By Daniel Lazare
“Only odd-numbered world wars start in Sarajevo.” That was the joke during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. Though it turned out not to be true, fortunately, a strange echo occurred a few years later when NATO military commander General Wesley Clark threatened to shoot down Russian planes flying paratroopers into Kosovo, prompting a British general to refuse on the grounds that “it’s not worth starting World War III.”
But war among the great powers may now be in the offing in Syria, where the conflict seems to be exploding on a new and grander scale. Instead of two players, NATO and Russia, it now includes a half dozen or more: the U.S., France and Great Britain, plus Russia, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other Arab gulf states. Where the conflicting claims of Bosnians, Serbs and Croats were difficult enough to sort out in former Yugoslavia, the struggle over Syria is an immense tangle in which a growing list of combatants struggle to impose their disparate points of view.
The upshot is a game of chicken that is bigger, bloodier and more intractable than anything in decades. Recognizing that an Islamic State takeover in Syria will lead to another round of jihad in Chechnya, Vladimir Putin sees no alternative but to step up support for the besieged government of Bashar al-Assad. Refusing to stand by while fellow Shi‘ites are slaughtered, Iran sees no alternative but to step up support as well.
Determined to halt any expansion by Iran or Hezbollah on its border, Israel increasingly tilts toward ISIS and Al Qaeda, while the Saudis — more and more paranoid about a “Shi‘ite crescent” extending from Yemen to Bahrain, Syria and even the kingdom’s own Eastern Province — have…