Syria, Iraq and Ukraine have been reduced to shambles. You’ve seen it all over the news: terrorist turned caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his Islamic State watch as their influence and power spreads like wildfire across the Levant, while pro-Russian opposition groups wreck havoc throughout the Ukraine, shaking the establishment of the Iraqi and Ukrainian governments at their cores. Millions of refugees and internally displaced persons across the regions suffer from inadequate resources and fear they may never return home again amidst oppositional invasions and airstrikes in cities like Mosul and Snizhne. Thousands of miles away from the comfort of our living rooms we wonder how these states descended into chaos so rapidly in the past few years and why attempts at reigning in their power prove ineffectual at best.

Yet, the leadership in two of these regions has emerged from the entropy unscathed, and, by some accounts, more powerful than ever despite the chaos unfolding within their borders. Bashar al-Assad began his third presidential term last week despite condemnation of Syria’s elections by the European Union, the United States and UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon as unfair and illegitimate. According to a recent Gallup poll, Vladimir Putin has enjoyed an 29% increase in his national approval rating this past year, no doubt in response to Russia’s invasion of Crimea and destabilizing role in Eastern Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Syrian political groups remain mired in intense intra-group conflict over how to handle their current domestic situation. With the current split system between Bashar’s Damascus and the opposition-led Aleppo government, little hope remains for any semblance of legitimate rule.

In Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been blacklisted and blamed by leaders in the Gulf States and Iraq’s own general public for failing to quash the rebel fighters edging their way towards Baghdad. Mired in gridlock as Parliament members attempt to form a new government, the hope for order and stability in Iraq seems fleeting for the near future.

How do Putin and Assad continue to reign with such unchecked power given the fierce opposition by their own citizens –as seen in the Pussy Riot protests and by free speech advocates being arrested for “violating public order”–and, by and large, the Western world? Without question, Russia’s star has risen astronomically in the global political arena over the past year. Damascus, thanks to the generosity of Putin’s government, has greatly increased its military power with Russian-made jets used to hunt down oppositional militias. Al-Baghdadi and his troops have captured the Al-Omar gas field in central Syria, increasing their economic power and threatening the very core of the Iraqi energy sector. Though by no means exclusively, ‘iron fist’politics, tangible gains in national interest and popularly supported cronyism are the three driving factors in the success of Bashar, al-Baghdadi and Putin.

Dominant leadership has proved crucial to the success of Putin’s Russia. Since 2000, his charismatic authoritarianism has pushed the country to the forefront of the political arena. By setting a precedent of swift, no-holds-barred action against opposition groups during the Second Chechen War, Putin enjoys popular support as a leader who demonstrates potency and has a clear vision for the future. Bashar too continues to hold absolute rule despite the scattered battlefields across the country, authoritatively quashing rebel groups with brutal barrel bombs and leaving millions displaced or in flight from their homeland. Al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State has also risen as an effectual political and military model that wins citizens’support thanks to welfare services and public works projects, despite grave ideological differences within the group’s vision of a caliphate and fundamentalist fueled sharia law.

All three leaders also boast a clear grand strategy for what they perceive as the public’s interest. Putin’s vision of Russian exceptionalism, reiterated in his speeches to the people, now inspire a new wave of popular support throughout the country, and his actions in Crimea and the rest of Ukraine reflect a prototypically powerful Russia rising from the ashes of the USSR’s breakup in 1992. Pro-Russian rebel forces now control the majority of Eastern Ukraine –including the area where Malaysian Airlines MH-17 was allegedly shot down by opposition forces with Russian-supplied surface-to-air missiles–further illustrating their influence. In Bashar’s inaugural speech last week, he called for a greater focus on caring for the people of Syria, decrying attempts from the West to uproot existing order in the country and promising to protect the Syrian people against further bloodshed. While his declarations of victory of terrorism don’t ring true for Syrians in Aleppo still recovering from last week’s airstrike, his military and political capabilities will undoubtedly keep Syria safe from international threats and slowly but surely defeat the Free Syrian Army from within its borders. Al-Baghdadi’s comprehensive public works campaigns and acquisitions of oil and gas fields in both Syria and Iraq have won the support of citizens and business leaders alike who hope to cash in on the loot.

