Great powers intervene when they can. It’s as simple as that. Good and bad don’t play into it.
Exactly! The Dr. is in the house on this one. In this instance “can” is in the center of the nexus of three domains, location, connections, and security. There is no oil at the location, the connections are too complicated, and the security is in jeopardy from too many directions.
Throw a rock in any direction, not towards the government nor the Syrian rebels, and you will hit someone who would like to go to war, but they can’t.
The Image 