Class on the 31st of January

Today in class we discussed The Social Contract, and were aware that the concept would make an appearance on Friday's quiz which will also include 1-20 on the Citizenship Test.  Reminder you have a current event due Friday as well.

Name _______________________

What is the Social Contract?

How does Hobbes interrupt the social contract?

How does Locke  interrupt the social contract?

How does Rousseau interrupt the social contract?

Do you believe that the Theory of the Social Contract is valid?  Why or why not?

Social Contract

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Social contract, in political philosophy, an actual or hypothetical compact, or agreement, between the ruled and their rulers, defining the rights and duties of each. In primeval times, according to the theory, individuals were born into an anarchic state of nature, which was happy or unhappy according to the particular version. They then, by exercising natural reason, formed a society (and a government) by means of a contract among themselves.

Although similar ideas can be traced back to the Greek Sophists, social-contract theories had their greatest currency in the 17th and 18th centuries and are associated with such names as the Englishmen Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau. What distinguished these theories of political obligation from other doctrines of the period was their attempt to justify political authority on grounds of individual self-interest and rational consent. They attempted to demonstrate the value and purposes of organized government by comparing the advantages of civil society with the disadvantages of the state of nature, a hypothetical condition characterized by a complete absence of governmental authority. The purpose of this comparison was to show why and under what conditions government is useful and ought therefore to be accepted by all reasonable people as a voluntary obligation. These conclusions were then reduced to the form of a social contract, from which it was supposed that all the essential rights and duties of citizens could be logically deduced.

Theories of the social contract differed according to their purpose: some were designed to justify the power of the sovereign; on the other hand, some were intended to safeguard the individual from oppression by an all-too-powerful sovereign.

According to Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651), the state of nature was one in which there were no enforceable criteria of right and wrong. Each person took for himself all that he could; human life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” The state of nature was therefore a state of war, which could be ended only if individuals agreed (in a social contract) to give their liberty into the hands of a sovereign, who was thenceforward absolute, on the sole condition that their lives were safeguarded by sovereign power.

Locke (in the second of Two Treatises of Government, 1690) differed from Hobbes insofar as he described the state of nature as one in which the rights of life and property were generally recognized under natural law, the inconveniences of the situation arising from insecurity in the enforcement of those rights. He therefore argued that the obligation to obey civil government under the social contract was conditional upon the protection not only of the person but also of private property. If a sovereign violated these terms, he could be justifiably overthrown.

Rousseau (in Du contrat social, 1762) held that in the state of nature man was unwarlike and somewhat undeveloped in his reasoning powers and sense of morality and responsibility. When, however, people agreed for mutual protection to surrender individual freedom of action and establish laws and government, they then acquired a sense of moral and civic obligation. In order to retain its essentially moral character, government must thus rest on the consent of the governed, the volonté générale (“general will”).

Class on the 31st of January

Today in class we finished Inside Assad's Syria.  Reminder you have a map quiz Friday and a Current Event due on Monday the 6th of February.

Click image to watch Inside Assad's Syria

Class on the 30th of January

Today in class we finished the answers for the citizenship test and you were assigned a current event which will be due on Friday and on the Topic of something the 45th President of the United States has done since taking the office.

Class on the 30th of January

Today in class you were assigned a Current Event on the UK and learned the three new "European" countries (Ireland, Spain, Portugal) for Friday Map Quiz.  We also watched Inside Assad's Syria, click here to stream.

Class on the 27th of January

Name ____________________

(or should I be deported?)

