When we turned to Aleppo, we discovered a cityscape that was more complicated than those of Raqqa, Saraqeb, and Darayya. Its battle lines crisscrossed the city, continually shifting during our period of study, making each neighborhood its own unique nucleus in an atomized space. Aleppo is the oldest and second largest Syrian city. Known for its mercantile past and modern industrial present, the city had approximately 3 million residents before the conflict began. The first wave of protests began in 2011, and the city council came into being in March 2013 and was staffed by over 550 personnel by 2016.1

This chapter explores the foreign policy discourse of the old Anglosphere coalition during the first phase of the crisis and civil war in Syria, from early 2011 to mid 2012. First, the chapter considers the Anglosphere response to the Arab Uprisings, as protests spread to Syria. Second, it analyses the evolution of Anglosphere foreign policy discourse, as Assad’s crackdowns intensified. Third, it analyses calls for regime change and support for regional allies, amidst a policy of not intervening militarily. In all three cases, the USA is shown to lead, within a nevertheless intimately interconnected old Anglosphere coalition. This analysis sets the ground for shifting Anglosphere foreign policy from August 2012, as chemical weapons concerns rapidly overtook a policy of democracy promotion at a distance.