Reddit Reddit reviews The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East

We found 2 Reddit comments about The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East
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2 Reddit comments about The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East:

u/gonzolegend · 4 pointsr/syriancivilwar

Most people here would have been following and researching the war, and the larger Middle East picture, online for years now. I don't think there is a quick way to get that amount of knowledge.

Books would be your best bet though for quickly catching up. I would recommend you focus on one good book on the Syrian war, one book on ISIS, and one book on the Middle East region as a whole. Should cover the basics.

I always recommend Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation as a good backgrounder on the Middle East. It's about Fisk's 40 years as a Middle East correspondent and each chapter of the 1,000+ page book looks at another war that he covered. So you'll get an idea of 2003 Iraq War, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, Lebanese Civil War, Iran-Iraq War, Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. It also covers his interviews with Bin Laden and the rise of Al Qaeda.

Will give you a good big picture of the last few decades of history and how we got here. Understanding the history of the players like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Al Qaeda is just as important as understanding the internal situation of the war.

Other than that plenty of books available on the Syria war specifically. Can take your pick. My choice would be Christopher Philips The Battle for Syria. A London based Researcher for Chatam House and Queen Mary University.

But plenty of other books available that all cover the recent war.

Haven't read any books on ISIS itself, since I've followed it since the early days. But for quickly catching up there are several books looking at the group and its rise.









u/random_crank · -2 pointsr/syriancivilwar

> US backed off from their regime change ambitions in Syria

ISIS had jack to do with Obama's indifference to the Syrian rebellion.
There weren't even Bashar change ambitions at the beginning - "he's a reformer!!" said Hillary, if you remember - and there was never Ba'athist-rule-change ambition. Obama had already slapped Erdogan in the face in May 2013 "We know what you are doing with the radicals in Syria" and he had refused to do anything but the extremest minimum about the sarin attacks later in the year. The only serious account of the international aspect of the civil war is Philips https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Syria-International-Rivalry-Middle/dp/0300234619 who argues that the international involvement, e.g. of Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and (above all) Turkey was due precisely to US contraction in the middle east after the apocalyptic Bush-Cheney Iraq War. The various regional powers were basically fighting to take up the space the US had formerly occupied. The US of course entered somewhat to manage this squabbling, but that's about it.