1. What is the supreme law of the land? 

2. What does the Constitution do? 

3. The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution. What are these words? 

4. What is an amendment? 

5. What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution? 

6. What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?

7. How many amendments does the Constitution have? 

8. What did the Declaration of Independence do? 

9. What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence? 

10. What is freedom of religion? 

11. What is the economic system in the United States?

12. What is the “rule of law”? 

13. Name one branch or part of the government.

14. What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful? 

15. Who is in charge of the executive branch? 

16. Who makes federal laws? 

17. What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?

18. How many U.S. Senators are there? 

19. We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years? 

20. Who is one of your state’s U.S. Senators now?

21. The House of Representatives has how many voting members? 

22. We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years? 

23. Name your U.S. Representative. 

24. Who does a U.S. Senator represent? 

25. Why do some states have more Representatives than other states? 

26. We elect a President for how many years?

27. In what month do we vote for President?

28. What is the name of the President of the United States now?

29. What is the name of the Vice President of the United States now?

30. If the President can no longer serve, who becomes President? 

31. If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?

32. Who is the Commander in Chief of the military? 
33. Who signs bills to become laws? 

34. Who vetoes bills? 

35. What does the President’s Cabinet do?

36. What are two Cabinet-level positions? 

37. What does the judicial branch do? 

38. What is the highest court in the United States? 

39. How many justices are on the Supreme Court? 

40. Who is the Chief Justice of the United States now? 

41. Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What

is one power of the federal government? 

42. Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the states. What is one power of the states?

43. Who is the Governor of your state now?

44. What is the capital of your state?

45. What are the two major political parties in the United States?

46. What is the political party of the President now? 

47. What is the name of the Speaker of the House of Representatives now? 

48. There are four amendments to the Constitution about who can vote. Describe one of them.

49. What is one responsibility that is only for United States citizens?

50. Name one right only for United States citizens. 

51. What are two rights of everyone living in the United States? 

52. What do we show loyalty to when we say the Pledge of Allegiance? 

53. What is one promise you make when you become a United States citizen? 

54. How old do citizens have to be to vote for President?

55. What are two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy? 

56. When is the last day you can send in federal income tax forms?

57. When must all men register for the Selective Service?

58. What is one reason colonists came to America?

59. Who lived in America before the Europeans arrived? 

60. What group of people was taken to America and sold as slaves?

61. Why did the colonists fight the British? 

62. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? 

63. When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?

64. There were 13 original states. Name three. 

65. What happened at the Constitutional Convention? 

66. When was the Constitution written?

67. The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers. 

68. What is one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for?

69. Who is the “Father of Our Country”? 

70. Who was the first President?

71. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803? 

72. Name one war fought by the United States in the 1800s.

73. Name the U.S. war between the North and the South. 

74. Name one problem that led to the Civil War. 

75. What was one important thing that Abraham Lincoln did?

76. What did the Emancipation Proclamation do? 

77. What did Susan B. Anthony do? 

78. Name one war fought by the United States in the 1900s.

79. Who was President during World War I? 

80. Who was President during the Great Depression and World War II? 

81. Who did the United States fight in World War II? 

82. Before he was President, Eisenhower was a general. What war was he in? 

83. During the Cold War, what was the main concern of the United States?

84. What movement tried to end racial discrimination?

85. What did Martin Luther King, Jr. do?

86. What major event happened on September 11, 2001, in the United States? 

87. Name one American Indian tribe in the United States. 

88. Name one of the two longest rivers in the United States. 

89. What ocean is on the West Coast of the United States? 

90. What ocean is on the East Coast of the United States? 

91. Name one U.S. territory. 

92. Name one state that borders Canada. 

93. Name one state that borders Mexico. 

94. What is the capital of the United States?

95. Where is the Statue of Liberty?

96. Why does the flag have 13 stripes? 

97. Why does the flag have 50 stars?

98. What is the name of the national anthem?

99. When do we celebrate Independence Day?

100. Name two national U.S. holidays. 

Class on the 26th of January

Name ______________

Batman the Animated Series

P.O.V

How is Detective Harvey Bullock’s story different from that of Officer Renee Montoya, and Officer Wilkes?

 

How is Officer Renee Montoya’s story different from that of Detective Harvey Bullock, and Officer Wilkes?

 

How is Officer Wilkes’ story different from Detective Harvey Bullock, and Officer Renee Montoya?

When you have three variations of the same account, what ways can you determine what happened?  Where does Lieutenant Hackle succeed and fail in this regard?  

