How will foreign powers determine Syria's future.
They will enable the democratic uprising to be crushed, and ordinary people will continue to live in a dictatorship. This will happen in these stages 1. The Shia and Sunni dictatorships with the aid of their superpower supporters will decide on a new dictatorship for Syria with a better sectarian balance (ie more wealthy Sunni business clans). 2. Military support for the rebels by the Sunni dictatorships will stop. 3. The new government will continue to receive outside help to murder and torture the uprising into submission. 4. Key figures in Assad's murder machine will retire in comfort and safety.
If you doubt this then consider that 1. The Middle East is really one interconnected dictatorship, the rivalries provide excuses to discredit or oppress internal opposition, the last thing they want is to defeat their enemies (ie Israeli elite need the Iranian elite, Iranian elite needs the Israeli elite, Saudi elite needs the Iranian elite.... ). 2. The real conflict in the Middle East as elsewhere is between powerful minorities and powerless majorities. 3. Ordinary people in Western countries sympathize with calls for democracy, but do not really understand how lack of democracy and economic distribution abroad is eating away their own political systems from the inside at home (in the last four decades power has been transferred from ordinary people and their democratic governments, to international financial organizations and economically powerful authoritarian governments).
Should also mention that Western governments (and Syrian apologists for oppression) will sell this betrayal as an humanitarian act to end suffering by civilians. I will ask them: Before the uprising did ordinary Syrians suffer? What has the sacrifice by tens of thousands of people achieved in the last forty years of Assad rule? Will the Syrian people ever get another chance to take back their rights? (answers Yes, Nothing, No)
