Blog 3

Blog 3

George Williams

01MAR19

After the death of Alexander the vast empire was split into a series of smaller kingdoms which were ruled by each of Alexanders generals. They then proceeded to fight against each other until an outside power came in and took over in setting up a singular power. The closest regime change to this was the Syrian revolution as there was a similar splitting of powers with several factions trying to gain control of the whole region until outside powers stepped in and decided a victor. When the revolution began there were several different factions including some questionable fighters who were tolerated as the greater evil needed to be destroyed. This evil was the president of Syria who was responsible for various human rights violations. This fight would lead to the Syrian Civil war which is still on going. As more territory was taken by the different fighters from the Syrian government, the different factions began infighting as well as continuing to fight the government. This is very similar to the splitting of the empire of Alexander with infighting erupting between former allies. From there the Russians and Iranians began to back the government forces. The strong foreign backing helped to the loyalist forces push back the “freedom fighters” who included the volatile ISIS or ISIL. With the loyalist forces hanging on to a sliver of what was their territory, the Russians began to pour in aid. This is similar to the gifting of the kingdom of kingdom of Attalus III from which the Romans took over the east. The Russian aid and outside help from other nations allowed for the destruction of the largest faction, ISIS. With the Russians helping the loyalist troops, they attacked and took back much of the land that they had lost to ISIS. This is similar to the complete taking of the other kingdoms but particularly Ptolemaic Egypt which was one of the larger and more powerful of the kingdoms. The current situation leaves the loyalist forces holding much of the territory with a few of the other factions holding significantly smaller plots of land. If the comparison holds then the Syrians, with the support of the Russian juggernaut, should push the rest of the freedom fighters out of the country and re-establish the sovereignty of the nation. The other possibility would be that the freedom fighters would get a significant of amount of foreign aid probably in the form of US aid. This would most likely only succeed if the Russian support also pulled out.

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