Friday 7 March 2014

The Syrian Civil War is entering its third year and has devastated the country. Based on her research, a Texas A&M professor asserts that foreign intervention in the conflict has likely negated any chance of post-war democratization (photo: Shutterstock.com).

Foreign Intervention In Civil Wars Discourages Democracy“Without foreign support, rebel groups have to depend more on the support of the people,” she explains. “The more the people are mobilized for the war effort, the more they will come to demand and expect changes favorable to themselves in the post-war regime. In turn, postwar political elites will want to meet these demands in some form in order to stay in power.”
I was going to take the piss, especially as she is a professor of international affairs at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service [the A is for agriculture], but thinking twice it is a truth that the Syrian revolution is more imperiled by not being self-reliant. The headline I think has it the wrong way about, it is the dependence not the help that is the problem, it is the needing to rely on foreign arms shipments, not the arms themselves that those fighting for a free Syria have to worry about. And there is the confusing use of intervention as a catch-all term.

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