Washington’s Long War on Syria

268 Pages·2017·1.54 MB·English

by  Stephen Gowans

Stephen Gowans
WASHINGTON’S
LONG WAR ON SYRIA
Baraka Books
Montréal
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ISBN 978-1-77186-108-3 pbk; 978-1-77186-113-7 epub; 978-1-77186-114-4 pdf; 978-1-77186-115-1 mobi/pocket
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Table des matières
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
Ideology and the Syria Conflict
Divide et Impera
Defining War
CHAPTER ONE
THE DEN OF ARABISM
Syria’s 1973 Constitution
The Expedients of Political Survival
Syria’s 2012 Constitution
Arab nationalist Libya
Arab nationalist Iraq
Oman
CHAPTER TWO
REGIME CHANGE
CHAPTER THREE
The 2011 Distemper
CHAPTER FOUR
The Myth of the Moderate Rebel
CHAPTER FIVE
THE BA’ATHISTS’ ISLAMIC ALLY
CHAPTER SIX
WASHINGTON’S STATE ISLAMIC ALLIES
CHAPTER SEVEN
DIVIDE ET IMPERA
CHAPTER EIGHT
ECHOES OF HITLER
CHAPTER NINE
WALL STREET’S EMPIRE
Who Rules America?
Szymanski on the Theory of the State20
The Council on Foreign Relations
Targeting Countries with Publicly-Owned Economies
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES
Introduction
Chapter one • The Den of Arabism
Chapter two • Regime Change
Chapter three • The 2011 Distemper
Chapter four • The Myth of the Moderate Rebel
Chapter five • The Ba’athists’ Islamic Ally
Chapter six • Washington’s Islamic Allies
Chapter seven • Divide et Impera
Chapter eight • Echoes of Hitler
Chapter nine • Wall Street’s Empire
Conclusion
Also available from Baraka Books
Are wars of aggression, wars for the conquest of colonies, then, just big
business? Yes, it would seem so, however much the perpetrators of such
national crimes seek to hide their true purpose under banners of high-
sounding abstractions and ideals.
Norman Bethune, 1939
FOREWORD
This book was completed late in 2016, at a point the Islamist insurgency in
Syria, backed by the United States and its Arab monarch allies, was in its fifth
year. It is less an account of the events that marked the conflict from 2011
through late 2016, and more an examination of the processes that shaped it. It is
also an inquiry into three political forces which have vied for control of the
Syrian state, not only from 2011, but from the end of World War II; these forces
are secular Arab nationalism, Sunni political Islam, and U.S. imperialism.
A lapse of a period of four to five months between completion of the book and
its publication presented a risk that what was current at the time of its writing
might no longer be current at the point the book was released. This posed no
trouble from the point of view of the analysis. The focus of the book was on the
sweep of events over many decades, and the passage of a few months would
hardly alter the account. But a problem arose in relation to the verb tense in
which events would be described. Writing in the present tense, as if events of the
ground and the balance of forces in the war that prevailed late in 2016 would
continue to prevail indefinitely, carried with it the risk that the book would
appear dated from the very first moments of its release, depending on what
happened in the interim period between completion of the book and its
publication. This, of course, was the challenge of how to write about an event of
contemporary significance that was still in progress. To deal with the challenge,
I chose to write the book retrospectively, with events and processes that were
current as late as the final months of 2016 treated as history, as indeed they
would be, technically, by the time the book appeared in print.