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The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East by [Phillips, Christopher]

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Christopher Phillips

The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East Kindle Edition

by Christopher Phillips (Author)

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An unprecedented analysis of the crucial but underexplored roles the United States and other nations have played in shaping Syria’s ongoing civil war

Most accounts of Syria’s brutal, long-lasting civil war focus on a domestic contest that began in 2011 and only later drew foreign nations into the escalating violence. Christopher Phillips argues instead that the international dimension was never secondary but that Syria’s war was, from the very start, profoundly influenced by regional factors, particularly the vacuum created by a perceived decline of U.S. power in the Middle East. This precipitated a new regional order in which six external protagonists—the United States, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar—have violently competed for influence, with Syria a key battleground.

Drawing on a plethora of original interviews, Phillips constructs a new narrative of Syria’s war. Without absolving the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime, the author untangles the key external factors which explain the acceleration and endurance of the conflict, including the West’s strategy against ISIS. He concludes with some insights on Syria and the region's future.

Length: 321 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
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Product details

File Size: 1578 KB
Print Length: 321 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 030021717X
Publisher: Yale University Press (September 15, 2016)
Publication Date: September 1, 2016
Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B01L7SSDNO
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

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Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #493,090 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #51 in History of Syria
- #173 in Syria History
- #197 in 21st Century World History

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Old DufflerTop Contributor: DC Comics

Clear and reasonably jargon free discussion of foreign influence in the Syrian Civil War

October 18, 2019

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This work is now somewhat dated and I am not sure I fully agree with all of its conclusions. For the reader with little background, the author's tendency to frame discussion in terms of scholarly debates may become tiresome. In balance, however, these discussions are written in plain language with a minimum of the jargon or name dropping that often marks academic work. The writing is generally clear and the analysis is sound. A very good overview of the complex - and central - question of foreign involvement in the Syrian Civil War.

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Deidre Kellogg Ketroser

An Interesting and Important Book

December 15, 2019

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

An interesting book on the tragedy that is Syria. Well-written, it’s an important book to add to the collection for Syria activists.

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History Reader

Valuable insight into the dynamics of a tragedy

December 23, 2016

Format: Hardcover

When the first protests broke out in the southern town of Deraa in March 2011, Syria had a population of around 21 million. Since that time, some 500,000 of the country’s people have been killed, nearly two million have been injured, another five million have fled the country and more than six million have been internally displaced. The average life expectancy of a Syrian has dropped from 70 to 55 years. Christopher Phillips is therefore not exaggerating when he writes that the battle for Syria has given rise to ‘the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of the twenty-first century’.

In fact, Phillips’s refusal to engage in hyperbole is a distinguishing feature of his new book, The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East. So too is his focus on the broader geopolitical puzzle in which the Syrian conflict is just one particularly brutal and bloody piece. As he rightly notes, reports about the crisis in Syria have tended to focus excessively on the internal dynamics of the war, and this is unfortunately more often a reflection of political bias than it is of sound analysis.

Although Phillips does not deny the agency of Assad and his various domestic opponents, he is at pains to make clear that from the very beginning of the conflict in Syria, external actors have been essential in guiding and facilitating the actions of both the regime and the opposition. His goal in this book is to show how the war’s character, scale and scope have all been greatly impacted by these foreign influences.

The Battle for Syria begins with an uncontroversial sketch of the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East as it stood on the eve of the Syrian crisis in 2011 – namely, as one in which waning United States influence had created the conditions for a power struggle between regional states, and in particular between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Phillips then gives a brief overview of the strategic outlook and interests of each of the six countries that would become the most important external players in the Syrian conflict (the US, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar), providing just enough detail to make the analysis convincing without his descriptions becoming cumbersome or distracting.

Chapters Two through Five explore the early months of the conflict, the key period during which the path to civil war was paved. The escalating violence of the Syrian regime over the spring and summer of 2011 quickly sapped the international community’s patience with Assad: former partners in Qatar and Turkey decided to abandon him, while leaders in the US and Europe began imposing sanctions. All of these decisions were taken on the assumption that Assad and his regime would quickly collapse under the combined pressure of domestic unrest and international isolation. According to Phillips, however, this rested on a serious underestimation of the resilience of the Syrian government, and it would come to have fateful consequences for US policy on intervention (or, in the early days, a lack thereof).

