Posturing over Syria
I want to preface this thought with the statement that it's only a thought in its premacy. I've noticed that we're aggressively posturing over Syria, under the pretext of the Hariri assasination and the foreign fighters coming into Iraq over the Syrian border, but something has been seriously bothering me with our nation's rhetoric. Please tell me if I'm wrong on any of this or if you see any glaring holes in my logic, but here it goes:
Bashar al Assad, who has just taken over the "Presidency" from his father, has portrayed himself as a reformer. He has publically come out and condemned the assassination of Hariri, and when the Lebanese began protesting the Syrian occupation, instead of cracking down as his father would have he very rapidly pulled the troops out of Lebanon. This seems to be either because he was too weak to stand up to the Lebanese, he was too weak to stand up to international pressure, or because he actually wanted out of Lebanon. I can understand the Syrians being too weak to stand up to considerable international pressure, but the international pressure hadn't yet had the chance to really foment to that level. I can also understand bowing to the pressure of the other Arab states because of their sympathies with the Lebanese, but I didn't see an outpouring of outrage on the streets of Cairo or Jeddah. More importantly, if Bashar was too weak to stand up to the international pressure or the possibility that an anti-Syrian uprising would occur in Lebanon, I can't imagine that he would be able to buck the long-entrenched Ba'ath party within his own government--you know, the one who orchestrated the Lebanese occupation in the first place. The world knows that we're in no position to drive the Syrians out of Lebanon the way we drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait, so I can't imagine that the US could have used the threat of force in back channels to get the Syrians to capitulate.
It looks to me like Bashar may actually be interested in transforming the Syrian regime. An interview with Christiane Amanpour may not seem like much, but it was more pro-west than anything I can recall Syria doing in the time before his presidency. He also made it a point to call for a UN investigation into any involvement within his government in the Hariri assassination, and to deal with anyone involved in a typically Syrian manner, as was evidenced by the "suicide" of Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan. I would be liable to dismiss this as empty rhetoric, because I don't think he's powerful enough within Syria to take on the Ba'ath party and Hezbollah head on, but it's empty rhetoric in the right direction! Furthermore, his calling on the United Nations to investigate (even if his inferiors end up being completely uncooperative) shows an uncharacteristic openness for a Syrian leader. That's more than anything I've seen out of Syria, Iran, or Iraq (the three main states in which the Ba'ath party or Hezbollah had any kind of clout) in the past twenty five years.
So, we have a state that is interested in talking with us, with publically integrating with some of our ideas of the future, with starting to investigate a transformation of their culture to become more economically (and possibly politically) engaged. The days of the Arab despot supported by the US or USSR are over, and Bashar knows it. He's said as much. he's the leader of a nation with 60% of the population under the age of 25, a population who, by all accounts, is pushing for a more open internal media and more access to the outside world. He's positioning himself to transform his national dialogue and national identity. But to what end?
If he's truly trying to transform his nation, and the political machine that runs it, it would behoove us to incentivize Bashar to buy into our paradigm, our vision of the future. He's going to need all the help he can get. If this is the case (and it's a big "if"), he's working against the interests of one of the most hard core intelligence services in the Middle East, which is working hand in hand with Hezbollah. His major allies will be the youth in his own country, the business sector, etc. If we're the kid on the playground who is pushing the other kid, trying to get him to do what we want, he has two choices: he can either stand up to us to save face, or he can capitulate and look weak. If he honestly doesn't want to stand up to us, we're working against ourselves by playing hardball publically. Privately, fine, but in public, we're screwing ourselves as well as Bashar.
An interesting analysis of this situation can be found on Stratfor.
Bashar al Assad, who has just taken over the "Presidency" from his father, has portrayed himself as a reformer. He has publically come out and condemned the assassination of Hariri, and when the Lebanese began protesting the Syrian occupation, instead of cracking down as his father would have he very rapidly pulled the troops out of Lebanon. This seems to be either because he was too weak to stand up to the Lebanese, he was too weak to stand up to international pressure, or because he actually wanted out of Lebanon. I can understand the Syrians being too weak to stand up to considerable international pressure, but the international pressure hadn't yet had the chance to really foment to that level. I can also understand bowing to the pressure of the other Arab states because of their sympathies with the Lebanese, but I didn't see an outpouring of outrage on the streets of Cairo or Jeddah. More importantly, if Bashar was too weak to stand up to the international pressure or the possibility that an anti-Syrian uprising would occur in Lebanon, I can't imagine that he would be able to buck the long-entrenched Ba'ath party within his own government--you know, the one who orchestrated the Lebanese occupation in the first place. The world knows that we're in no position to drive the Syrians out of Lebanon the way we drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait, so I can't imagine that the US could have used the threat of force in back channels to get the Syrians to capitulate.
It looks to me like Bashar may actually be interested in transforming the Syrian regime. An interview with Christiane Amanpour may not seem like much, but it was more pro-west than anything I can recall Syria doing in the time before his presidency. He also made it a point to call for a UN investigation into any involvement within his government in the Hariri assassination, and to deal with anyone involved in a typically Syrian manner, as was evidenced by the "suicide" of Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan. I would be liable to dismiss this as empty rhetoric, because I don't think he's powerful enough within Syria to take on the Ba'ath party and Hezbollah head on, but it's empty rhetoric in the right direction! Furthermore, his calling on the United Nations to investigate (even if his inferiors end up being completely uncooperative) shows an uncharacteristic openness for a Syrian leader. That's more than anything I've seen out of Syria, Iran, or Iraq (the three main states in which the Ba'ath party or Hezbollah had any kind of clout) in the past twenty five years.
So, we have a state that is interested in talking with us, with publically integrating with some of our ideas of the future, with starting to investigate a transformation of their culture to become more economically (and possibly politically) engaged. The days of the Arab despot supported by the US or USSR are over, and Bashar knows it. He's said as much. he's the leader of a nation with 60% of the population under the age of 25, a population who, by all accounts, is pushing for a more open internal media and more access to the outside world. He's positioning himself to transform his national dialogue and national identity. But to what end?
If he's truly trying to transform his nation, and the political machine that runs it, it would behoove us to incentivize Bashar to buy into our paradigm, our vision of the future. He's going to need all the help he can get. If this is the case (and it's a big "if"), he's working against the interests of one of the most hard core intelligence services in the Middle East, which is working hand in hand with Hezbollah. His major allies will be the youth in his own country, the business sector, etc. If we're the kid on the playground who is pushing the other kid, trying to get him to do what we want, he has two choices: he can either stand up to us to save face, or he can capitulate and look weak. If he honestly doesn't want to stand up to us, we're working against ourselves by playing hardball publically. Privately, fine, but in public, we're screwing ourselves as well as Bashar.
An interesting analysis of this situation can be found on Stratfor.
posted by sadiq at 10/25/2005 02:57:00 PM
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