I do not know what to say about Syria. As the situation on the ground descends into what Al Jazeera reports may become a civil war, the tools available to those of us who comment from afar seem useless. After all, what does rational choice theory – the dominant school of thinking in international relations – offer at times like these? Risking death in order to make one’s country better is nothing if not irrational. And what of state actors like the Assad regime? What is rational about the transformation of a government into a death machine? A tool of total domination?

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