The crisis in Syria – and how to resolve it

Last month the United States launched a military precision strike in Syria in response to a chemical weapons attack on civilians in Douma, Syria, a week earlier, that the U.S. and others have blamed on the Assad government.

The country has been in a political quagmire since a democratic uprising in 2011 as part of the so-called Arab Spring. Since then the conflict in Syria has escalated into a proxy war, with complicated and confusing international alliances. A devastating humanitarian crisis ensued.

Stanford scholar Russell Berman, the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, has researched the conflict extensively. He recently authored an article – “The Syrian Rebellion and Its International Resonance” – in a special issue of The Caravan, a publication of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The title of the special issue is “Strategy in Syria: Beyond ISIS.”

Beran is the author of many books, among them In Retreat: America’s Withdrawal from the Middle East, Freedom or Terror: Europe Faces Jihad, Anti-Americanism in Europe: A Cultural Problem, and is the co-editor of The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel.

Berman recently talked with Stanford News Service about the complexities of the Syrian conflict and how peace can be achieved.