The US armed forces are still licking their wounds from their recent entanglement, this one is in Afghanistan, the one before was in Iraq. President Obama promised to withdraw and so he did, so he cannot command on a new entanglement now in another Arab or Muslim country. The Europeans are very weak. They were never so weak and never so not in the mood for war. The European trend now is more to be pacifists.
Into this reality came the Arab spring, the so called Arab analogy to 1968''s Czechoslovakia.
America and Europe would like to see the rest of the world as democratic as they are, you may say also as peaceful as they are in their countries. They all have enough economical problems now so they really don''t feel like joining another military coalition to Iran, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia or Syria.
Of course, the political situation in the Middle East and the eastern regimes are something that the western world never really understood. After all, the Levant thinking is much different from the western logic, it is really too much to ask from the western countries.
So the western world has invented a new policy that we can call: "Go without and feel with" or we can change it to: "Try to manage a political crisis without taking responsibility".
The advantages are: no western soldier is dead, no demonstrations in western capitals and someone else has to pay the price of the failure.
No one knows what the hell happens today in the blooming cities of Bagdad, Tunis, Sana''a, Tripoli and Cairo. You can guess of course that the citizens there are jumping happily from their beds every morning because they know that they are liberated from a dictatorship and are saved by a mighty democratic power that now protects them and takes care of all their needs. No. Those cities are probably in a complete mass and their citizens are probably in a deeper shit than they used to have before. Their economies are completely ruined, no tourists will go there for few years at least and no one will give those people Visas for a better world now.
The western forces lost the opportunity to have Syria – with her weak leader Assad - as a silent ally that will separate between Iran and Lebanon. Syria is maybe the weakest country in the Middle East. It could take so little in western terms to turn them to become silent allies that it is unbelievable that the western coalition could not achieve this goal. Assad''s Regime is not the way any American or European would like to live his life but most of the Americans also don''t wear Djellaba and most of their women don''t cover their faces when they go on the street. This is the Middle East Mr. Obama and dear European leaders. There is a very sensitive balance here and it seems your contribution to its future is quite negative.
If Assad will lose his chair in Damascus, his successors will make a bloodshed that what happens now – already 20,000 killed – will look like a Middle Eastern picnic. The Russians and the Chinese seem to understand better how things are moving here and they understand that nothing good will emerge from the collapse of Assad''s regime. After Assad it will be King Abdullah in Jordan and we will have great fireworks that no will be able to stop any more.
This hesitation to make a real change in Syria with real troops, sitting on the fence and giving orders and advices, is giving space for the Russians and the Chinese to act and so they do. If you aren''t willing to make sacrifice, you cannot win a war or manage a political crisis. The western leaders can make a note: those 20,000 are written on their names. If they would have not given the Syrian revolvers the hope they can win and money (to buy weapon) there were less killed in Syria''s cities on the recent months for sure. It is quite obvious that what will become after Assad will be nothing better and probably much worse than it used to be.
In between is Israel. Aimed from the south by the Muslim Brothers from Cairo, by the Ayatollahs from Saudi Arabia, that are successfully on the western side so far (great achievement) and the Hamas from Gaza that is armed and fueled constantly by Iran; From the North by Iran''s Hezbollah in Lebanon and the new Syria (whatever this will be now); From the east by a very weak and small Jordanian kingdom that probably will not last for too long too (sorry to disappoint) and behind it (geographically) is the new blooming democracy of Iraq.
If all this is not enough, don''t forget we did not say anything so far about Iran. This peace-seeking country is the Germany of 1938 and if you don''t see it then it is fine because you can feel like you are America or Western Europe in 1938.
Now the question that I left to your thinking is: who is going to pay the price for all of those crucial mistakes? Who will have the honor to play the role of Czechoslovakia?
Would you really need a hint?