Chapter One
The Syrian Paradox
Little about Syria’s natural endowments would lead an analyst to
predict that it would have such a central role in Middle Eastern
affairs. By most indicators of strategic importance-including size,
internal cohesiveness, and wealth-Syria would seem destined to be no
more than a minor player, relatively easy for greater powers inside and outside
the region to marginalize and ignore.
Despite these apparent manifestations of insignificance, vulnerability,
and weakness, Syria has long been an important consideration in U.S. foreign
policy toward the greater Middle East. Understanding this paradox is
essential to understanding the challenges that Syria poses for U.S. policymakers.
To that end, this chapter offers an overview of Syria’s strategic place
in the greater Middle East as well as an overview of the principal analytic
questions surrounding Bashar al-Asad’s presidency.
Apparent Weakness
Syria today has a population of about 18 million, placing it only in the middle
third of Arab League states in terms of size. More than most Arab states,
Syria’s population is a “fragile mosaic” of ethnic and sectarian communities.
2 Arguably, among Arab states, only Iraq and Lebanon present comparable
arrays of distinct communities.
Ninety percent of Syria’s population is Arab in ethnicity; another roughly
9 percent is Kurdish, with Armenians, Circassians, and Turkomans filling
out the mix. Syria’s Arab majority, however, is riven with sectarian cleavages
that diminish its coherence as a definer of individual identities. Sunni
Muslims are 74 percent of Syria’s overall population, but Kurds represent
probably 8 percent of that figure, reducing the core Sunni Arab majority to
roughly two-thirds of the populace. Another 16 percent of the population,
while Arab in ethnicity, consists of various offshoots of Shi’a Islam-Alawis,
Druze, and Isma’ilis. (This figure almost certainly includes a few tens of
thousands of Twelver Shi’a who are not captured as a distinct community in
official Syrian demographic data.) The Alawis are by far the largest community
in the category of non-Sunni Muslims; demographers usually estimate
Syria’s Alawi community at 11-12 percent of the overall population.
Christians, of various Orthodox and Uniate traditions and the Latin Rite,
along with a smattering of Protestants, make up another 10 percent of the
population. Syria’s small but historic Jewish community has all but disappeared
as a result of emigration in the early 1990s. (For maps of ethnic and
religious demography, see p. 3.)
These ethnic and sectarian cleavages have for centuries been the source of
considerable social tension in Syria. Even today, there are palpable, historically
grounded antagonisms between the Sunni Arab majority and non-Sunni
communities. Through much of the twentieth century, these antagonisms
were reinforced by the traditional economic dominance of Sunnis in
Syria’s major cities. They have been reinforced as well by Sunni perceptions
of non-Sunni Muslims as heretical and of Christians as willing collaborators
with non-Muslims seeking to rule Syria.
In such a climate of ethnic and sectarian antagonism, it was virtually
impossible for the entity that emerged as the modern nation-state of Syria
in 1946 to integrate its society successfully or forge a cohesive political community.
Of course, the difficulties of forging a coherent state structure and
national identity in a culturally pluralist society are not unique to Syria;
such problems have been felt in other places in the Arab world and, indeed,
throughout the postcolonial third world. But these pressures have been
undeniably acute in Syria.
To be sure, what many Syrians considered the lack of legitimacy of their
country’s territorial parameters exacerbated the problem of forging a state
structure and a national identity. Most politically aware Syrians viewed their
state’s territory as having been truncated through Western imperialist intervention.
This sense of deprivation went beyond frustration over the creation
of the state of Israel in 1947. Politically conscious Syrians shared a historically
grounded perception, rooted in the experience of the Arab revolt of 1916-20,
that a single state should have been created in historic Syria-bilad al-Sham
(literally, the northern region, in Arabic)-joining what are today Syria,
Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza in one sovereign entity.
The gap between the proposition that the Levant should be a single political
unit (the notion of suriya al-kubra, or Greater Syria) and the far more
modest territorial reality of postindependence Syria increased the difficulties
in forging a stable state structure or overarching national identity within
a fractured society. Of course, difficulties in forging such structures and
identities in polities whose borders are incongruent with their social structure
and political orientation have also been common experiences among
postcolonial nations in other regions of the third world. But this problem
was intensified for emerging polities in the Arab world by the apparent contradictions
between the existence of individual nation-states, on the one
hand, and deep attachments to a common Arab-Islamic culture and a pan-Arab
political vision, on the other. And, in the case of Syria, the task was
further complicated by the addition of a more specific pan-Syrian political
construct.
