The Vacuum of Power: Fragility in the Middle East

Idealism and the Middle Eastern Vacuum

To my valued paid subscribers, I confess that the length of my earlier reflections on Syria’s uncertain future gave me pause. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it’s definitely not one of my virtues. The complexity of these issues demands a fuller exploration—one that doesn’t merely skim the surface but dives into the murky depths of what happens when regimes fall, vacuums emerge, and chaos spreads.

This extended analysis is for those of you who have chosen, for reasons entirely your own, to support and endure my musings for the cost of a cup of coffee (and I definitely value my coffee). Here, I won’t delve into the American side of the Assad question, as that would require yet another essay of equally daunting length, which I might do another time. Instead I’ll focus on the costs and benefits to Syria’s neighbors while examining the lessons of Iraq and Libya and the fragile calculus faced by Israel and Iran.

In all this, the central question persists: Can chaos be managed, or is it merely survived? For Syria and its neighbors, the stakes are about to be as high as ever. Complexity without clarity is just chaos by another name. Syria’s situation is chaotic enough without adding structural confusion to the analysis. As we dive into the lessons of Libya and Iraq, it’s essential to compartmentalize the threads of thought, giving each its due while maintaining a clear path forward. You’ll need to see the forest and the trees—understanding how each element contributes to the larger narrative.

Lessons from Libya and Iraq: The Price of Hubris.

I can’t even get into examining the potential vacuum in Syria without first confronting the wreckage of Libya and Iraq. Libya, the tragedy play that begins with jubilation at the downfall of Muammar Gaddafi, descends almost immediately into the farce of chaos. A centralized, albeit despotic, regime was dismantled, leaving a fractured state where warlords and militias now vie for dominance. In the absence of institutional resilience, Libya became a theater of human trafficking, criminal enterprise, and an open-air market for weapons and suffering. Chaos, in its purest form, prevailed.

The Iraqi precedent is no less illustrative. Here, the architects of intervention underestimated the role of coherence in governance. The dismantling of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the subsequent disbanding of Iraq’s military created a vacuum eagerly filled by extremists. The rise of ISIS was not a bolt from the blue but the inevitable result of a system destabilized by ignorance and impatience. Indeed, it is not the removal of tyranny that ensures chaos, but the absence of a viable alternative.

Regime Change and the Pitfalls of Chaos: Lessons for Syria’s Neighbors