"From whom do I need protection?"
"From us."
It works every time, as US and European diplomats and politicians buy the Syrian line that Syria has been "wronged" somehow, and rush off anxiously to Damascus to engage the Syrians. They win lip-service assurances that Syria is opposed to terror and Syria wants peace, while all the while the business of the regime goes on as usual.
As for Israel, the West and the UN, as well as Israeli war-weariness, can be counted on to contain Israeli reactions to minimal proportions, and to shift the blame for violence on Israel, as was done this past summer in the Lebanese war.
The physical risks of confrontation are minimal for Syria, because it generally manages to fight its wars on foreign ground, and in any case, even the most disastrous defeats are turned into glorious victories by the Assad propaganda apparatus.
The real risk of the last Lebanon war, was that it was Hezbollah and Iran, and not Syria, that were viewed as the leaders of the struggle against the west and the "Zionists." Assad cannot afford to be second in that department. Perhaps that is why he announced, in a speech on August 15, 2006, his intention to use the method of "resistance" to retrieve the Golan Heights. The war with Israel would be a replay of the war with Lebanon. A bogus "resistance" group will create a provocation along the border, Israel will respond with ineffective strategic bombing, and Syria will respond with massive rocket attacks. Syrians explained that the method works because Israel has little tolerance for casualties, while Syria is "steadfast" and poor as well, and is able to rebuild following the war or do without.
Hafez Assad, father of Bashar, was wily, experienced and in his way, responsible. Rubin shows how, by carefully playing off the different powers against each other, probing their weaknesses and telling them what they want to hear, the Assad family has always been able to gain enormous foreign policy leverage, despite the fact that Syria is materially a non-entity that has no physical means or military resources that could be used to stop a serious assault by Israel or any western power.
The one instance when Syria backed down in the past, was in their support for Kurdish insurgents in Turkey. When Turkey made it clear that Syria would have a war on its hands if it did not desist, Hafez Assad gave up the fight.
As Rubin points out, unlike Papa Hafez, the old Don, Bashar Assad is brash and inexperienced and was initially unsure of himself. To stabilize his rule, he embarked on sham liberalization at home, and on adventurism abroad. The vigorous secular stance of the Hafez Assad regime was relaxed. Women were allowed to wear traditional clothing, and the religious establishment was coopted to support a new blend of Islamic Arabism or Arab-flavored Islamism. Repression is generally maintained not by arrests, but by threat of loss of livelihood. Syrian sources indicate that compared to the rule of Hafez, Bashar's rule is "liberal," causing a degree of satisfaction, because Muslim Brotherhood adherents and religious elements have more freedom. Bashar pursues a program of vigorous repression of liberal reformists, but, as these are a tiny minority, most people don't care.
Abroad, Bashar cooperated with Saddam Hussein against the United States, importing Iraqi oil under the noses of US intelligence and journalists, and the US did nothing. The deal was profitable for both dictators. When Iraq fell, he stepped up the Syrian alliance with Iran and backed, or helped create, the insurgency in Iraq.
Bashar Assad allows the operation of insurgency units based in Syria, and the flow of arms, protesting that he cannot control his borders, while allowing the insurgents to bank Iraqi funds in Syria and fund their activities. Amazingly, all this activity incurred almost no danger to Syria. It was hardly mentioned in the egregiously superficial report of the Iraq Study Group. On the contrary, Syrian mischief won Assad's regime a seat as an honored guest at negotiations aimed at "stabilizing" Iraq. Competition among the Western powers, as well as their interest in weaning Assad away from his alliance with Iran, guarantee that Syria will not be left without support.
Assad the son, concluded that there is almost no limit to what he can do. In Lebanon, he made one mistake - the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, which set the Arab world against him, and even France. To regain favor in the Arab world and bolster his regime at home, Assad is apparently counting on a war with Israel. Or perhaps, he is counting on the threat of this war, to force Israel to beg the United States to return to mediating discussions. These discussions will inevitably bring up demands to legitimize Syrian presence in Lebanon, to stop the investigation of the Hariri murder and grant other concessions, and like the previous "peace process" they are unlikely to lead to real peace. As Rubin explains, and as backed by the account of Dennis Ross, the difference in area between the Israeli and Syrian proposals was tiny for Syria, though all-important for Israel, but the Syrians needed an excuse to perpetuate the conflict.
The remarkable part of the Syria story is not the behavior of the Assads and their regime, which is par for the course for such dictatorships. Rather, it is the degree to which the United States and other Western countries, and to some extent Israel, have been willing to tolerate the antics of the Syrian regime and to do nothing about them. Most of the evidence that Rubin brings us is gathered from public news stories and statements of the leaders of the regime. The information is there for all to see. Yet nobody is willing to confront this regime, and even the Bush administration seems to be pursuing the folly of "engagement" and accepting insult upon injury with a smile.
On the contrary, much of the US Middle East "establishment," the State Department and Middle East Studies Association experts, the current and former diplomats, professors and consultants, vigorously deny any real wrongdoing to Syria. They attribute allegations that Syria and Iran control the Iraq insurgency, the Lebanese chaos, the Hamas and the Hezbollah to "Zionist" and "neocon" propaganda. While Syria is fomenting violence in Iraq and Lebanon, and vigorously carrying out a program of regime change in Lebanon, the establishment of foreign policy "experts" continue to insist that the United States and the "Zionists" are plotting regime change against Syria. Since regime change would very likely bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power, it is unlikely that Israel or the United States have any such plans. Analysis of the reaction of the United States and other western powers to Syria would require another book.
Accounts by Syrians, and developments since the publication of the book bear out the main points of Rubin's thesis. Bashar is "advancing" on all fronts. In Lebanon, in Iraq, and internally in Syra. /P>
Everyone who wants to understand the Middle East should be reading "The Truth About Syria." Unfortunately, Rubin's thesis will surely be dismissed or minimalized by the establishment in charge of making foreign policy in the United States, and of handing it down to Israel. As Rubin is an Israeli, it is convenient to label his veridical picture of Assad's Syria as the work of neocon Zionists intent on "regime change." Meanwhile, Assad himself, and his sidekicks in Tehran, are the only one in the Middle East engaged in regime change business in the Middle East.