Yet, the widespread, intricate cronyism that ties the three together is the most damning evidence of all. Reports recently surfaced that the Islamic State may be selling Syria oil and gas through secret back channels, even though the Syrian government vowed to “eliminate” the extremist Sunni terrorist organization, which it considers a threat to Bashar’s presidency. Russia too has joined in on the action, providing the Syrian regime with weapons and jets to combat their civil war, seeing value in defending a vital economic and political ally in the Middle East.

Sustained growth by these three powers gravely threatens American political and economic interests; yet, the US has proposed ineffectual sanctions that, while crippling to Syria and Russia’s economy, have done little to nothing to ease tensions and render solutions. Putin hasn’t batted an eyelid: the creation of the $100 billion BRICS Development Bank poses a serious threat to both the US dollar and the influence of Western-based lending institutions like the World Bank and IMF. While a three-front war in the regions would be strategically challenging and politically impossible, more direct action must be taken in Iraq, Syria and Russia. While America’s presence in Iraq is growing, its purely advisory role lacks the necessary punch to rid Iraq of ISIS.

While war hawks and some leaders in the US want to sustain the country’s role as the international police force for conflict and corruption around the world, it is clear that a majority of Americans want to focus on domestic economic and political rehabilitation. Ultimately, the country may no longer be able to foot the bill, either economically or politically.

The views expressed by these authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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On June 11, hundreds of fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) swelled into Iraq from its northern border with Syria. In days, the fighters toppled the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Tikrit, cities that United States forces had fought for years to stabilize. The Iraq Security Forces (ISF), trained by the United States, crumbled.

The Iraq war hawks of old were quick to the punch. Pundits like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, who had lost all credibility for constructing the fallacious existence of weapons of mass destruction that ultimately fooled the public and Congress into supporting the war, were now making rounds on the Sunday talk shows preaching the same outdated nonsense: more military intervention, and fast!

The extremely complicated Iraq situation could become a major talking point in the 2016 midterm elections, possibly requiring currently elected officials to act decisively before the elections in support of military or diplomatic intervention. For these reasons, anyone planning to vote in the upcoming election should keep three things in mind that offer overwhelming evidence against candidates or incumbents that support another large-scale military intervention. After 2016, we voters won’t get another chance for two years. “Fool me once, shame on you,” the saying goes. If we are fooled twice, the shame is entirely ours.

First, President Obama is not to blame for the destruction of the house that then-President Bush built. Folks like Senator John McCain think otherwise, blaming the withdrawal of forces under President Obama on the current crisis: “Lindsey Graham and John McCain were right,” said McCain, who sometimes speaks in the third person, on the ISIS crisis. “Our failure to leave forces on Iraq is why Sen. Graham and I predicted this would happen.”

McCain’s statements should be taken with a grain – no, a shaker – of salt. On New Year’s Eve 2011, the last of 40,000 US troops rolled out of Iraq. Though the withdrawal happened under the watch of President Obama, it was then-President Bush who had tied the hands of future administrations to maintain troops in the country past the end of 2011. In November of 2008, the Iraqi parliament and Bush agreed to a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that allowed continued presence of US troops until the end of 2011, after the expiration of the mandate to occupy that was issued by the UN Security Council. More importantly, pursuant to the SOFA any presence past that deadline had to be approved by Iraq, which rejected the Obama administration’s proposal to keep 3,000 troops behind in the country to continue to mentor the ISF.

According to Middle East historian Juan Cole, “Bush had to sign what the [Iraqi] parliament gave him or face the prospect that U.S. troops would have to leave by 31 December, 2008, something that would have been interpreted as a defeat… Bush and his generals clearly expected, however, that over time Washington would be able to wriggle out of the treaty and would find a way to keep a division or so in Iraq past that deadline.”

