Syrian situation in a meaningful way. The United States is exhausted from over a decade of managing two overseas interventions (most of the time simultaneously), and the Obama administration is much less keen on overseas adventures than that of George W. Bush. This was recently demonstrated in America's strategy of leading from behind in 'Operation Unified Protector' in Libya. Europe appears unwilling to act in Syria without American backing and, after all, the continent learned a hard lesson on the limits of its power projection in "Unified Protector" which demonstrated its inability to lead prolonged military operations, even one as circumscribed as that in Libya. 4 Finally, Russia has no true incentive to cooperate with the West, where there is by now a consensus that Assad cannot be allowed to remain in power in light of the atrocities he has committed. Moscow, as Austin clearly noted, will not risk losing the wide range of military and economic interests it has in Bashar's regime. No End in Sight In conclusion, the parallels Austin draws between Afghanistan and Syria are highly controversial; even more so is her appeal for a joint American-Russian brokered ceasefire and subsequent peace plan, though we all can hope for one. The risk, I suggest instead, is not of Syria becoming another Afghanistan. Rather, today's Syria largely resembles Libya during "Unified Protector" -- with militias, clans, and local and foreign jihadists, supported by foreign actors, struggling against the central government's forces, but also one another, while porous borders