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Strategic Wisdom in the New Greater Middle Eastern Game? A De-escalatory Rethinking of the Syrian Conflict

Abstract From an offensive realist perspective, great powers always seek out opportunities to attain more power so as to feel more secure. This outlook helps us consider that the Gulf-Eurasia setting has evolved into a theatre for a new rivalry between camps led by the US and Russia, working to resolve regional crises as they compete over the content of understandings that will be reached and the arising leadership and economic opportunities—the most visible dispute being the Syrian conflict. In consequence, geopolitical realism and perceptions of security dilemmas shape much of their actions and permit the crisis to define the dynamics of global stability more negatively. However, policy-making elites have long sought to temper offensive realism by bringing the logic of positive-sum market exchange into the domain of zero-sum geopolitics. For this purpose, in the Syrian game, this study relies on strategic wisdom as a combination of notions of (re)setting new norms in managing the friction between international competition and cooperation. Transcending monocausal explanations for the Syrian conflict as opposed to the diverse interests of the great powers (US and Russia), it concludes by evaluating the prospects of managing the rise in zero-sum competition.