Dance Of May

 I can't be bothered to dot the is and cross the ts right now, but one reason why WWIII is not going to be set off by Western aid to the Syrian rebels is that this is a revolution, not a proxy war. A revolution with strongest support in the countryside, and not centred on the working class, not surprising when the left parties have accommodated the regime. But not a process that the US can turn on and turn off, something the Russians, and far more so the Chinese, with bigger fish to fry in their trade and other interaction with the US, will note before allowing it to become a proper war flashpoint. The Israelis, who have been happy to let Assad stay, are not going to threaten any Russian missiles for real unless they are damn sure the Russians would back down. This isn't the height of the Cold War, nobody is keeping their finger on the button for the sake of Assad.

 All this is is a Russian power play. Before there was serious talk of intervention, it was the US saying that Assad must go which the Russians said was upsetting them, and preventing a peace process. And the same voices that warn of the dangers of helping the rebels now (and suggest it is futile without any assessment, which is where I start to turn off), told us then that the Russian plans were the way to go. Meanwhile, the facts on the ground, that there is a revolutionary people that aren't going to put up with a state of torturers, means that the same choices have to be made down the line, but with Assad's allies having created more chance that the war will spread, and become more sectarian.