International impact of the Koran burning in Afghanistan

The impact of individual actions on the modern globalized international system can have extensive ramification. Such an example of one individual actors mistakes having far reaching consequences occurred this past week as a group of individuals incinerated a number of Koran’s in the highly Islamist state of Afghanistan. Unsurprisingly the Afghani people reacted the the burning of the holy book, which they consider to be the direct word of god, very radically. As of now the 20 people have died in the riots, and the riots are intensifying daily. The actions of this individual or group of individuals have reached across the world effecting not only Afghanistan but all the way to the office of the President. President Obama released a almost unheard of statement of apology,  but despite his best efforts the protests have only continued to grow and become more violent. Similar protest erupted last year on a smaller scale after a Pastor from Florida was filmed burning a Koran. While these protests did not reach the same level as the current protests they show that the actions of a few can have repetitive
consequences on the global stage.

It is in this aspect of individuals viewed as representing a larger entity, that the Realist perspective  fails to account for. Realist perspective tends to focus on the systematic approach but as we can see here, random actions of singular individuals can have sweeping reprecussions in the Global system

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Syria; a domino unwilling to fall

When I first heard of the crisis in Syria, it seemed small and in comparison to similar events in Egypt and Libya unimportant. As the events of The Arab spring unraveled however it began to become more and more clear that Syria would become the next hot spot for revolution.  Compared to Mubarak and Qaddafi, Bashar al-Assad looks like the spoiled kid on the play ground after he is told to share his favorite toy, and indeed I noticed many pun-dents predicting that he would quickly bend to the protestors demands, atleast to the extend to stop outright violence.

And if you continue to use this liberal lens in which all actors should act rationally then you will come to the conclusion fairly quickly that Assad is insane or at least acting against his personal interest. But if we were to use a Realist lens we will come to a different conclusion.

In realist theory we must believe that man is not necessarily rational. If Assad is in a situation where he risks losing a large amount or all of his power, it only makes sense that he will be willing to use every last bit of it to keep it. looking at the situation from this perspective we have to realize that Assads seemingly bi-polar and impulsive turn from gentle reformer to mad tyrant is to be expected. In fact a realist would say it is only natural. While many would feel that it is foolish to look at a conflict such as Syria and focus only on the individual level of analysis I feel that Assad is the core barrier to revolution in Syria and while he remains in power the great push for democracy and liberty in the Arab world will be staled, a domino unwilling to fall and continue the movement across the Islamic world.