Since Syria achieved its independence as a modern nation-state in 1946,
this accumulated historical baggage has made it a challenging place to govern,
always to some degree at apparent risk of coming apart as a society. The
pull of supranational identities, whether Arab or Muslim, and subnational
identities, either to minority sects or non-Arab ethnicity, has complicated
the consolidation of a stable state structure or a genuinely national Syrian
identity. For the first quarter-century of its independence, these internal difficulties
helped to keep Syria weak and politically unstable, making it vulnerable
to manipulation by outside actors. Today, nearly sixty years after
independence, the traditional tensions within Syrian society still lie not far
below the surface of Syrian politics.
Islamic revivalism among Sunni Muslims, while clearly a regionwide
phenomenon during the last three decades or so, has had special resonance
in countries like Syria, with a Sunni majority but also significant non-Sunni
and non-Muslim communities. Historically, the main exponent of politically
oriented Islamism among Syria’s Sunnis has been the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood, a salafi movement self-consciously modeled on the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt. The Brotherhood has a long history in Syria, originating
before independence, and made a forceful play for political power in
the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although the Brotherhood as an organization
has been suppressed in Syria for more than two decades, the strength
and persistence of Islamic revivalism among a significant segment of Syria’s
Sunnis continues to reinforce the country’s sectarian cleavages and adds
another layer of complexity to the maintenance of political stability by secular
(and non-Sunni) rulers.
Syria’s problematic internal political environment is matched by an undistinguished
economy. After more than five decades of effort at economic
development, Syria remains comparatively unprepossessing in its economic
performance. Its gross domestic product per capita is $3,300 a year, less than
that of the most important non-oil-producing economies in the region,
including Egypt ($4,000), Jordan ($4,300), Morocco ($4,000), and Tunisia
($6,900), and nowhere near that of the major oil-producing states of the
Persian Gulf. More than a quarter of the labor force still works in the agricultural
sector, which is focused on cultivation of cereals, cotton, fruits, and
vegetables. Almost 30 percent of the labor force works in industry, but
Syria’s industrial sectors have long been either state-owned (the model for
heavy industries) or heavily protected and subsidized by the state (the tendency
for light industries, active predominantly in food processing and textile
production). For the most part, these industrial enterprises are not
internationally competitive. Syria has failed to develop substantial nonagricultural
exports, and its agricultural exports do not earn sizable amounts of
foreign exchange.
Syria’s most important natural resources are deposits of oil and gas, but
its proven reserves of both make it at best a second- or third-tier energy
producer for international markets. Syria earns at least 50 percent of its
trade revenues from crude oil exports; without this windfall, Syria’s overall
economic performance would be far less positive. More ominously, without
development of new sources, Syria’s current proven reserves of oil are projected
to run out within a decade, prospectively setting the stage, barring
compensating changes, for a precipitous deterioration in the country’s economic
situation.
Challenges for U.S. Policy
These apparent manifestations of weakness notwithstanding, Syria has long
been an essential consideration in U.S. foreign policy toward the greater
Middle East. Syria’s centrality to the U.S. agenda in the region stems in part
from its strategic location-at the heart of the Levant, in the heart of the
Middle East as a whole. But Syria’s regional status also stems from the ability
of the regime established by Hafiz al-Asad in 1970 to consolidate a sufficiently
stable domestic platform from which to assert Syrian interests on
the regional stage. As he tenaciously worked to make Syria a real player in
regional affairs, Asad frequently challenged and almost always complicated
the efforts of U.S. policymakers dealing with the Middle East. Since Bashar
al-Asad succeeded his father, in July 2000, these challenges have continued
into the post-September 11 environment.
