By Ayham Kamel

It may be tempting to view the plethora of recent gatherings -- the Arab League summit, the U.S.-Gulf Cooperation Council Strategic Cooperation Forum, and the Friends of Syria conference -- as evidence that the global community is getting more serious about addressing the violence in Syria. But the summits really just exposed the rifts among the relevant players that will prevent a viable and coordinated response. Syrian President Bashar al Assad, in turn, will profit from the lack of coherence; he will only nominally entertain Kofi Annan's peace plan as he maintains his grip on power, and the bloodshed will worsen.

International powers remain hesitant regarding any form of direct intervention. They considered initiatives calling for buffer or humanitarian zones, but ultimately no country seems prepared to act. Key powers appear to be pursuing their distinct policies, with only a hint of coordination.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar will provide extensive support -- including arms -- to the Syrian opposition, but are unlikely to supply the heavy arms that would lead to an immediate change in the balance of power. Heavy arms are more difficult to smuggle and training rebels would be much more challenging than during the Libyan conflict. Moreover, the escalation could provoke an un-calculated response from Assad's military. While their interests differ, the two powers see Assad's survival as a threat to their influence. Riyadh's purpose is to limit Iran's regional influence. Meanwhile, Doha has invested significant diplomatic and political capital in the struggle against Assad and any failure to deliver would represent a tangible setback to its prestige. Behind the armament policy is also a deep concern that if Assad regains control, Damascus and Tehran would aim to destabilize the al Saud and al Thani ruling families' grip on power.

Arming the rebels, who have had trouble obtaining ammunition sine the regime began its extensive military campaign in early February, will provide much needed psychological support and will help weaken Assad's forces. While the resolve of Syria's opposition will not abate, arms from the Gulf will neither arrive overnight nor will they immediately change the balance of military power, which is still heavily tilted in the regime's favor. An equally important element of the Gulf strategy is providing monetary incentives to officers in the Syrian army to incite defections. But Assad has built multiple safeguards to prevent defections, a tactic he inherited from his father.

The U.S. is willing to overlook, perhaps even support, GCC efforts to weaken Assad. But Washington is definitely not interested in playing an active role. It is concerned about Saudi Arabia's and Lebanon's support of Salafist rebels and al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri's call for jihad in Syria. While Sunni monarchies in the Gulf benefit from rising sectarianism in Syria, the U.S. interest in long-term regional stability could be compromised if the Sunni-Shia confrontations spread to Iraq and other countries. U.S. officials believe that a political settlement will be needed to prevent prolonged instability. Verbal support for the Annan process is a reflection of the desire to keep negotiations open, but U.S. officials are convinced that under current conditions the Annan plan will only enable Assad to retain power.

Assad will probably not implement key elements of the Annan peace plan, which calls for a halt of hostilities from all sides, and a negotiated settlement between the regime and the opposition. The regime views cooperation with the UN envoy as a way to secure the successes achieved by its military strategy and to gain some breathing space. While Annan is a shrewd diplomat, there are few reasons to think that success is in reach. Syria's opposition will probably not negotiate with Assad or agree to a settlement that keeps him in power. Meanwhile, there are no indications that the Lion of Damascus has reached a point where he would accept his own ouster.

Ayham Kamel is an analyst in Eurasia Group's Middle East and North Africa practice.

If this past week is any indication of what's to come, Israel could be in for some serious heat this summer. Iran is well on its way to developing a nuclear program, the international community is taking aim at Israel's ambiguous approach to its own nuclear weapons, and Israel promptly lost what was, in all fairness, a no-win situation when it confronted a humanitarian flotilla steaming toward the blockaded Gaza. On top of these issues, the most worrying near-term risk is on the Lebanon and Syria front.

Since April, the Israeli government has been saying that Syria is supplying Hezbollah with scud missiles provided by Iran. The rhetoric flared last week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Hezbollah is now operating the scuds out of Syrian territory. If true, this situation would be a real game changer for Hezbollah -- given that the scuds could reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, creating a very different threat level than the group has ever posed before.

The Israelis have responded by ramping up the diplomatic pressure, publicly castigating Lebanon and Syria, and launching overflights of Lebanon. In the past week, the Israelis also launched a 5-day nationwide military-readiness exercise, publicly insisting it had nothing to do with the crisis (but predictably causing hysterics among Israel's neighbors). Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri was sufficiently worried that he hopped a plane to meet with President Obama for urgent discussions. Obama's reaction wasn't quite what Hariri expected, though, as the U.S. president used the meeting to scold him for weapons transfers, which violate U.N. Security Council resolutions passed after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

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One of the most frequently cited reasons you hear that attendees come out to Davos is that you can do about one month of meetings in 5 working days. In the ever faster, hyper-productive, blackberrified world, that's about as compelling an argument as you can have.