Class on the 26th of January

In class we reviewed our Syria overview packets and began The Confused Person’s Guide to the Syrian Civil War.  Remember you have a current event on Syria and Iraq due on Monday the 30th and a map quiz on Europe tomorrow.  

Name __________________________

Summarize each section of, “The Confused Person’s Guide to the Syrian Civil War.”

Overview:

What:

Who:

Where:

Why:

When:

Syria in 60 seconds:

 

 

The Confused Person’s Guide to the Syrian Civil War

A brief primer

KATHY GILSINAN

Overview;

In what French President Francois Hollande called “an act of war” against his country, on November 13 several attackers staged a complex assault involving shootings and suicide bombings in Paris that left 129 people dead. ISIS has claimed responsibility, citing France’s participation in the “crusader campaign” against the group. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was unsympathetic, blaming French policy toward his country: “We said, don’t take what is happening in Syria lightly. Unfortunately, European officials did not listen.” France is one of 65 members of the U.S.-led international coalition against the Islamic State, and one of eight that has conducted air strikes against the group in Syria.

France’s direct combat involvement in Syria is fairly recent; having enlisted in international air strikes in Iraq last year, in September France joined a long list of combatants in Syria’s civil war by bombing an ISIS training camp in the country. (David Graham has more here on France’s campaigns against ISIS and its affiliates in Syria and elsewhere.) That participation seems destined to expand; two days after the Paris attacks, France’s defense ministry announced it was conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, and U.S. officials were reportedly sharing intelligence on ISIS targets with their French counterparts.

What?

Syria’s conflict has devolved from peaceful protests against the government in 2011 to a violent insurgency that has drawn in numerous other countries. It’s partly a civil war of government against people; partly a religious war pitting Assad’s minority Alawite sect, aligned with Shiite fighters from Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, against Sunni rebel groups; and increasingly a proxy war featuring Russia and Iran against the United States and its allies. Whatever it is, it has so far killed 220,000 people, displaced half of the country’s population, and facilitated the rise of ISIS.

While a de-facto international coalition—one that makes informal allies of Assad, the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, the Kurds, and others—is focused on defeating ISIS in Syria, the battlefield features numerous other overlapping conflicts. The Syrian war looks different depending on which protagonists you focus on. Here are just a few ways to look at it:

Who?

When we asked readers what they wanted to know about the civil war, one asked: “Who are the various groups fighting in Syria? What countries are involved?” By one count from 2013, 13 “major” rebel groups were operating in Syria; counting smaller ones, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency puts the number of groups at 1,200. Meanwhile, the number of other countries involved to various degrees has grown; including the United States, nine countries have participated in U.S.-led airstrikes against ISIS in Syria (though Canada’s newly elected prime minister has vowed to end his country’s involvement in the military campaign); Russia is conducting its own bombing against ISIS and other rebel groups, in coordination with ground operations by Iranian and Hezbollah fighters. This is before you tally the dozens of countries whose citizens have traveled to join ISIS and other armed groups in Syria.

Thomas van Linge, the Dutch teenager who has gained renown for his detailed maps of the Syrian conflict, groups the combatants into four broad categories: rebels (from “moderate” to Islamist); loyalists (regime forces and their supporters); Kurdish groups (who aren’t currently seeking to overthrow Assad, but have won autonomy in northeastern Syria, which they have fought ISIS to protect); and finally, foreign powers.

Many of the parties I place in this last category are fighting or claiming to fight ISIS. The divide among them is whether to explicitly aim to keep Assad in power (Russia and Iran), or to maintain that he must go eventually while focusing on the Islamic State at the moment (the U.S.-led coalition).

In that sense, broadly speaking, Russia has intervened on behalf of the loyalists and the United States has intervened on behalf of the rebels, though the U.S. has tried to only help certain rebels, providing arms and training to “vetted” groups. It’s this contradiction in U.S. goals—America wants Assad to go but is also fighting ISIS, one of the strongest anti-Assad forces in Syria, in defiance of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle—that helps answer another reader’s question: “Why is it still so difficult to wrap my own head around our official involvement in the conflict?” Russia’s approach is less sensitive to the differences among rebel groups: It opposes all of them. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov summed it up at the United Nations earlier in October: “If it looks like a terrorist, acts like a terrorist, and fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist, right?”