Discussing fault is politically sexy, but is also a serious distraction from the real elephants in the room: the premise that the 2003 invasion was a good idea in the first place, and the uncertainty of how to prevent Iraq from dissolving into a hotbed of anti-American, anti-West extremism that Obama has acknowledged could pose a major threat to national security. Besides offering plans that can’t be taken seriously or no plans at all, no one seems to know what to do, which brings us to observation number two:

The situation is extremely complex. The consequences of any action are hard to predict, and even the most airtight and straightforward of plans always fail to account for all of the details. There won’t be an easy solution, and it certainly won’t come in the form of “precise and targeted” (or more grandiose, for that matter) military action.. This rather basic worldview is the most compelling case for no military action at all, but it has an entire industry of defense contractors and grand strategist neocons reeling at the possibility that the most sure-footed solution is to the resist the urge to find one.

At this point, one of several carefully selected quotes from Senator McCain or Iraq architects Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld calling for Iraq War 2.0 could be inserted and summarily picked apart.

But what about the opinion of the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal, widely circulated to the American public? Recently, they wrote: “The alternative is to stage an intervention similar to what the French did in Mali in early 2013, using a combination of air power and paratroops to defeat or at least contain ISIS…Mr. Obama’s policy in Iraq has failed, that his claims of retreat without risk from the Middle East were false and naive, and that his premature withdrawal now demands an emergency intervention.” Such an opinion is a perfect embodiment of what is sure to be increasing calls for the United States to come to the rescue of the Middle East once again. They will seem simple, and they should be rejected for that reason. Anyone who thinks a few paratroopers and airstrikes, and “presto, no conflict!” is missing the real point.

Third, the disintegration of Iraq is, according to international terrorism scholar Nafeez Ahmed, a “neocon’s dream.” No one should lose sight of the fact that in a region beset by religious conflict, the primary objective of all actors is, and always has been, how to secure control of oil supplies. Look carefully through the news coverage and the statements of politicians, though, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any discussion of it. Calls in the United States to plant the “seeds of democracy” and stave off terrorism are really Trojan horses for doing the dirty work of securing dirty energy. The sooner policymakers recognize that, and act accordingly to move this country toward independence of foreign oil, the sooner a solution to the Middle East won’t be tainted black by petroleum.

The Obama administration’s decision to decline sending any troops to Iraq that would fulfill a combat role is a correct one. Left on the table, however, is “targeted and precise military action,” most likely in the form of air strikes. Vaporizing ISIS with drones isn’t going to prevent their continued recruitment of radicals, nor is it going to fix the mess that is the Iraqi government.

Here is what we shouldn’t do: commit more military forces to a conflict that we have never understood fully from the beginning. Politicians and voters on the home front should recognize that the issues that are within our grasp are more sustainable energy and increased domestic security from a very threatening and unstable region of the world. That region, unfortunately, will be unstable whether we like it or not.

Need another plot twist to convince you? The regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad (who violated a United States red line when it used chemical weapons to exterminate revolting Syrians) is also fighting the Islamic State along side the United States. This defacto alliance is so strong that officials inside the Obama administration have called for easing pressure for an Assad regime change.

The long and the short: what the United States spent over ten years doing in Iraq was undone in one month. Any American voter should be extremely suspicious of another snake oil, fix all solution based upon the same flawed tactics that have cost countless lives and over a trillion dollars. Protecting our embassy and the American citizens who work there is a priority. Trying to nation build with our military is not. Continued discussions with allies, watching and waiting, and remaining cognizant that other unsavory powers like Syria, Russia, and Iran hate ISIS as much as we do is a far more prudent solution. Using our military to prevent the region from descending into the chaos the neocons are trying so desperately to convince us is just around the corner (and have been for 10 years) won’t work. Voters won’t subscribe to the vison that a crisis in an unstable Middle East is just around the corner anymore, because the region has been unstable for centuries.

“Some men just want to watch the world burn,” Alfred tells Batman in “The Dark Knight Rises.” The reader will criticize this article for failing to propose a “grand strategy” to stop the Islamic State, and discrediting those who do. Here’s the plan: watch them. They can’t be stopped, but they can be stopped from threatening American lives if we refuse to put those lives in harm’s way: adding more fuel to the fire will show an unfortunate amnesia of history, and that history will repeat itself.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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