The Syrian civil war that started early in 2011 has evolved into a spiral of violence that not only has lasting consequences for the state and society of Syria, but is inevitably affecting regional power balances in the Middle Eastern and beyond. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Russia, and Western governments are financing and supporting diametrically opposed actors in this conflict, raising the stakes and transforming what has started as a civil war into a veritable regional and international proxy war. Syrian refugees have fled to Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon. The humanitarian catastrophe is crossing borders, rendering Syria’s fate a watershed moment for the region across multiple transnational dimensions. Shedding light on these immediate regional ramifications of Syria’s civil war, this article will reflect on the extent to which the Syrian civil war has become a game changer from a geopolitical perspective. Doing so, it will analyze how the war evokes fears of broader instability on a regional level, and how the conflicting power backing by influential external actors accounts for a deep-seated malaise in Great Power interactions over political conceptions not only of the geopolitical mapping of the Middle East, but of international security governance at large. It will be argued that the divergence of interests between the U.S., Russia, Turkey, Iran, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar over Syria’s future is indicative of a broader phenomenon of hegemonic decline and a re-balancing of power in international relations.
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