Pressure is growing on the US to expand its activities against the Islamic State into Syria. The IS has well-established bases in northern and eastern Syria, and as long as its bases there are untroubled, there is little chance that progress can be made in defusing the threat it poses to Iraq. President Obama’s problem is that US foreign policy in the region is contradictory: it supports the Iraqi government but opposes the Syrian government, both of which oppose the IS. Obama should be following the balance of power maxim, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But it would be hard for Obama to ally the US with a Syrian government that has killed about 191,000 Syrians in the civil war.
Apparently, the truck convoy left Ukraine and returned to Russia. There was no confrontation with Ukrainian forces, and the response from the West remains unclear. RT, a media outlet that closely reflects Russian policy, gives the Russian side of the debate, raising some important issues about humanitarian intervention. Given that we have no accurate or independent information about the contents of the humanitarian convoy, it is hard to assess whether the Russian side is persuasive.
Fighting has resumed in the Gaza Strip, as the peace negotiations yielded nothing but additional animosity between Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, tensions have actually heightened as the Palestinian Authority announced that Hamas had agreed to terms to pursue membership in the International Criminal Court. Israel does not believe that it can get a fair hearing at the ICC, and the political damage to US-Israeli relations from a negative ruling would be immense.
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