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CIAO DATE: 8/01
Let's Defeat Syria, Not Appease It
On The Issues
April 2000
Although Syria has been conducting peace negotiations with Israel, past events show that Syria's Baathist regime creates conflict to survive. Therefore, as long as that regime survives, Israel cannot hope to achieve peace with Syria.
As the violence in Lebanon escalated in recent weeks, one thing was certain: Israel would attack Lebanese targets but leave the roughly 40,000 Syrian troops that were deployed in Lebanon untouched. This was so because both Israel's Labor government and the Clinton administration believe Syria wants to make peace but is perched precariously between two trends: Iranians and other "enemies of peace" face the United States and the "peace camp." It is a neatly packaged story. It is also wrong.
The theory was articulated a year ago by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk: "Syria has become a type of nexus point between the negative, disturbing trends . . . and other underlying trends that could, if the United States succeeds in advancing the peace process, coalesce and allow the United States to advance its agenda while containing the enemies of peace. . . . The Syrian government would prefer to follow the route of peace." The most effective response for Israel, then, is to restrain itself, offer Syria more in the negotiations, and downplay any Israeli or American strategic advantages in the region.
Yet, Israel has four times, under four different Israeli governments in the last five years, offered Syria the entire Golan Heights. The current Israeli government also has signaled that it will recognize Syria's takeover of Lebanon and lobby for a monster economic payoff from the U.S. Congress and massive international development assistance from elsewhere. Israel's prime minister, against the strong objections of his military, argues for U.S. military sales to Syria. The United States and the European Union have also pressed Turkey to warm its relations with Damascus, in line with Mr. Indyk's theory that Syria acts disturbingly because it feels vulnerable and isolated.
In other words, in exchange for the Golan Heights, money, U.S. arms, Lebanon, diplomatic support, strategic surrender, and an international guarantee to help the Assad regime survive, Syria would only have to rein in Hezbollah and allow Israel to plant its flag atop one embassy in Damascus. It takes considerable imagination to envision what more could be offered to tempt Syria into peace.
Conflict: A Pillar of the Syrian Regime
Syria's rejection of Israel's two demands—reining in Hezbollah and diplomatic normalization—shows how impossible it is for this regime in Damascus to ever make peace with Israel. Regimes fall not when they impoverish their nations but when they lose their will to survive. Conflict remains the pillar of the Syrian regime's legitimacy and the excuse for its repression and poverty. It would be suicidal for Syria to surrender the definitive idea of its regime—conflict with the imperialist West and its local representative, Israel—by allowing an Israeli flag to fly in Damascus and disarming the symbol of its continued struggle, Hezbollah. Conflict is safe since Damascus is confident that with each challenge, Israel, under American encouragement, will shrink from conflict and instead limit itself to attacking easy but useless targets. It also understands that Israel's bombing of Lebanese targets is viewed in the region as weakness, since everyone knows the Lebanese are mere Syrian puppets.
By now, Syria's modus operandi should be clear. Ever since Mr. Assad's secular Baathist regime took control of Syria, it has behaved consistently. Since its Stalinist system bars it from accomplishing anything constructively, it vindicates and enriches itself by creating problems and then reaping the benefits of "solving" them.
In 1964, it tried to trigger a conflict with Israel and then offered to enter Lebanon to "protect" it from Israel—a trap the Lebanese wisely, but only temporarily, averted. Syria fomented a civil war in Lebanon in 1976 and then came in as a "peacekeeper," confiscating much of Lebanon's wealth in the process. It shot down a U.S. plane in 1983 and then "intervened" with the Lebanese to surrender the pilot in a well-choreographed scene. It created and encouraged terror groups to take U.S. hostages in the early 1980s and then "helped" release them, with equally impressive theatrics. It unleashed Hezbollah in 1993 and 1996 against Israel's northern border, and then stepped in to work out a cease fire.
That worked so well the second time—since it brought U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Damascus in such a state of despair that he was willing to cool his heals on Damascus airport's tarmac and return home without meetings—that Mr. Assad has now returned to this formula. After all, it is not often that a tiny country with a collapsing economy and few global allies can so easily tweak the world's only superpower.
A Challenge to the Syrian Regime
In fact, conditions have never been riper for a challenge to the Baathist Syrian regime. Syria's lordship over Lebanon is shaky. The Christian community harbors seething hatred for Syria. The new majority in Lebanon, The Shiite Muslims, are beginning to focus on their own interests at Syria's cost. A large body of Lebanese Shia are openly rejecting the influence of the Iranian revolution, its totalitarian religious theories, and its military. Inter-clerical strife in Lebanon mirrors a similar development in Iran. The chances for a Shiite-Christian alliance emerging to expel Syria haven't been brighter since 1982.
Israel should realize that it will have peace only after it destroys Syria's Baathist regime. Then it could view each round of conflict with Syria as an opportunity to strike Syria's forces and fragile infrastructure in Lebanon. The Lebanese, many of whom are waiting impatiently for the day in which Syria is weakened or shows signs of cracking, will take matters into their own hands, and Syria will slowly bleed to death there. The Baathist regime in Syria is addicted to conflict. If Israel raises the cost of this addiction, it will trap Mr. Assad's government in a death spiral from which it cannot extract itself.
Such a shift in understanding would require more than just a change of heart in the United States and Israel. For the peace process elite—like their antecedents, the 1970s arms-control elite—the concept of regime destruction and unabashed victory are simply unfathomable and ludicrous. It would be no more imaginable to defeat Baathism than it would have been to defeat communism. Whole cottage industries, embellished with impressively powerful and well-endowed institutions, have sprung up over the last decade in Washington and Israel dedicated to this ideology. Careers and jobs are at stake. If there is ever to be peace, it will have to be preceded by a serious spring cleaning both in the United States and in Israel. The real question is, How much more anguish in Israel and Lebanon will it take for Israel's Labor Party and the Clinton administration to understand how much war this peace process is causing?
David Wurmser is director of Middle East studies at AEI. A version of this article appeared in the Wall Street Journal Europe on February 25, 2000.
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