The next three chapters consider the reasons why the major external powers chose to back the various players they did and the important ways in which these decisions shaped the conflict. Most significant in this respect was the support given by anti-Assad regional powers to Islamic extremist groups in Syria. While Islamists had been present among the opposition from early on – Assad released many extremists from prison in an attempt to radicalise the protest movement and thus legitimise his crackdown – covert support from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar for extremist elements helped to ensure that the insurgency took on an ever-more vicious and sectarian ideological hue. The supplementation of Assad’s exhausted military forces with Shiite militiamen from Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan has only fanned these flames.

The final three chapters of the book explore both actual and threatened direct intervention by foreign militaries. Phillips explores the controversy surrounding the Russian-brokered solution to Assad’s breach of President Obama’s ‘red line’ with an admirably even hand, drawing out the negative consequences of Obama’s reticence without ignoring the constraints the US President was facing. The subsequent discussion of the US-led intervention against Islamic State is sound, but it does not provide much original insight. Phillips compensates for this, however, with an incisive analysis of the ongoing Russian military intervention in Syria which has tipped the balance in favour of Assad without creating the conditions for his final military victory: the rebels and their foreign backers still remain committed to the fight. We are thus left with the rather unhappy conclusion that "until the various external actors involved either have their goals sufficiently satisfied or cut their losses and leave the stage, the war is likely to continue in some form."

Phillips writes that he does not intend The Battle for Syria to be a history of the Syrian civil war, but rather "a study in international relations, which utilises broader approaches from that discipline to to increase our understanding of the origins, expansion and continuation of Syria’s conflict." This characterisation is not entirely accurate: the content of the book is, in general, more descriptive than it is analytical or prescriptive. One unfortunate consequence of this is that we are not offered many insights into how the direction of the war could or should be changed. This lack of forward-looking analysis is especially regrettable in view of the potential for a US-Russia rapprochement in Syria under the incoming Trump administration. These points notwithstanding, Phillips does provide some genuinely valuable insight into the dynamics of a tragedy that will undoubtedly remain at the centre of the world’s attention for many years to come.

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Michael Stephens

Important addition to knowledge on the Syrian War

December 19, 2016

Format: Hardcover

Philips has produced a thorough analysis of the constituent parties that have swirled around the Syrian conflict since the outbreak of the first protests began almost six long years ago. This ranks as the first book of its kind which attempts to unlock the impact of regional and international actors and their varying interests in Syria, and it is done with a great deal of skill. While seeking to draw out the impact of external actors on the Syrian quagmire, it is clear that Philips (who worked as a teacher in Syria) has a good grasp of the inner dynamics of the country, and resists the simplistic tropes that too often govern analysis of Syria's complex social make up. The important point to note is that Phillips' account does not remove agency from the Syrians themselves, but seeks to place it within a set of wider constraints, and provides a fuller context. External actors appear to have the power to escalate the conflict, but when it comes to de-escalation their influence is significantly weaker.

The book is particularly strong in the years 2012-2014, and does much to explain how the competing interests of the Gulf States and Turkey, clashed diametrically with those of the Islamic Republic of Iran, leading to a long drawn out protracted war of interests in which numerous opportunities were lost to de-escalate the conflict. Turkey comes across as the one actor that has really paid a price for its intervention in Syria, this in contrast to Russia, Saudi, Iran and the US, who have yet to feel the true impact of the Syrian civil war on their domestic economies, and/or politics. It is this lack of pain which Philips argues leads external actors to maintain their investment in the Syrian war, because their is no downside to retreat at this point in time, indeed to withdraw support for one side would be seen as a humiliating defeat, and whilever this dynamic lasts the war is sure to continue.

Given the recent fall of Aleppo the book will need a fairly rapid update to account for all the changes that are sure to come in 2017, as Assad moves on the offensive against the rebels. But this does not detract from the central thesis of the book which is strongly and consistently argued. It is refreshing to have a non-biased account of Syria, from an author who clearly cares for the Syria's people and has much to say about each external actor involved in the conflict, most of it quite critical.

This book should be considered important reading for scholars, policy wonks, and generally interested readers alike. It is well researched and sourced, but written in an easy and lucid style which allows for quick reading.

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