The U.S. and Russia Ensure a Balance of Terror in Syria
▻https://theintercept.com/2016/10/29/the-u-s-and-russia-ensure-a-balance-of-terror-in-syria
Christopher Phillips’s brilliant analysis of the factors fueling the Syria war is a refreshing contrast to works by most ostensible experts, who are partis pris, ill-informed, or both. With his new book, “The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East,” published by Yale this month, Phillips joins a short list of writers, among them Joshua Landis, Patrick Cockburn, Fawaz Gerges, and the late Anthony Shadid, who have made original contributions to understanding the Syria war’s causes and consequences. “The Battle for Syria” makes a determined and successful stab at apportioning responsibility to all the countries whose lavish provision of weapons and money have prolonged the war far longer than Syria’s own resources would have permitted. The deaths of more than 500,000 and the dispossession of almost half of Syria’s estimated 22 million inhabitants testify to the lack of interest these outsiders have in Syria itself and the priority they place on their own competing goals.
