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

Bashar’s Syria 419strategic cards that he retains: (1) support of the Iraqi insurgency; (2) support of Hezbollah;(3) hosting of Palestinian terrorist organizations; (4) opposition to Abu Mazen and to theIsraeli—Palestinian peace process; and (5) willingness to revive the peace negotiations withIsrael without reference to the “deposit” or to taking up the negotiations at the point wherethey ended.For the time being, Bashar is aware of the paucity of the cards in his hand and of thefact that none of the cards alone are appealing enough to the U.S., particularly when itseems to believe that it can effect a positive regime change that would give it all the cardsat once. Consequently, Bashar’s policy priority vis-à-vis the US is to convince it that: theSyrian regime is still strong and resilient, hence the U.S. cannot count on its falling; theconsequences of toppling the regime would be catastrophic as they would bring about adisintegration of the country into rival communities similar to Iraq, and may even bring theJihadi movement and the Muslim Brotherhood to power; and that Syria will continue to bea nuisance to American interests in the region as long as its own interests are not addressed.The fact that many of Bashar’s close advisors were educated in the U.S. or the U.K.,and that Bashar himself speaks fair English (though he is not completely fluent), does nothave much effect on the Syrian discourse with Washington. Bashar has even failed to makethe most of media opportunities (such as an interview with Christianne Amanpour on CNNin which he lapsed into Arabic and offered lame logical proofs for Syria’s innocence in theassassination of al-Hariri). 148Bashar’s failure to convince the U.S. of the resilience of his regime and of the inadvisabilityof toppling it leaves him only one option, namely, trying to prove that Syria’snuisance value warrants changing policy towards it. As Bashar’s hopes for a substantialdialogue with the U.S. diminishes, he may be tempted to step up his “nuisance value” bythreatening U.S. interests in various ways (such as escalating terrorism and support of theIraqi insurgency).A Look AheadFrom the forst days of Syrian independence until Hafez al-Asad’s rise to power in 1970,Syria went through twenty military coups. A decade into the Asad era, Syria went througha period of terrorism against the regime launched by the Muslim Brotherhood. Experiencewith the supposed “stability” of authoritarian countries such as Russia and Yugoslavia,which turned out to be chimerical once the feared regime collapsed, raises the question ofwhether the basic elements of instability continue to fester under the surface and may eruptif and when the regime falls (or merely is thought to have lost its grip on power). To a certainextent, it may be said that deterrence by the regime of political unrest has been reduced; thewillingness of members of civil society to protest and criticize the regime implies as much.Syria’s own past and the specter of communal fragmentation and “Lebanonization,” alongwith the trauma of the breakup of erstwhile ostensibly stable countries in Eastern Europe, isexploited by the regime to deter both political opposition and potential schemes for regimechange entertained in Western capitals.Today the regime is on the defensive. The history of Bashar al-Asad’s decision makingdoes not portend measured and rational responses to this challenge. Some possible scenariosinclude: Bashar could embark on a movement to change the system from the top. He would putthe blame for the mistakes of the past five years on some of his associates and retirethem, release political prisoners, and announce real parliamentary elections in a year