Casey Research By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist
The Vietnam war wasn't really about Vietnam. Spaniards may have fought
in the Spanish Civil War, but the real opponents were elsewhere. US and
Soviet machinations in Afghanistan in the late 1970s had little to do
with liberating a repressed population.
They were all proxy wars, struggles between superpowers that chose to
fight their battles in faraway lands and inflict their collateral damage
on other peoples instead of their own.
Each war had a cover. Each time the superpowers of the world got
involved - overtly or covertly - to right an arguable wrong. Really
though, they were there to fight each other. To weaken each other. To
claim moral superiority and political preeminence. And to win the right
to use the proxy nation's resources and location to their advantage.
It would be lovely to think such wars are a thing of the past... but another proxy war is rapidly developing.
This one pits the world's biggest oil producer against one of its
largest customers. It positions a nation with a stranglehold on European
gas supplies against one with newfound gas wealth and dreams of future
exports. It involves pipelines and terrorism and sovereignty and
religion and contrasting concepts of human rights and political
progress.
It is Syria.
In its simplest description, the war in Syria is a civil war, a revolt
against a tyrannical dictator who would rather slaughter his own people
than relinquish his power.
Of course, it is more than that. Syria is a complicated place and an important player in Middle Eastern and global relations.
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