The Asad regime’s inclination to challenge U.S. Middle East policy has
not stemmed primarily from the personal obstreperousness of Syrian leaders,
but from a particular assessment of what defending Syrian interests
required in the face of the U.S. posture toward the region. The United States
is, of course, the chief external backer of the state of Israel-from a Syrian
perspective, an expansive power seeking regional hegemony. U.S. military
and political support has been critical to allowing Israel to expand its territorial
holdings and occupy these lands in defiance of what Syrian leaders
frequently describe as “international legitimacy.” From a Syrian vantage
point, U.S. policy in the Middle East for much of the last thirty-five years
has aimed principally at ensuring Israel’s ability to consolidate and maintain
its hegemonic position in the region.
Given this interpretation of the underlying rationale for America’s Middle
East policy, the Asad regime has long been concerned to forestall a
worst-case scenario in which Syria would be encircled by regimes hostile to
its interests, allied to the United States, and docile toward Israel (that is, a
Lebanon that has made a separate peace with Israel, a pro-Western Turkey
cooperating strategically with the Jewish state, an Iraq with a regime supported
by and supportive of the United States, a Jordan ruled by pro-American
Hashemites who have sold out the Palestinian cause and forged
security ties to Israel, and a rump Palestinian entity). Under these conditions,
Syria would be marginalized in regional affairs, with other states free
to ignore or undermine its interests. The Asad regime’s efforts to forestall
such a scenario have frequently brought it into conflict with U.S. efforts to
promote stability in the Middle East, whether in the Arab-Israeli arena or
the region as a whole.
Syria and Regional Stability
Syria has long been a focus for U.S. efforts to stabilize the Arab-Israeli
arena. Syria is a leading frontline state, and the Arab-Israeli diplomatic
record contains important acknowledgments that a comprehensive peace
between Israel and the Arab world cannot be achieved without the conclusion
of a peace agreement between Israel and Syria. More recently, the
Arab League’s 2002 peace initiative made clear that a settlement between
Israel and Syria is a predicate condition for peace between Israel and the
Arab world as a whole.
U.S. policy toward Syria in the Arab-Israeli context has fluctuated between
efforts to facilitate Israeli-Syrian agreements and attempts to isolate
and pressure Damascus to change its terms and tactics for achieving a
peaceful settlement. The 1974 Israeli-Syrian disengagement agreement
brokered by Henry Kissinger marked the beginning of serious U.S. involvement
in Israeli-Syrian diplomacy. Jimmy Carter, who came to office eager
to pursue a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement, certainly recognized
Syria’s centrality to that project; in the face of Egyptian and Israeli pressure,
however, Carter ultimately gave up on the quest for comprehensive peace,
pursuing instead a separate Egyptian-Israeli settlement. During the Reagan
administration, when Syria’s isolation became an important objective
of U.S. Middle East policy, the United States pursued a “Lebanon First”
option for Arab-Israeli peacemaking as well as a “Jordanian option” with
regard to the Palestinian question; neither course proved productive. The
administration of George H.W. Bush returned to the goal of a comprehensive
peace, with a concomitant refocusing of diplomatic effort on Syria, by
convening the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference. President Bill Clinton
picked up on his predecessor’s efforts and worked until his last year in office
to broker an Israeli-Syrian settlement. The administration of George W.
Bush, by contrast, has declined to engage on the Syrian track, preferring to
press Damascus in the context of the war on terror. In the end, no administration,
Democratic or Republican, has been able to escape the ineluctable
logic of Kissinger’s observation that the Arabs cannot make war without
Egypt and cannot make peace without Syria.
More generally, Syria has been, and almost certainly will continue to be,
an unavoidable point of reference for U.S. efforts to forge a regional order
that is both more stable and more favorably disposed to the interests of the
United States and its allies. Syria has long been considered a critical “swing
state” in the regional balance. For the first two and a half decades after
World War II, Syria was a constant point of struggle between and among
Arab republics and their conservative monarchical rivals in an ongoing contest
for regional influence. After 1970, when Hafiz al-Asad came to power,
Syria became a considerable player in its own right in this contest.
Continues…
Brookings Institution Press
Copyright © 2005
Brookings Institution Press
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ISBN: 0-8157-5204-0
Excerpted from Inheriting Syria
by Flynt Leverett
Copyright © 2005
by Brookings Institution Press .
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