What Political Science Can Teach Us About The US Airstrikes on Syria

Moscow cast its eighth veto at the Security Council in defense of the Syrian government yesterday. The vote in question would have dispatched a team of UN investigators to the site of the chemical weapons attack and compelled the Syrian government to cooperate with the investigators. Alas, for now they will not deploy. The status quo prior to the chemical attack seems to be in place. That is, with one big exception: the US decision to fire 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase suspected of being used in the attack.

This was the first time in the six year Syrian war that the United States directly and deliberately targeted Syrian government forces. But will the US military strike actually change anything about the conflict? Will the Syrian government's behavior alter in any meaningful way? Will Syria's backers approach the conflict any differently? It turns out that there is some emerging political science that points to some of the answers to these questions.

On the line in this podcas…