Where?

What started in Syria has spread to multiple countries—to Iraq, where ISIS has effectively erased part of the border with Syria and taken over a chunk of the northwest; to Turkey and Lebanon, which together have taken in more than 3 million of the 4 million registered Syrian refugees; to Europe, which has received more than 500,000 asylum applications from Syrians since 2011; and to the United States, which as of this writing has resettled fewer than 2,000 Syrian refugees since 2011 but has pledged to take in 10,000 more over the next year.

Why?

Why did Syria’s protests of 2011, which began in part as a response to the arrest and mistreatment of a group of young people accused of writing anti-Assad graffiti in the southern city of Deraa, morph into today’s chaos? Or as one reader asked: “What are they fighting about?” The protests started after two Arab dictators, in Tunisia and Egypt, had already stepped down amid pro-democracy demonstrations in their countries. Syria’s war is unique among the Arab Spring uprisings, but it is not unique among civil wars generally. Stanford’s James Fearon has argued that “civil wars often start due to shocks to the relative power of political groups that have strong, pre-existing policy disagreements. … War then follows as an effort to lock in … or forestall the other side’s temporary advantage.” The Syrian uprising presented just such a shock, and the opposition to Assad may have seen a short-term opportunity to press for more gains by taking up arms before their Arab Spring advantage disappeared. An International Crisis Group report from 2011 noted that Assad at first responded to protests by releasing some political prisoners and instructing officials “to pay greater attention to citizen complaints,” but that “the the regime acted as if each ... disturbance was an isolated case requiring a pin-point reaction rather than part of a national crisis that would only deepen short of radical change.”

Once a war starts, an awful logic often keeps it going, according to Fearon: “Given enormous downside risk—wholesale murder by your current enemies—genuine political and military power-sharing as an exit from civil war is rarely seriously attempted and frequently breaks down when it has been attempted.” Another complication: The Atlantic’s Dominic Tierney, among others, has argued that Assad purposely radicalized the opposition to delegitimize the rebellion, by releasing terrorists from prison and avoiding fighting ISIS.

When?

To paraphrase one reader’s question: When does this end? The political-science professor Barbara F. Walter has pointed out that since the end of World War II, civil wars have lasted an average of 10 years, but that the number of factions involved is likely to prolong this one. Ben Connable and Martin Libicki of the Rand Corporation have meanwhile found that insurgencies tend to end when outside state support is withdrawn, and that “inconsistent or partial support to either side generally presages defeat.” With foreign involvement increasing on both sides, neither is likely to win, or lose, anytime soon.

Syria in 60 Seconds:

Here’s how Andrew Tabler, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, summarized the conflict:

The Syrian Civil War is arguably the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War, with over a quarter million killed, roughly the same number wounded or missing, and half of Syria’s 22 million population displaced from their homes. But more than that, Syria today is the largest battlefield and generator of Sunni-Shia sectarianism the world has ever seen, with deep implications for the future boundaries of the Middle East and the spread of terrorism.

What started as an attempt by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad to shoot Syria’s largest uprising into submission has devolved into a regionalized civil war that has partitioned the country into three general areas in which U.S.-designated terrorist organizations are dominant. In Syria’s more diverse west, the Alawite and minority-dominated Assad regime, and a mosaic of Shia militias trained and funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), hold sway. In the center, Sunni moderate, Islamist, and jihadist groups, such as ISIS and the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, share control. And in the northeast, the Kurdish-based People’s Protection Units (YPG) have united two of three cantons in a bid to expand “Rojava”—Western Kurdistan. As the country has hemorrhaged people, neighboring states have carved out spheres of influence often based on sectarian agendas that tear at the fabric of Syrian society, with Iran (and now Russia) propping up the Assad regime; Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the U.A.E. supporting the Sunni-dominated opposition; and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) supporting the YPG.

