| Description |
This paper utilizes three strands of International Relations (IR) theory: realism, constructivism, and leadership theory to inform the actions of the United States and Russia in their intervention in the Syrian Civil War. First, a brief overview of the case is presented along with a review of the theoretical approaches that are used for analysis. The approaches are applied to early military intervention policies for both states. For the United States, theoretical approaches are applied for the policy period of 2014-2016 and for Russia, for the period of 2015-2016. Based on these applications, six hypotheses are made for future policy from 2017-2020, three for the United States and three for Russia. When compared to the reality of state policy from 2017-2020, the leadership theory hypothesis proved to be the most accurate for the United States and all hypotheses for Russia were strikingly accurate. Despite that, all theoretical approaches provided a degree of difficulty in implementation. As a result, a new approach for prediction is proposed that utilizes leadership theory and constructivism to inform which actions are most likely and how they may be taken in the future. This new approach is applied to possible 2021 leaders: Putin for Russia and either Joe Biden or Donald Trump for the United States. Finally, further areas of study are suggested such as using the proposed methodology in other aspects of IR including humanitarian intervention and diplomacy as well comparing various IR theories and their predictability in these areas as well. |
