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Syria is NOT Kosovo

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I found a good article underlining why Syria's situation is not the same as the one in Kosovo back in 1999 whereby "apples are being compared not to oranges but to cobras". In view of these arguments, do you think intervention might be still justifiable?



  • The war between Serbia and Kosovo was a civil war, but was fought the casus belli being a territorial dispute. Kosovo wanted to become a new state. The Syrian rebels want to free the whole Syria from Assad. Maybe if a war breaks out with the Kurds, the comparison will be brought up again. 
  • The risks of the intervention were much lesser, both concerning outside involvement and regional spillover. 
  • Unlike today, the West had one crystal clear objective in mind: detaching Kosovo from Serbia.
  • The Kosovar opposition was united and, again, shared just one aim.
  • The drive behind both sides was nationalism and not religion. Religion was used, but as a feature of each identity that had to be differentiated in order to justify secession,
  • Even though Milosevic was not a beloved leader, the war was not fought to oust him. Democracy in itself (apart from the democratic right to decide on the future of the state) was not really at stake.
  • No side was able to resort to WMD.  
  • No territory was oil (or other key resource, for that matter)-rich
  • Syria is a more important ally to Russia than Serbia was.
  • Serbia and Kosovo are part of the greater Europe, a continent the West intends to conserve as an island of peace since the 90s (hence the Georgia fuss in 2008).


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