(MCT) — WASHINGTON — Despite Americans’ exhaustion with 11 years of foreign conflict, the victor in Tuesday’s presidential race may find it all but impossible to keep the United States from becoming more deeply entangled in the unfolding calamity of Syria’s sectarian civil war.

Pressure for Washington to play a greater role comes from a variety of factors: soaring casualty tolls, hundreds of thousands of refugees flooding into neighboring countries, wholesale destruction of Syria’s infrastructure, the growing presence of al-Qaida-linked fighters, fears that violence will spill over into adjacent nations, and the danger that the Assad regime will collapse, leaving Syria’s chemical weapons open to theft.