‘Houston, We Have Too Many Problems’: The US, Iraq, North Africa, Afghanistan and… Syria

After the outstanding success of the elimination of Bin Laden and the difficult resolution of the Libyan crisis, with the toppling of the Gaddafi regime, the Obama Administration has had to face, besides the perennial Israeli-Palestinian issue, the complicated deterioration of the situation in Syria and its potential for spill-over. Since his re-election and even while still campaigning in 2008, Obama has issued concrete statements and even entire speeches on each one of the stages of the process called the ‘Arab Spring’. In response to the regime of Al-Assad in Syria, Obama seemed to be acting as he did in each of the successive falling dominoes in North Africa, confirming a strategy that included close cooperation with his allies but without direct intervention (especially in the military sphere). The strategy followed during the ‘Arab Spring’ can be said to have been successful, if only in view of the ultimate results of the demise of autocratic regimes and the optimistic expectations for reconstruction and democratic development. But Syria has posed a different challenge to the US-