the Levant region has been engage in direct conflict for most of the post-2010 de-militarisation of the United States of America war machine. The burden of conducting yet another Middle Eastern conflict for the American nation will undoubtedly fall upon the American people and America's immediate military allies.
Strategically, from an American perspective, the inclusion of the American involvement within the Syrian sectarian conflict, unlike the Afghanistan and Iraqi conflicts, is the most important variable, the Syrian conflict will now expand the Levant conflict towards a direct confrontation between the most prominent hard powers of Russia and the United States of America.
From a Assad and sectarian domestic perspective, the American involvement in the Syrian conflict may influence the local Syrian and the collective Arab and Islamic resentment of the American Devil and the Zionist enemy due South West coming into direct conflict and in thus the Shia and Hezbollah may find a change of focus by the sectarian conflict with the Sunni, and to re-focus the Syrians in a new common enemy and to re-engage the Syrian Nationalism fervour by the Syrian Nation having to engage the traditional enemy directly.
Syrian nationalism may disengage the domestic sectarian conflict and to re-engage the Syrians on the Golan Heights, and again with Israel and America collectively in a more visceral Islamic Jihad.
Conversely, in the meantime, the United States Strategists, may, in turn, view the opportune moment to purge the Shia minority stranglehold upon the Syrian power elites, via the Shia Alawites, and diffused outwardly to the Sunni majority of the Syrian population. The back to square one of the crux of the Syrian conflict has been focused upon the Syrian sectarian power base which had been hitherto been focused upon the Shia, Alawite, minority who have shored up all the centralised power of the Syrian social and political elite. The Syrian population is predominately Sunni and the primary focus of the military strikes within Syria has been on Sunni dominated areas of the Syrian geo-political and sectarian demography.
The fork in the road for the Syrian conflict is how will the American and Russian role in this conflict will pan out.
One the one hand, the Sunni may sleep with the Devil and enjoin the Americans and Syrian Rebels in ousting the Assad regime outright and in the process to realise the Islamic State grand desire in the long run which is to purge the Levant of the Shia outright.
Alternately, and second, the Syrian Sunni may enjoin the Shia regime and enjoin a Syrian Nationalism movement in purging the traditional enemy of the Israelis and the Americans. In which case, the Assad regime may be viewed as the xenophobic Martyr as a Syrian Nationalist. This perspective will venerate the Assad regime as the defender of the Syrian Nation.
Thirdly, the Assad regime may be toppled and in place a Sunni dominated regime be inserted that will be anti-Iran and more reticent towards Kurdish secessionism.
Finally, the Islamic State may lose their domestic source of recruitment with many Sunni enjoining the Syrian Sunni Rebels, in purging the Alawaite, Shia regime, the Hezbollah, and the Iranian military and material logistical support, in the overall ideological and strategic Sunni Caliphate in the Levant region.
In turn, the Kurdish question as the third factor in the current paroxysms within the Levant may be considered a root probable cause for the domestic troubles which had been simmmering since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. The ultimate wicked problem of the Kurdish self determination has been put in the too hard basket for the present moment. Ultimately, the Kurdish Nationalism question will rear its head again long after the demise of the Assad regime.
The main influencing factor in this conflict is President Putin and the ball is now on his court.
In the meantime, with the imminent Russian contact, this may be considered as being more likely, more so than the Cuban crisis in 1963.
The cordial relationship between President Putin and President Trump will be tested. Paradoxically, the Putin regime had supported President Trump's election victory almost directly due to President Trump's foreign policy announcement prior to the 2016 Presidential election.
In April, 2017. things have changed and over 50 tomahawk missiles landing of various Syrian targets is a testament of the fluidity of foreign policy in a realpolitical world order whereby ideological mainstay are not as concrete as a black and white, good and bad, dichotomous world view.
By Tim Tufuga
Source:
1. Al Jazeera, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/04/us-missiles-syria-170407013424492.html, 6th April, 2017.
2. Defcon, http://defconwarningsystem.com/2017/04/07/syria-event/, April, 6th, 2017.
3. BBC.com, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39500947, April, 6th, 2017.
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