THE

CONSEQUENCES
OF SYRIA
HERBERT AND J ANE DWI GHT WORKI NG GROUP
ON I SL AMI SM AND THE I NTERNATI ONAL ORDER
Many of the writings associated with this
Working Group will be published by the Hoover Institution.
Materials published to date, or in production, are listed below.
ESSAY SERI ES:
THE GREAT UNRAVELI NG: THE REMAKI NG OF THE MI DDLE EAST
In Retreat: Americas Withdrawal from the Middle East
Russell A. Berman
Israel and the Arab Turmoil
Itamar Rabinovich
Refections on the Revolution in Egypt
Samuel Tadros
Te Struggle for Mastery in the Fertile Crescent
Fouad Ajami
Te Weavers Lost Art
Charles Hill
Te Consequences of Syria
Lee Smith
ESSAYS
Saudi Arabia and the New Strategic Landscape
Joshua Teitelbaum
Islamism and the Future of the Christians of the Middle East
Habib C. Malik
Syria through Jihadist Eyes: A Perfect Enemy
Nibras Kazimi
Te Ideological Struggle for Pakistan
Ziad Haider
Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah: Te Unholy Alliance and
Its War on Lebanon
Marius Deeb
[For a list of books published under the auspices of the
WORKING GROUP ON ISLAMISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER,
please see page 57.]
THE
CONSEQUENCES
OF SYRIA
Lee Smith
H O O V E R I N S T I T U T I O N P R E S S
Stanford University Stanford, California
HERBERT & JANE DWIGHT WORKING GROUP ON ISLAMISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER
ESSAY SERIES: THE GREAT UNRAVELING: THE REMAKING OF THE MIDDLE EAST
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for their signifcant support of the
HERBERT AND JANE DWIGHT WORKING GROUP
ON ISLAMISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER:
Herbert and Jane Dwight
Beall Family Foundation
Stephen Bechtel Foundation
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. Clayton W. Frye Jr.
Lakeside Foundation
vii
Series Foreword
by Fouad Ajami and Charles Hill / ix
Te Consequences of Syria / 1
I. Looking at Syria, Seeing Iraq / 1
II. Historys Seeds / 8
III. Te Devil We Know / 13
IV. Te Jihadist Alibi / 28
About the Author / 53
About the Hoover Institutions Herbert and
Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism
and the International Order / 55
Index / 59
CONTENTS
ix
It s a mantra, but it is also true: the Middle
East is being unmade and remade. Te autocra-
cies that gave so many of these states the appear-
ance of stability are gone, their dreaded rulers
dispatched to prison or exile or cut down by
young people who had yearned for the end of the
despotisms. Tese autocracies were large prisons,
and in 2011, a storm overtook that stagnant
world. Te spectacle wasnt pretty, but prison
riots never are. In the Fertile Crescent, the work
of the colonial cartographersGertrude Bell,
Winston Churchill, and Georges Clemenceau
are in play as they have never been before. Arab
SERIES FOREWORD
The Great Unraveling:
The Remaking of the Middle East
x
SE RI E S F ORE WORD
G
nationalists were given to lamenting that they
lived in nation-states invented by Western pow-
ers in the afermath of the Great War. Now, a cen-
tury later, with the ground burning in Lebanon,
Syria, and Iraq and the religious sects at war, not
even the most ardent nationalists can be sure
that they can put in place anything better than
the old order.
Men get used to the troubles they know, and
the Greater Middle East seems fated for grief
and breakdown. Outside powers approach it
with dread; merciless political contenders have
the run of it. Tere is swagger in Iran and a
belief that the radical theocracy can bully its
rivals into submission. Tere was a period when
the United States provided a modicum of order
in these Middle Eastern lands. But pleading
fatigue, and fnancial scarcity at home, we have
all but announced the end of that stewardship.
We are poorer for that abdication, and the Middle
East is thus lef to the mercy of predators of
every kind.
xi
SE RI E S F ORE WORD
G
We asked a number of authors to give this
spectacle of disorder their best try. We imposed
no rules on them, as we were sure their essays
would take us close to the sources of the
malady.
fouad ajami
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Cochairman, Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group
on Islamism and the International Order
charles hill
Distinguished Fellow of the Brady-Johnson Program
in Grand Strategy at Yale University;
Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
Cochairman, Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group
on Islamism and the International Order
1
I: LOOKING AT SYRIA, SEEING IRAQ
Since August when he demanded that
Bashar al-Assad step aside, the president of the
United States has refused to make good on his
own professed policy of regime change in Syria.
