John Brennan, Director of the US’ main spy agency – the CIA – admitted that the US does not “have the solutions” for the Syrian civil war.
Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies – a think tank – he described how the conflicts complexity makes it unusually difficult for policy makers to come to terms with.
in my 36 years working on security issues, it is the most complicated issue I ever have encountered because of the many, many internal actors, external actors, the sectarian tensions, the problems that have beset that country for so long that were suppressed because of an authoritarian regime under Bashar Al-Assad.
Yet despite the fact that a recent truce – brokered by the US and Russia – seems to be holding for now, Brennan was not optimistic about speedy resolution to the conflict as a whole. Stating that it is likely that a resolution would not come for a number of years.
Rather, he discussed how the impact of the ‘Arab Spring’ – the series of uprisings that began in Tunisia in late 2010 – had changed the landscape of the region dramatically.
The Arab Spring ushered in a new phase in Middle Eastern history, but there is still a long way to go before democratic principles are going to take root there and the economic, political, social, cultural and other types of reforms are going to be able to address what I think are very, very serious challenges
