US will have to grapple with new realities

[unhappycamper]

http://www.straitstimes.com/news/opinion/invitation/story/us-will-have-grapple-new-realities-20140924



US will have to grapple with new realities
By Hugh White, For The Straits Times
Published on Sep 24, 2014 10:47 AM

Throughout his presidency, Mr Barack Obama has been steadfast in his reluctance to send American forces back to war. He stubbornly, and quite courageously, resisted pressure to take a bigger role in Libya or to intervene in Syria, and, just a few months ago at West Point, he explained why, eloquently defending his view that American armed force was seldom the answer to the world's problems.

~snip~

The first reality is that, despite efforts by the United States over nearly a decade of occupation, Iraq faces a crisis almost as profound as Syria's. Mr Obama had hoped that, once he had withdrawn US forces, Iraq would find its feet as a state and society.

Now it, too, faces a full-scale civil war, which is so deeply connected to Syria's that they have become in effect one conflict.

The second reality is that neither Iraq nor Syria is likely to survive these conflicts in the form they have existed since the Ottoman Empire collapsed. Once the fighting subsides - and that may not be for many years - the political map of the Middle East will most probably have been transformed. New national borders will replace the colonial boundaries imposed by Britain and France after World War I.

....

Most of the current unrest in the Middle East was created by the Treaty Of Versailles in 1919: