Did An Invisible US Strategy Sink Syria?

Economic sanctions are a brutal cudgel affecting the average citizen far more than the governments it is designed to topple. For instance, there is little evidence that the lifestyle of recently deposed Syrian Leader Bashar al-Assad was adversely affected by the American Sanctions. Yet the everyday Syrian has suffered through 11 years of civil war, and their corresponding diminishing economic fortune made all the worse by the imposition of American economic sanctions.