Class on the 26th of January

In class we reviewed our Syria overview packets and began The Confused Person’s Guide to the Syrian Civil War.  Remember you have a current event on Syria due on Monday the 30th and a map quiz on Europe tomorrow.  

Name __________________________

Summarize each section of, “The Confused Person’s Guide to the Syrian Civil War.”

Overview:

What:

Who:

Where:

Why:

When:

Syria in 60 seconds:

 

 

The Confused Person’s Guide to the Syrian Civil War

A brief primer

KATHY GILSINAN

Overview;

In what French President Francois Hollande called “an act of war” against his country, on November 13 several attackers staged a complex assault involving shootings and suicide bombings in Paris that left 129 people dead. ISIS has claimed responsibility, citing France’s participation in the “crusader campaign” against the group. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was unsympathetic, blaming French policy toward his country: “We said, don’t take what is happening in Syria lightly. Unfortunately, European officials did not listen.” France is one of 65 members of the U.S.-led international coalition against the Islamic State, and one of eight that has conducted air strikes against the group in Syria.

France’s direct combat involvement in Syria is fairly recent; having enlisted in international air strikes in Iraq last year, in September France joined a long list of combatants in Syria’s civil war by bombing an ISIS training camp in the country. (David Graham has more here on France’s campaigns against ISIS and its affiliates in Syria and elsewhere.) That participation seems destined to expand; two days after the Paris attacks, France’s defense ministry announced it was conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, and U.S. officials were reportedly sharing intelligence on ISIS targets with their French counterparts.

What?

Syria’s conflict has devolved from peaceful protests against the government in 2011 to a violent insurgency that has drawn in numerous other countries. It’s partly a civil war of government against people; partly a religious war pitting Assad’s minority Alawite sect, aligned with Shiite fighters from Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, against Sunni rebel groups; and increasingly a proxy war featuring Russia and Iran against the United States and its allies. Whatever it is, it has so far killed 220,000 people, displaced half of the country’s population, and facilitated the rise of ISIS.

While a de-facto international coalition—one that makes informal allies of Assad, the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, the Kurds, and others—is focused on defeating ISIS in Syria, the battlefield features numerous other overlapping conflicts. The Syrian war looks different depending on which protagonists you focus on. Here are just a few ways to look at it:

Who?

When we asked readers what they wanted to know about the civil war, one asked: “Who are the various groups fighting in Syria? What countries are involved?” By one count from 2013, 13 “major” rebel groups were operating in Syria; counting smaller ones, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency puts the number of groups at 1,200. Meanwhile, the number of other countries involved to various degrees has grown; including the United States, nine countries have participated in U.S.-led airstrikes against ISIS in Syria (though Canada’s newly elected prime minister has vowed to end his country’s involvement in the military campaign); Russia is conducting its own bombing against ISIS and other rebel groups, in coordination with ground operations by Iranian and Hezbollah fighters. This is before you tally the dozens of countries whose citizens have traveled to join ISIS and other armed groups in Syria.

Thomas van Linge, the Dutch teenager who has gained renown for his detailed maps of the Syrian conflict, groups the combatants into four broad categories: rebels (from “moderate” to Islamist); loyalists (regime forces and their supporters); Kurdish groups (who aren’t currently seeking to overthrow Assad, but have won autonomy in northeastern Syria, which they have fought ISIS to protect); and finally, foreign powers.

Many of the parties I place in this last category are fighting or claiming to fight ISIS. The divide among them is whether to explicitly aim to keep Assad in power (Russia and Iran), or to maintain that he must go eventually while focusing on the Islamic State at the moment (the U.S.-led coalition).

In that sense, broadly speaking, Russia has intervened on behalf of the loyalists and the United States has intervened on behalf of the rebels, though the U.S. has tried to only help certain rebels, providing arms and training to “vetted” groups. It’s this contradiction in U.S. goals—America wants Assad to go but is also fighting ISIS, one of the strongest anti-Assad forces in Syria, in defiance of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle—that helps answer another reader’s question: “Why is it still so difficult to wrap my own head around our official involvement in the conflict?” Russia’s approach is less sensitive to the differences among rebel groups: It opposes all of them. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov summed it up at the United Nations earlier in October: “If it looks like a terrorist, acts like a terrorist, and fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist, right?”

