The worsening violence and repression in Syria has left policymakers scrambling to think of ways the United States could help end the bloodshed and support those seeking to dislodge the Assad regime. The desperate desire to “do something” has led to increasing calls for the United States to provide military aid to armed insurgents or even engage in direct military intervention, especially in light of the possible use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.

The question on the mind of almost everyone who has followed the horror as it has unfolded over the past two years is, “What we can do?”

The short answer, unfortunately, is not much.

This is hard for many Americans to accept. We have a cultural propensity to believe that if the United States puts in enough money, creativity, willpower, or firepower into a problem that we can make things right. However, despite the desires of both the right-wing nationalists and liberal hawks, this isn’t always the case.

Both the right and the far left seem to embrace the idea that United States—either for good or for ill—has the power to determine the outcome of virtually every conflict in the world. However, there are limits to power. The tens of billions of dollars’ worth of arms sent to the Shah and to Mubarak were not enough to keep these dictators in power against the will of their own people. Overwhelming U.S. military force could not prevent a Communist victory in Vietnam or create a peaceful, democratic, pro-American Iraq.

The Baath Party has ruled Syria for most of the past 50 years, from even before the 30-year reign of Bashar al-Assad’s father. Military officers and party apparatchiks have developed their own power base. Dictatorships that rest primarily on the power of just one man – like Libya’s Gaddafi, Egypt’s Mubarak, and Tunisia’s Ben Ali – are generally more vulnerable in the face of popular revolt than are oligarchical systems where a broader network of elite interests has a stake in the system. Just as the oligarchy that ruled El Salvador in the 1980s proved to be far more resistant to overthrow by a popular armed revolution than the singular rule of Anastasia Somoza in neighboring Nicaragua, it is not surprising that Syria’s entrenched ruling group has been more resilient than the personalist dictatorships toppled in the wave of largely nonviolent insurrections in neighboring Arab countries.

A large minority of Syrians—consisting of Alawites, Christians, and members of other minority communities; Baath Party loyalists and government employees; the professional armed forces and security services; and the (largely Sunni) crony capitalist class that the government has nurtured—still cling to the Assad regime. There are certainly dissidents within all of these sectors, but altogether regime supporters number as much as one-third of the population.

What this means is that even large-scale direct foreign intervention will not lead to a quick collapse of the regime.

The Nature of the Opposition

The initial popular uprising against the Assad regime, which began in March of 2011, was overwhelmingly nonviolent, broad-based, and non-sectarian. Since turning to primarily armed resistance by early the next year, however, an increasing percentage of the armed opposition appears to consist of hardline Salafi Islamists, including some who are affiliated with al-Qaeda. Even the so-called “moderate” Free Syrian Army consists of literally hundreds of separate armed militias, some of which are just as extreme, and operate without a central command. A shoulder-fired missile that could defend a village from a Syrian helicopter gunship could also take down a civilian airliner.

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