The metamorphising struggle for Syria I Raymond Hinnebusch I November 2021

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Syria’s conflict has metamorphised into a hybrid: a partially frozen proxy war over territory combined with a battle over sanctions and reconstruction. This lecture will explore three aspects of this contest. The lecture will look at the stalemated proxy war; the effort of the regime to use reconstruction to consolidate its power and marginalize opposition and the US effort to obstruct this. At stake is whether Syria’s sovereignty will survive and in what form or whether it’s statehood will further fail, with likely waves of spill-over to neighbours. But Syria is also a test case of the global order: whether the US can use its dominance of the world financial system to sustain its world hegemony or whether its reinvention as a “sanctions hegemon” is the last episode in the transition to a multipolar world. This lecture was given by Professor Raymond Hinnebusch (University of St Andrews) as CBRL's AGM lecture on 17 November, 2021.