Though the world dodged a bullet with the British parliamentary vote Thursday against going to war, it also brought with it great dangers, notably that of complacency, today being registered in various places. Though the tactical victory in England over the parliamentary vote is important, it arguably makes the very short term dangers possibly greater, not less. The screaming front page massive headlines in the New York Times, "Obama Set for Limited Strike on Syria as British Vote No: Seeking Allies – Another Ship Moves In," the Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Prepares for Solo Strikes on Syria After Britain Balks," and Washington Post, "Obama Can Go it Alone on Syria: Lawmakers Clamor for a vote," in today’s morning papers say it all. One hopes against hope that one is wrong on this, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. US Secretary of State John Kerry invoked the catastrophe of World War I but seemed to understand none of its lessons about the dangers of using military force in a region already boiling over from ethnic and religious conflict, tension and violence, including by outside powers. The danger is that an already brutal internationalized Syrian civil war will become the flashpoint for even larger regional and global conflict. The stakes are enormous for as former US National Security Advisor and Dean of the American Foreign Policy Establishment Zbigniew Brzezinski states in a Wednesday, August 28, 2013 Financial Times op-ed, "The Steps That Obama Must Now Take On Syria,"
"In a worst-case scenario, this crisis could become reminiscent of the initially trivial violence in the Balkans a century ago."
What is being referred to here is of course the regional sectarian and ethnic conflict that led to one of the seminal catastrophes of the 20th century, from which many others, including World War II flowed, namely World War I.