I will allow Cicero to provide my rejoinder, “The sinews of war are infinite money.”

The overall point in my post, however, is not that the war is being fought for wealth but that the war cannot be properly described except by reference to economic transactions. Take for example the complete confusion of sides and interests. Each ‘side” of the conflict is connected to so many different other interests that it is almost impossible to map out all the possible interactions. The modern term for such a complex is a “market.”

With whom you trade determines with whom you are allied in the Syrian conflict. My analysis takes for granted the point that the nation-state as a complex has disappeared in Syria. What is left is two competing market states: pro-Assad and anti-Assad. The pro-Assad state is that market that trades together to keep Assad in charge whereas the anti-Assad state is that market that trades together to remove Assad from power.

My further claim that the Syrian conflict is completely privatized merely meant to convey this sense of economic interaction. Men have been mercenaries since the dawn of time, but their presence of mercenaries in Syria has little to do with my claim. May claim is that the employers of mercenaries being economized is novel. In a real sense the mercenaries and irregular forces are not being employed by particular nations but by competing market complexes that have emerged to determine whether Assad stays or goes.

Your point is that the collapse of nation states in the Middle East will send waves of refugees to Europe?
They’re coming anyway.

(I’ll follow the gnxp link with avidity.)

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/12/idea-scultping.php

I still don’t see why any of this matters.

The ghosts of millions of mercenaries who died on the battlefields of history want to have a word with you.

Neither these rebels nor Assad are terribly impressive as military organizations. Both could be annihilated nearly to the last man in (probably) less than eight hours by an unrestrained Western military organization, public or private.

Gold alone doesn’t win wars. In any event, this civil war was unnecessary, the the material support for it is a symptom of insanity within the American foreign policy establishment, which has been incubating its particular brand of madness for over a century now.

It’s also not taking the motivations behind both sides seriously. Do you think that Sunni jihadis care about money? They care about struggle, victory, and the establishment of their religious and political goals. Their typical footsoldier is an economic incompetent who has no potential at all to even be a marginally productive actor in the global economy. They’re bred and trained to kill and fight.

I would restate the above as “cuius forum, eius res publica”: “whose the market, his the state.” What is the defining characteristic of each side of the conflict? I would contend that there is no defining characteristic except for one: contract. The rebels in Syria are bound by nothing deeper than economy, and the same goes for Assad’s forces and allies. Irregulars fight on both sides with weapons that most did not create but received from others. Consider the following: a rebel Kurd using Saudi money to purchase American made weapons in order to fight an Alawite funded by Iran money using Russian made weapons.

In a very real and important sense we are watching the first completely privatized war. Everything is outsourced and dispersed. There is no central command for either side but merely a market for violence. Whoever can dominate the market will win the conflict. Syria is no longer (and never was) about what the Syrian people want or need but about what organizations can provide the most timely and effective violence to bear upon the competition.

So hopefully, many decades after an horrific all-out Sunni/Shia conflict, there will be more enlightened government in the Middle East for whomever survives and if there is anyone else outside the region who cares anymore, having had to find other ways to get energy in the meantime.