Syria stands as a cautionary tale for US presidents

Syria will be a cautionary tale for future American administrations when Barack Obama leaves office, writes Michael Young

US President Barack Obama speaks at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO summit in Manila on November 18, 2015. Saul Loeb / AFP Photo

The attacks in Paris and Beirut last week make one think of Barack Obama’s remarks in an interview with George Stephanopoulos in September 2013. Asked about American intentions in Syria, Mr Obama responded “the United States can’t get in the middle of somebody else’s civil war”.

The president may regret his words, because Syria is many things, but it certainly is no longer just “somebody else’s civil war”. Had Mr Obama been better advised, he would have realised that Syria is not a country easily pushed to the bottom of the pile. And with the Al Assad regime fighting for survival, this was even less likely after the uprising began in 2011.

However, this was no secret. In an influential book published in the 1960s called The Struggle for Syria, the British journalist Patrick Seale described how Syria was a centrepiece of the regional struggle for power between Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt and the Hashemite regime in Iraq and its successors. Located at the nexus between the Gulf, Israel, North Africa and Turkey, Syria played a role far beyond its relative strength.

The former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger once remarked: “You can’t make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria.”

This was implicit recognition of the capacity of the Syrian regime to be a spoiler, given its geographical position and the many regional levers it controlled allowing it to protect its interests.

Mr Obama would have benefited from similar insight when the Syrian war started. Instead, the president’s advisors were entirely focused on avoiding another American military venture in the Middle East. They failed to grasp that the Syrian breakdown, and the chaos it engendered, would impose itself on America, as it has on the Arab world, Europe and Russia.

We may have the benefit of hindsight today, but there was plenty of evidence early on that Bashar Al Assad, in his brutal repression of dissent and his willingness to provoke a civil war to stay in power, was working according to a template adopted by other Arab dictators, notably Muammar Qaddafi.

Nor could American officials have been unfamiliar with a revealing incident that occurred in April 2007, when the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, visited Damascus. At the time the UN was preparing to establish a tribunal, under Chapter VII authority, to try suspects in the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

Mr Assad, wary that this might uncover the Syrian regime’s involvement in the crime, issued an implicit threat. In an account leaked to Le Monde, he was quoted as saying that the tribunal “might easily cause a conflict that would degenerate into civil war, provoking divisions between Sunnis and Shiites from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea”.

This pattern of survival through destruction was always an essential reflex of Arab despots, and should have preoccupied the Obama administration. The Syrian regime’s initial strengthening of jihadist groups, by releasing extremists from prison, buying petroleum from ISIL or avoiding bombing jihadist targets was central to efforts to represent itself as a more acceptable alternative after the uprising began in 2011.

Within the past year the Obama administration has radically changed in its approach to ISIL. After the fall of Mosul, the Americans were largely fixated on Iraq not Syria. Today, the focus has shifted to Syria. It took a year for Washington to recognise what was evident to most observers then, namely that Syria was the source of regional instability and terrorism.

Mr Obama has finally come around to accepting that an impetus for ISIL recruitment is the continued presence of Mr Al Assad in power. That is why the United States today insists he must leave office. However, absent military intervention on the ground or a neutralisation of Russian efforts to target the only groups that stand against ISIL, Washington’s efforts will advance slowly.

Both actions are risky and almost certain not to be adopted. However, Mr Obama would do well to engage in a review of his administration’s decisions on Syria, indeed his own decisions. From the start there was a refusal of the administration to appreciate the dangers in allowing the war in Syria to spin out of control and adopting a minimalist approach toward it.

Beyond covert operations, a key role of the intelligence services is to analyse and forecast political events.

So why should the administration’s unwillingness to appreciate the risks in Syria be less of a scandal than flawed intelligence?

The answer is that the White House very likely rejected all information that might have made involvement in Syria more likely, at a time when its priority was to “pivot” away from the Middle East.

Syria will remain a cautionary tale for future American administrations. Ignoring some problems in the world only leads to greater problems. Mr Obama may be adapting, but it’s too late. The Syrian genie is out of the bottle and it will take a great deal of pain to put it back in.

Michael Young is opinion editor of The Daily Star in Beirut

On Twitter: @BeirutCalling