The UN is convening a conference on Syria in Montreux from January 22 with 30 odd states including India attending the meet. While the US is standing in the way of Iran’s participation, Russia has stated clearly that Iran’s absence will prevent the conference from delivering the intended results.

A solution to the Syrian crisis is unlikely to emerge with either Assad in power or in the existing circumstances of the military stand-off. A political solution will have to be imposed from outside, possibly an understanding between the US and Russia with tacit consent of China.

The emerging doctrine of intervention is built around the ability of the international community, mainly the US-led western alliance, to impose its collective will in order to restore a deteriorating situation or to prevent a nascent conflict from burgeoning into full blown war with wider ramifications.

New energy find in West Asia will set forth new political equations. Syria alone has discovered huge proven gas, oil and shale reserves. Whether the Assad regime survives or a change of regime happens there would determine the global gas system in a large way.

It is not so much because of the use of chemical weapons that will unleash US fire-power, but the fact that the Assad regime might be winning the civil war in conjunction with its Iranian and Hezbollah allies.