World Order

by Henry Kissinger

Participants in the contests search for outside support, particularly from Russia and the United States, in turn shaping the relations between them. Russia’s goals are largely strategic, at a minimum to prevent Syrian and Iraqi jihadist groups from spreading into its Muslim territories and, on the larger global scale, to enhance its position vis-à-vis the United States (thereby reversing the results of the 1973 war described earlier in this chapter). America’s quandary is that it condemns Assad on moral grounds—correctly—but the largest contingent of his opponents are al-Qaeda and more extreme groups, which the United States needs to oppose strategically. Neither Russia nor the United States has been able to decide whether to cooperate or to maneuver against each other—though events in Ukraine may resolve this ambivalence in the direction of Cold War attitudes. Iraq is contested between multiple camps—this