Syria: Intervention Will Only Make it Worse

Syria: Intervention Will Only Make it Worse
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
May 08, 2013 | http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/08/syria-intervention-will-only-make-it-worse/print/

This article appears in this week’s magazine under the title, “Intervention Will Only Make it Worse.” Brzezinski rebuts Sen. John McCain, who argues in his article that Syrian intervention is in the U.S. interest.

The Syrian conflict is a sectarian war in a volatile region whose potential to spread and directly threaten American interests would only be increased by U.S. intervention.

The struggle is between forces funded and armed by outside sponsors, notably Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran. Also participating are foreign religious groups not directly controlled by the sponsors, namely the Sunni Salafists and Iranian-aligned militias, not to mention intensely anti-Western al-Qaeda fighters. American involvement would simply mobilize the most extreme elements of these factions against the U.S. and pose the danger that the conflict would spill over into the neighborhood and set Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon on fire.