Does Spain’s History Provide a Lesson in Syria’s Civil War?
In the debate over the rights and wrongs of foreign intervention in Syria, some have sought parallels in an earlier internal struggle that divided nations: the Spanish Civil War. The conflict that pitted Spaniard against Spaniard from 1936 to 1939 saw an international regime of non-intervention flouted by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and later the Soviet Union, as the democratic powers stood aside.
Foreign volunteers fought on both sides in an ideological struggle between defenders of Spain’s democratic government, supported by the revolutionary left, and General Francisco Franco’s autocratic traditionalists, backed by Hitler and Mussolini. The late-1930s was a time when Europe’s democratic powers showed both a readiness to appease Hitler’s Germany and an ambivalence toward the Communist-backed forces fighting Franco.
Seeking to apply the lessons of Spain to the Syrian conflict, Michael Petrou at Maclean’s magazine wrote on May 9, “We said it was a Spanish conflict, a civil war, and should be decided by the Spaniards. It wasn’t. The democracies might not have intervened, but other powers did.” As for Syria, he continues, “Non-intervention isn’t an option, because intervention is already happening. Saying you’re against intervention in Syria is like standing in the middle of a blizzard and saying you’re against snow.”
Others have dismissed the parallels with Spain. Daniel Larison, in a riposte to Mr. Rubin in The American Conservative a year ago, rejected “lazy 1930s references when making arguments for taking sides in another country’s civil war.” “Even if we accept the comparison for the sake of argument,” he wrote, “how is it in the U.S. interest to back the weaker side?”
http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/does-spains-history-provide-a-lesson-in-syrias-civil-war/
Foreign intervention in 'civil wars' is nothing new. The 'intervention' can range from providing diplomatic support to sending money and military supplies to 'volunteer' fighters to actual military units as Germany did on the side of the Nationalists in Spain. The USSR, Mexico and France provided help for the Republicans but it was a losing effort. Some 50,000 took refuge in Mexico at the end of the war.
The American Civil War was an exception in terms of large scale foreign intervention but it was 150 years ago.
= new reply since forum marked as read