Where?

What started in Syria has spread to multiple countries—to Iraq, where ISIS has effectively erased part of the border with Syria and taken over a chunk of the northwest; to Turkey and Lebanon, which together have taken in more than 3 million of the 4 million registered Syrian refugees; to Europe, which has received more than 500,000 asylum applications from Syrians since 2011; and to the United States, which as of this writing has resettled fewer than 2,000 Syrian refugees since 2011 but has pledged to take in 10,000 more over the next year.

Why?

Why did Syria’s protests of 2011, which began in part as a response to the arrest and mistreatment of a group of young people accused of writing anti-Assad graffiti in the southern city of Deraa, morph into today’s chaos? Or as one reader asked: “What are they fighting about?” The protests started after two Arab dictators, in Tunisia and Egypt, had already stepped down amid pro-democracy demonstrations in their countries. Syria’s war is unique among the Arab Spring uprisings, but it is not unique among civil wars generally. Stanford’s James Fearon has argued that “civil wars often start due to shocks to the relative power of political groups that have strong, pre-existing policy disagreements. … War then follows as an effort to lock in … or forestall the other side’s temporary advantage.” The Syrian uprising presented just such a shock, and the opposition to Assad may have seen a short-term opportunity to press for more gains by taking up arms before their Arab Spring advantage disappeared. An International Crisis Group report from 2011 noted that Assad at first responded to protests by releasing some political prisoners and instructing officials “to pay greater attention to citizen complaints,” but that “the the regime acted as if each ... disturbance was an isolated case requiring a pin-point reaction rather than part of a national crisis that would only deepen short of radical change.”

Once a war starts, an awful logic often keeps it going, according to Fearon: “Given enormous downside risk—wholesale murder by your current enemies—genuine political and military power-sharing as an exit from civil war is rarely seriously attempted and frequently breaks down when it has been attempted.” Another complication: The Atlantic’s Dominic Tierney, among others, has argued that Assad purposely radicalized the opposition to delegitimize the rebellion, by releasing terrorists from prison and avoiding fighting ISIS.

When?

To paraphrase one reader’s question: When does this end? The political-science professor Barbara F. Walter has pointed out that since the end of World War II, civil wars have lasted an average of 10 years, but that the number of factions involved is likely to prolong this one. Ben Connable and Martin Libicki of the Rand Corporation have meanwhile found that insurgencies tend to end when outside state support is withdrawn, and that “inconsistent or partial support to either side generally presages defeat.” With foreign involvement increasing on both sides, neither is likely to win, or lose, anytime soon.

Syria in 60 Seconds:

Here’s how Andrew Tabler, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, summarized the conflict:

The Syrian Civil War is arguably the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War, with over a quarter million killed, roughly the same number wounded or missing, and half of Syria’s 22 million population displaced from their homes. But more than that, Syria today is the largest battlefield and generator of Sunni-Shia sectarianism the world has ever seen, with deep implications for the future boundaries of the Middle East and the spread of terrorism.

What started as an attempt by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad to shoot Syria’s largest uprising into submission has devolved into a regionalized civil war that has partitioned the country into three general areas in which U.S.-designated terrorist organizations are dominant. In Syria’s more diverse west, the Alawite and minority-dominated Assad regime, and a mosaic of Shia militias trained and funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), hold sway. In the center, Sunni moderate, Islamist, and jihadist groups, such as ISIS and the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, share control. And in the northeast, the Kurdish-based People’s Protection Units (YPG) have united two of three cantons in a bid to expand “Rojava”—Western Kurdistan. As the country has hemorrhaged people, neighboring states have carved out spheres of influence often based on sectarian agendas that tear at the fabric of Syrian society, with Iran (and now Russia) propping up the Assad regime; Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the U.A.E. supporting the Sunni-dominated opposition; and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) supporting the YPG.