Checkmated: The decline of American power, most probably

A game of chess has been played in the Eastern Mediterranean between two giants and the result is plain for all to see. The squirming and writhing and sweaty brow of the American antagonist is evidence of this. The US's chief concern is not for peace in our time or any time, nor is it too concerned about the use of chemical weapons, no, its chief concern is for its own waning, flickering power. No President wants to be the one who presides over the decline of American power. To date the Americans have been brilliant surfers, coasting along on a mighty wave that peeked with victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and post World War II economic growth. The wave is about to break and its not going to be pleasant.

Syria has the dubious distinction of being the trigger for America's decline as a global policeman. The US cannot afford not to strike after all that has been said, after all the warnings they issued and after nailing their colors to the mast, otherwise they will lose all their power and most of that power rests on smoke and mirrors and bluff for the most part. The image of a tough guy bully is crucial to US policy, without it, without the ability and will to take action, its weapons inventory becomes superfluous, just an expensive pile of scrap metal. 

While the US has 'big guns' and lots of them, what they lack is a profitable enough reason to go to war over Syria. War, like any venture, is a capitalist enterprise, it has to at least pay for itself and this one does not. Also, the first rookie mistake in war is to set up the game in such a way as to allow your opponent to push you to making moves you do not want to make and drag you into a costly military adventure. The first strike is up to the US, the following strikes and their magnitude and type are up to their opponents to determine, after which the US would be committed to putting 'boots on the ground' and not just in Syria in response. 



The US has been checkmated in the most brilliant way, it loses if it strikes and it loses if it doesn't strike. It loses in the second instance by the simple fact that US political ineptitude allowed its competitor, the Russian Federation, to win considerable regional good will and clout especially among the people of the region. Russia's master stroke came with its eleventh hour gambit, offering to sacrifice Syrian chemical weapons to stave off war, weapons that so far have proved more of a liability than an advantage, to which Syria rapidly agreed. This made the Russians look like peacemakers. The whole affair has also been a convenient excuse for Russia to station a permanent naval flotilla in the Mediterranean. The US also loses if its strikes because a strike would plunge the region into the abyss of war. This war will not be a Vietnam-style police action, it wont be a war to topple an aggressor dictator like Saddam, or a crackpot dictator like Qaddafi, it would be a war that involves a complex pattern of alliances akin to that seen in that great regional European war of note, World War I. This war would consign the United Nations to history, much like the Second World War did its predecessor The League of Nations. 

 The winner in the end is anyone's guess, but to those who subscribe to the myth that the righteous will ultimately triumph this war's conclusion may very well see the defeat of the aggressor, i.e. the US, the side which fired the first shot, assuming they go ahead with the strike. And what countries say they will or will not go to war over is one thing before the first shot is fired, quite another after the first shot is fired. There is really no solid ground on which to stand analytically speaking, predicting anything is pointless at the brink of war especially when the stakes are so high.

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