BETWEEN 1936 and 1939, the Spanish Civil War condensed the awful drama
of the 1930s into one conflict. Spain was where left-wing illusions about
Stalinism went to die, where Hitler’s war machine tuned up for the Blitzkrieg,
where aerial bombardments of civilians and politically-motivated “cleansing”
were normalized. It was a proxy war for the totalitarian powers, a magnet for
volunteers from around the Western world, and an object lesson in the impotence
of Europe’s liberal democracies.
As with Spain, so now with Syria. Once again we have a divided country
bled by an ideological proxy war — this time between the Salafism of the Gulf
states and the Twelver Shi’ism of the Iranian regime, with other regional and global
powers hovering in the background. Once again we have the escalating atrocities
— chemical warfare, massacres and religious persecutions, the return of
beheadings, slavery and crucifixion. Once again we have ideologically motivated
volunteers rushing in from far and wide; once again we have liberal powers
seemingly helpless to bring the conflict to an an end.
But then there is this illuminating difference. The Spanish Civil War
actually ended relatively swiftly; after less than three years of fighting
Franco’s nationalists had won. The Syrian conflict, though, is in its fifth
year and counting, and its ultimate outcome is no clearer today than it was in
2012 or 2014.
In part, this difference is actually a grim sort of
good news — not for Syria, obviously, but for the world. One reason Spain’s
civil war ended quickly was the sheer effectiveness of the military aid the
Axis powers sent to the nationalist cause. Spain proved (or seemed to prove)
the effectiveness of total war as a tool of ideologically-motivated statecraft:
The left was crushed, Franco’s regime established, and looking from afar Adolf
Hitler could draw an obvious lesson for his own terrible ambitions.
In Syria, the
lessons are very different. The war is endless, the factions barely competent,
and neither of the main ideological forces invested in the conflict seem
capable of actually winning it. The Iranian mullahs have helped President
Bashar al-Assad survive, but not to prosper. The Gulf states have lost control
over their own Sunni proxies, and now face an Islamic State that threatens them
as well.
This means that neither Tehran nor Riyadh can
look at Syria and see a template for regional expansion or grand ideological
victory. And that, in turn, makes a Middle Eastern version of the massive
conflict that followed the Spanish Civil War seem relatively unlikely. For all
their ambitions and enmity, neither the Iranians nor the Gulf states (who are
currently hiring Colombian mercenaries to fight their other proxy war, in Yemen) look anywhere near strong enough
to start one.
Of the powers
involved in Syria that are strong enough to start a wider war,
meanwhile — Russia, the United States, France and Turkey — it’s not at all
clear what they would hope to get out of it. The West can barely decide which
Syrian faction we should be bombing. Russia’s brinksmanship with Turkey is a
show of toughness with no clear strategic objective attached.
That doesn’t make a blundering sort of war impossible.
But unlike in Ukraine, where Vladimir Putin does aspire to hold territory, in
Syria and its environs none of the outside powers seem to want responsibility
for anything. And so long as there’s no ground they’re willing to fight over or
even occupy, the risk of sustained great power conflict seems moderately
remote.
Which is happy news relative to where things stood in
Europe as the Spanish Civil War was winding down. But if Syria is (probably)
not a harbinger of a full-scale Third World War, it is a harbinger of a
different set of evils — institutional collapse, permanent disorder, and the
inability of global institutions to master the problems that they supposedly
exist to solve.
If the war in Spain previewed an era of totalitarian aggrandizement, the
war in Syria has exposed the essential hollowness of so-called nation-states,
the ease with which ethnic and religious furies can take over when they crack.
If the war in Spain was a proving ground for eastern
front-style total war, the war in Syria is a training ground for Paris-style
terrorists.
If the war in
Spain ushered in a decade of vast militaries on the march, the war in Syria is
giving us civilians on the march — the movement of refugees as a geopolitical
crisis. If the war in Spain demonstrated that Hitler and
Stalin were happy to step in when a liberal center failed to hold, the war in
Syria demonstrates that the Pax Americana is cracking and no power
or alliance is remotely prepared to take its place.
If the war in Spain
was a dress rehearsal for World War II — well, the truth about Syria is that
it’s probably not a rehearsal for anything. It’s the main event, and nobody can
foresee when it will end.
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