Syria: The New Cambodia

Will Iran make the U.S. whack Assad?

Michael Young | August 10, 2005

(Page 2 of 2)

Bizarre, you say? Perhaps, but relocating a conflict to a more convenient venue can be tempting when a country is eager for military success; particularly, too, when it is contemplating some sort of drawdown of forces. In order to regain a hold over Iraq, and in the process break the increasingly powerful Iranian hand there, the Bush administration might seek first to settle its accounts with Syria on the Western border. Syria is feeble; Iran is not. Syria has no solid allies; Iran is still regarded as a country with which business can be concluded. And ending suicide attacks is something palpable, while curbing Iranian influence demands subtlety that is far less marketable.

Such logic is not any stranger than, let's say, the Nixon administration's behavior in Cambodia in 1969. The U.S. bombed North Vietnamese sanctuaries there to prevent the entry of troops and weapons into South Vietnam, ultimately visiting disaster on a neutral country. This took place after Richard Nixon had won the 1968 election on a platform of negotiated withdrawal from Vietnam, and was seen as an extension of that effort.

A conflict with Syria is unlikely to be quite as dramatic. However, in the absence of a clear-cut administration policy on Syria; given Syrian recklessness in playing sorcerer's apprentice with the jihadists; given the growing Iranian threat to American plans in Iraq, compounded by the ongoing nuclear dispute; and given growing American annoyance with how Iraq is developing, a spectacular reshuffling of the deck might emerge as a favorite option of the administration. If that happens, Syria is the likeliest target, even if the American fist would mainly be directed towards Iraq's east.