Editor,

RE: "UN is structured to fail” (The New Times, September 23). The US is actually winning the war in Syria if we define the goal as making and keeping the Arab world – beyond the bits the US controls through its allies – in perpetual hot conflict, chaotic and ungovernable and unable to coalesce against external enemies.

The US doesn’t need any ‘victory’ in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or anywhere else in the sense of having clients in power there in order to proclaim it has achieved its war objectives. All it needs is to keep the situation perpetually on the boil in order to win.

The only risk is that the chaos spreads well beyond the confines of those target countries into members of the Gulf Consultative Council (Saudi Arabia and the other allied Persian Gulf emirates and sultanates). This is a real risk the longer the conflicts continue. The fallout on Western Europe may also end up being so dire it shakes up the US’s oldest alliance and puts paid to the EU project – but who says this would hurt the US safely behind its Atlantic Moat?

Mwene Kalinda