Bashar's Syria: The Regime and its Strategic Worldview Shmuel Bar ...

Bashar’s Syria 403and to challenge, when necessary, the designs of the United States in the region. For him,maintaining Syria’s position as a “swing state” vis-à-vis the Israeli–Arab peace process wasessential for discouraging the U.S. from total confrontation with Damascus. The conventionalwisdom in the Middle East and in most Western foreign ministries was that therecan be no Arab–Israeli war without Egypt and no enduring Arab–Israeli peace withoutSyria. Along with these strategic considerations, Syrian Realpolitik in the Hafez al-Asadera dictated a pragmatic “wait and see” attitude in times of crisis and caution, so as not toburn bridges with any country.While “wait and see” was a preferred policy in times of crisis, Hafez al-Asad had aclear reading of the strategic map, by which he divined when a crisis was becoming a newstrategic reality, and he used this to formulate his day-to-day policies. This map showed thereal balance of power between the two superpowers, and Asad had no illusions regardingthe independent capabilities of Syria or of the Arabs in general. Having lost the GolanHeights to Israel in the 1967 war, and having ended the 1973 war with the Golan lost again,and Damascus in the range of Israeli artillery. Hafez al-Asad realized that Syria alone couldnot overcome Israel, supported as it was by the United States. The prospects for a unitedArab effort (the “joint struggle”) were also low after Egypt entered into a peace processwith Israel. The result of this conclusion was Asad’s concept of “strategic parity” withIsrael. This strategic parity was based on: (1) building up Syria’s own military power inorder to pose a credible military threat to Israel, and (2) an enhanced relationship with theUSSR as an essential component of Syria’s national security. These two elements were tobe augmented by gaining Arab support for Syria’s goals in the peace process (includingpreventing any “separate peace” after the defection of Egypt), and development of relationswith the U.S. so as to weaken, as far as possible, the US-Israel commitment. 120This strategy, however, sustained a series of fatal blows during the last decade of Hafezal-Asad’s lifetime. Syria all but lost the support of its superpower patron (the USSR) anddid not succeed in its approaches to the U.S. or Europe. The changes in the Soviet Unionthat preceded its demise reduced Moscow’s generosity in terms of military hardware to itsclient regimes, including Syria, and at the same time Syria’s economic situation limited itsindigenous ability to build its military machine. The Arab collective through which Syriahad influenced processes in the region was all but defunct by the early 1990s. Developmentsin the Israeli–Arab conflict also took their toll; the Israeli–Palestinian and Israeli–Jordanianagreements left Syria alone, particularly after the failure of the Asad–Clinton Geneva summitin 2000. Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon threatened the legitimacy of Syria’s militarypresence in that country. By the time of Hafez al-Asad’s death, Syria had no viable militarystrategy vis-à-vis Israel.With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, Asad succeeded temporarily in forging aregional role for Syria by participating in the U.S.-led coalition to expel the Iraqi armyfrom Kuwait in 1991, adhering to the sanctions on the Iraqi regime during the 1990s, andmaintaining Syria’s status in the renewed Israeli–Arab peace process after the Madrid PeaceConference. This role provided Syria with tacit guarantees for its continuing domination ofLebanon and an exemption from attempts to interfere in its domestic affairs. All this changedafter the events of 9/11. It is difficult to know how Hafez al-Asad would have navigatedSyria’s ship through the strategic changes in the wake of those events. His successor, though,has left himself with almost no strategic cards with which to play on the international andregional fronts. As a result, the Syrian regime has become vulnerable in the field of its mostvital interests—the domestic front.The Syrian relationship with Iran may also be seen in the context of compensation forthe fallen pillar of Soviet backing. It filled in with Syrian need for an ally in Lebanon (trough