Syria today represents the Afghanistan of 1980s, Vietnam of the 60s and Korea of the 50s.
If the war in Syria was truly about Syria or about defeating ISIS, the mess we see in the region today would have been cleaned up already. The recent shooting down of a Russian plane by Turkey is classic Cold War politics. We saw this way too many times during the Cold War, in the proxy wars in Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam and Latin America.
What started as a movement for democracy in Syria back in 2011 became entangled in regional power politics between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel on one side, against Iran, the Assad regime and Hezbollah on the other. Fast forward to 2014, and the global superpowers — the US/Europe and Russia — are also closely involved in backing their proxies.
