Syria has the potential to become America’s new Vietnam – so, as Barack Obama sends the first 50 special operations troops to Syria to engage the Islamic State, we must be wary of history repeating itself.
The original mistake with Syria, as with Vietnam, was for leaders in Washington to believe that civil wars and insurgencies taking place halfway around the world represent a critical national security interest. Back then, the illusory “domino theory” – the idea that if one nation went communist it would start a chain reaction leading all the other nations in the region to do the same – justified the decision to engage in a tiny nation that itself represented zero threat to the United States. A version of that logic is at work again.
We’ve been told that it matters a great deal to US security interests whether Assad rules in Syria – but it does not. At last check an Assad has run Syria since 1970 without requiring US intervention. And any successor regime inheriting a destroyed Syria could hardly be a threat. Nonetheless, this assumption creates a powerful bias toward intervention that is difficult to check regardless of the strategic reality.
The original mistake with Syria, as with Vietnam, was for leaders in Washington to believe that civil wars and insurgencies taking place halfway around the world represent a critical national security interest. Back then, the illusory “domino theory” – the idea that if one nation went communist it would start a chain reaction leading all the other nations in the region to do the same – justified the decision to engage in a tiny nation that itself represented zero threat to the United States. A version of that logic is at work again.
We’ve been told that it matters a great deal to US security interests whether Assad rules in Syria – but it does not. At last check an Assad has run Syria since 1970 without requiring US intervention. And any successor regime inheriting a destroyed Syria could hardly be a threat. Nonetheless, this assumption creates a powerful bias toward intervention that is difficult to check regardless of the strategic reality.
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