For the record, I hate blackberries. They don't sit well with my underlying sense of balance (or my tendencies towards compulsiveness), and it would make my colleagues utterly miserable. So I don't do it. Neither does U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, who I met with this morning. He then went further. "I don't do blackberries, I don't know CPR, and I can't put out a fire," he told me. His work is important, but apparently he's useless in emergencies.

Fortunately, nothing was burning during the CNBC debate this morning. Though Barney did get himself plenty worked up. We got into it a little bit on U.S. military spending, of all things. His top argument for balancing the budget was to slash military expenditures. I managed to get him to admit we needed more funds for cybersecurity. His fallback position was to stop spending for weapons that don't have enemies. If I could get him to add the caveat, "likely enemies over the next 20 years," I think we'll have a winner.

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By Ian Bremmer and Willis Sparks

To mark 60 years in charge, China's Communist Party threw a lavish party last week, a triumphalist pageant with enough military hardware on parade to fill the nightmares of would-be "dragon slayers" for years to come. It was a reminder that China has developed advanced fighter aircraft, military satellites, the Dong Feng 21 missile (also known as the "aircraft carrier killer"), and has been working toward production of a first aircraft carrier of its own -- an asset that would enable China to project naval power further from its shores than ever before. As if the visuals weren't enough, the celebration included a 2,000-member military marching band.

So will China one day pose the 21st century equivalent of a Soviet-scale military challenge to America's geopolitical dominance? That's unlikely. China wants to extend its influence throughout East Asia, protect the commercial traffic that provides the oil, gas, metals, and minerals that feed China's growing economic appetite, and project national pride. It will one day pose a broader military threat than it does now, but its economy has grown so quickly and its living standards have improved so dramatically over the past two decades that it's hard to imagine the kind of catastrophic, game-changing event that would push its leadership to upend a profitable status quo and confront American leadership outside Asia. China's leaders know their government won't be ready anytime soon to bear a superpower's burdens. Their primary goal is to bolster their political control by generating prosperity for the Chinese people. Why would it allow anything short of the most dire and immediate threat to its territorial integrity to ignite a military conflict that would sever its web of commercial ties with countries all over the world -- and, in particular, with its three largest trading partners: the European Union, the United States, and Japan?

Beijing's primary military concern is the risk of a direct or proxy conflict with the United States over Taiwan. But the Chinese leadership knows that no U.S. government will support a Taiwanese bid for independence, and why should China invade the island when it can co-opt most of Taiwan's business elite with privileged access to investment opportunities on the mainland? Globalization has been good to China's Communist Party, and wars are bad for business.

Certainly, China has ambitious military modernization plans. With 2.3 million soldiers under arms, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is already by far the world's largest. It has reportedly invested considerable time, effort, and money in cyber-warfare technology. Its total military budget probably doubled between 2003 and 2009 to about $70 billion. But that's still only about 12 percent of what the United States now spends on its military each year -- and an even smaller percentage if supplementary U.S. spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is included.

The problem for U.S. policymakers over the next several years is not that the unipolar world order will give way to a multipolar but to a non-polar system. In other words, it's not that America has company on the global stage but that it must continue to carry so much weight on its own-and at a time when pressing problems at home will limit the American public's appetite for ambitious foreign-policy commitments.

Over the past 20 years, U.S. analysts have scanned the horizon in expectation of potential challengers to America's great power advantages. The European Union was already struggling to manage the latest round of expansion before the financial crisis gave EU leaders another reason to avoid potentially onerous new commitments abroad. Russia's leaders may be unhappy with the geopolitical status quo, particularly when it comes to the balance of power within several former Soviet republics. But they're far too preoccupied at the moment with the protection of domestic markets, banks, and companies from the worst effects of the financial crisis to embark on any long-term plan to build a threat to U.S. power outside its immediate neighborhood. India has market reform issues to manage and security worries flowing across the border from Pakistan. Within the Western hemisphere, Brazil appears to have no grander near-term aspirations than to promote stability in Latin America, jumpstart an economic recovery, find new ways to profit from its recent oil discovery, and to play a broader leadership role among developing states.

It's not a challenge for dominance, but a growing vacuum of power that should worry Washington. The more important questions for the next decade are: Who will take the lead on building a new global financial architecture that reflects 21st century realities? Who will take the lead on multilateral efforts to address climate change? Who will create a new (and more credible) nonproliferation regime? Who will provide momentum behind Middle East Peace talks? Who will provide the leadership to ensure that G20 summits don't simply turn into G8-style photo opportunities with a wider angle lens?

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