The suffering in Syria has become horrifying and there is worse to come. It nevertheless remains quite difficult to determine the causes of the present situation and more difficult still to determine how other governments within the international community ought to respond.

Since last Saturday, when Russia and China engaged in a “double veto” of a UN Security Council resolution aimed at bringing some resolution to the conflict raging in Syria, news media in the United States have analyzed the national interests served by their joint decision. Speculation for why these countries would support the Syrian despot has included Russia’s desire to continue accessing Syria’s warm-water ports and the benefit both countries gain from unhindered access to Iran’s vast oil reserves. In any case, Ambassador Susan Rice described the vetoes as “disgusting” and “unforgiveable.”

Syrian forces tank moving along a road during clashes with the Syrian army defectors, in the Rastan area in Homs province, Jan. 30, 2012.

This surfeit of analysis aimed at Russia and China is remarkable primarily for the corresponding lack of analysis of why the United States is taking its own approach to the conflict. Even after the following Tuesday, when the Pentagon announced that plans for military intervention were being reviewed, most US media analysis remained focused on why Russia and China felt compelled to offer a  minority report. What might we hear if media analysis in the United States worked from the (admittedly countercultural) presumption that US foreign policy is no less interest-driven than that of our rivals?

We might hear that the low, grumbling threat of US military intervention against a regime supported by Russia and China contains more than echoes of cold war containment policy, this time writ regional. We might hear that the larger US strategic goal in this revolutionary time is to contain the spread of Iranian influence.

Over the past year, many Christian friends in the Arab world have shared various versions of a conspiracy theory in which the United States does not fear but is rather aiding Islamist takeovers of governments in the region. While this possibility may be strange for many Americans to ponder, the theory accounts for what some may argue to be the national interest of the United States.

Facilitated by the previous administration’s failure in Iraq, Iran has enjoyed a bloc of influence stretching westward through Syria and Lebanon. The fall of Assad’s regime would limit Iran’s ability to project power throughout the region—by severing the Iranian connection to Hezbollah in Lebanon, for instance—a boon to both the State of Israel and the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Saudi Arabia chief among them.

It appears that the US, focused on preserving stability in the Gulf region, is confident in Saudi abilities to control the broad streams of Sunni Islamist impulses (as they have done in their own local context). Some would therefore argue that Islamist political orders, although antithetical to US ideologies, may be preferred as the enemy we know to the Iranian enemy we know all too well.

This observation is the mirror image of what many have pointed out as Russia’s geopolitical interest in weakening Sunni communities within the confederation. By propping up a nominally Shiite regime in Syria and thus bolstering Iran’s Shiite political order, Russia achieves the double aim of preserving its oil interests in Iran while crafting a counterbalance to Sunni groups within its own sphere of influence.

The current diplomatic tensions between the United States on one side with China and Russia on the other indicate that the Arab Spring has now become the new battleground for the Great Powers—those that remain and those on the rise. The geographic distinction confirms some elements of Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis, though not his underlying theory of civilizational incompatibility. Access to petroleum trumps the civilizational divide.

At the same time, however, we are seeing evidence that the outworking of the Arab Spring will likely be accomplished quite apart from Great Powers influence. The heart of the current struggle in the Arab world is an internal conversation, a struggle between Sunnis and Shiites and between levels of accommodation for the secular west (including quasi-Communist ideologies). The outcomes of that struggle are quite unpredictable to persons embodying western ideologies. As much as Russia may try to preserve Shiite political power as a tool to balance Sunni insurgents and as much as the United States may try to limit Iranian influence by opening the door to populist Sunni Islamism, the volatility emerging from centuries of political manipulation at their hands is not easily controlled.

Russia is correct to warn that hasty regime change in Syria will lead to civil war and greater violence than we have already seen. Such a change will break the country in much the same way US policy left Iraq broken. US policymakers are confident that such a breaking will work toward a variety of US ends. Russia would benefit most from some version of the status quo. Both options are drenched in blood, and both fundamentally disregard the wellbeing of the Syrian people. And that, rather than the veto of a UN Security Council resolution, is both disgusting and unforgiveable.

“Death to the Arabs,” “Death to the Christians,” and “Kahane was right” (a right-wing rabbi whose organization was labeled as a terrorist group by the US) were scrawled in Hebrew on a monastery in Jerusalem and an Arab-Jewish school operated by the Greek Orthodox church on Tuesday.  The police suspect they are “price tag” events, a name given to attacks by right-wing settler groups who oppose any peace movements toward the Palestinians.

Both the Council of Religious Institutions and the Holy Land and the Anti-Defamation League condemned the attacks.

The people of Syria are in our thoughts and prayers as the violence intensifies following lack of action by the UN Security Council.  China and Russia vetoed a Western-Arab U.N. Security Council resolution backing an Arab League plan for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside and end the government’s violence against its people.  The changes proposed by Russia, seen by Reuters, would have introduced language assigning blame to Syria’s opposition, as well as the government, for violence in which the United Nations says more than 5,000 people have died.

Western nations reject the idea of equal blame, saying the government is mainly responsible.

Russia had also insisted on dropping a demand that the Syrian government withdraw its security forces from cities, but U.S. and European delegations refuse to include that change.

Please pray for an end to the violence and an outcome that will bring freedom and prosperity for the Syrian people.

For more information and analysis, see:

• Syria crisis: Fear and abandonment in under-fire Homs
• William Hague says UN veto a ‘betrayal’ of Syrian people
• Syria Comment blog by Joshua Landis 
• China and Russia Act To Block a New Precedent for Intervention

In letters to Christian church leaders in Syria, the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), offered his support of the churches’ collective call for an end to violence and his prayers for the people in the region.

“In these difficult days, I will continue to pray and encourage members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to pray for you and your efforts to sustain the courage and faith of your communities,” wrote Hanson. In addition to prayers for the people of Syria, the presiding bishop said he mourns the recent death of a priest there, “who died serving others.”

Participants in the WCC meeting on Muslim-Christian Relations

As the violence in Syria continues, Hanson acknowledged in his letters that there are no simple answers to resolve the current situation, and therefore agrees with many Syrian church leaders on the need for dialogue instead of further fighting.

“We who are at ‘the ends of the earth’ cannot forget the importance of Syria for the growth of our faith or the communities of disciples keeping the faith in the land of Christianity’s birth,” Hanson wrote. “We affirm, with you, that the Christian communities in Syria are an essential component to the fabric of Syrian culture and history.”

At the conclusion of his letter, Hanson said he will pray for the efforts of Syrian church leaders toward renewing and strengthening their relationships with Muslim neighbors, and he asked how the ELCA might assist church leaders and the people of Syria.

“We know that well-meaning actions can sometimes result in unintended negative consequences, thus we seek your guidance. In this critical time, we hope to do all we can to strengthen your callings to be ministers of reconciliation in your land,” wrote Hanson.

The Rev. Robert Smith, Area Program Director for the Middle East & North Africa, was attending a World Council of Churches on Christian meeting in Beirut about Christian and Muslim relations when the letter was released. He read the message to the group of about 40 Christians and Muslims gathered from throughout the region, including participants from Syria. The letter was received as an important message from a church leader in the U.S. that respected the complexity of the ongoing situation in Syria while offering heart-felt solidarity. Since then, Bishop Hanson has received responses from Syrian church leaders expressing similar thoughts.

Read the ELCA news release