Barack Obama has ignored both domestic crit-
ics of his position on Syria as well as Washing-
tons traditional regional partners clamoring for
American leadership. In failing to intervene in
the Syrian civil war for humanitarian reasons
while also seizing a strategic opportunity to
topple Assad, Obama has had to face down even
members of his own administration, virtually all
of whom, including cabinet of cials and some of
Te Consequences of Syria
LEE SMI TH
2
L E E SMI T H
G
his closest aides, eventually came to argue for
arming the anti-Assad rebels. Although Obama
contends that he has on his side the vast major-
ity of a war-weary America, an electorate that
loathes the idea of yet another entanglement in
the Middle East, the reality is that it was Obama
himself who consistently undercut any alterna-
tives. Te US public, never eager for foreign
adventures in the frst place, was simply follow-
ing the lead of a president who never made the
case for a policy that could advance American
interests and help save those destined for Assads
meat grinder, without having to land tens of
thousands of US troops.
Te many apparent turns, nuances, and shifs
in the administrations Syria policyfor instance,
repeated promises of enhanced military aid to
the rebels, the red line drawn over Assads use
of chemical weapons, the threat to strike regime
targets afer Assad used his unconventional arse-
nal, and the decision not towere parts of a
messaging campaign intended to further protect
Obamas steel-like determination to stay out of
the Syrian confict no matter what. Regardless
of what one may think of his policy, the fact that
3
THE CONSEQUENCES OF SYRIA
G
Obama defected every argument, entreaty,
enticement, and forecast of impending doom to
preserve that policy cannot fail to impress. How-
ever, history ofers conficting evidence as to
whether single-mindedness and obstinacy are
necessarily desirable character traits in a man
whose job also requires fexibility, the willing-
ness to listen to seasoned advisers, and the ability
to change coursein short, the practical talent
of democratic politics. He owns his decisions on
the Syrian confict so singly and so starkly that
perhaps the judgment on his policy can only be
equally absolute: either he was right and kept
the United States clear of a prolonged confict in
Syria and built the foundations of a new Middle
East; or he was wrong and in ruining Washing-
tons decades-long position in the region ushered
in an era of instability whose ripples will reach
far past the Persian Gulf littoral and afect all the
world.
What is dif cult about assessing the presidents
Syria policy is that there is not much evidence of
how Obama sees the Middle East in general and
Americas role there. Compare Obamas regional
strategy, for instance, to that of his predecessor.
4
L E E SMI T H
G
Shortly afer the 2003 invasion of Iraq, George
W. Bush laid out his freedom agenda for the
Middle East in a series of speeches that made a
clear case for why promoting democracy was not
only good for Arab societies but also in the
American national interest. In contrast, Obamas
speeches, starting with his June 2009 Cairo
address, have been vague on specifcs. To be sure,
his speeches and of cial statements have touched
on various prioritieslike Arab-Israeli peace, as he
explained in his 2013 address to the UN General
Assembly, and Irans nuclear programbut they
lack an integrated vision of the region and Amer-
icas purpose there. Accordingly, its been dif -
cult for many observers to discern whether this
White House has a coherent Middle East policy
or if it is simply improvising on the fy.
However, the Obama administration as a
whole has tended to favor communicating with
the public in settings less structured than public
addresses and of cial statements. It is in Obamas
interviews with the press, as well as information
leaked afer informal of-the-record briefngs
with select journalists, where we can fnd at least
5
THE CONSEQUENCES OF SYRIA
G
some inkling of his grand strategy for the Middle
East. Te outline started to become clearer in
his second presidential term. His goal, as he has
explained to David Remnick of the New Yorker
in January 2013 and Jefrey Goldberg of Bloom-
berg News in March 2014, is to create a geopo-
litical equilibrium. By balancing traditional
American partners like Saudi Arabia and Israel
against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Obama
hopes to create a new regional security architec-
ture, one ensuring American interests and alle-
viating the sectarian confict now ravaging the
Middle East, from the deserts of Iraq to the shores
of Lebanon. Obama sees the Syrian confict in the
framework of this larger picture.
Whether Obama turns out to be right or
wrong, his critics, including this writer, made a
fundamental error in their early assessment of
his Syria policy. We questioned his ability to
read the strategic landscape of the Middle East.
For at least two years into the uprising, his oppo-
nentsfrom US senators like John McCain to
the Saudi royal familypounded their heads in
frustration. Doesnt he get it? Toppling Assad, as
6
L E E SMI T H
G
retired Marine Corps General James Mattis put
it, would be the biggest strategic setback for
Iran in 25 years.
As it turns out, Obama did see the big picture.
Like his many critics, he, too, saw Syria primarily
in the larger context of Iran. He refused to take
serious action against Assad not only because
he saw himself as the president elected to extri-
cate America from Middle Eastern confict rather
than further implicate us, but also because it
was central to his concept of US policy in the
Middle East.
If Obamas gambit, his big idea about geopo-
litical equilibrium, and subsequent decision to
stay out of Syria turn out to be right, then they
will eventually entail a historical reconsidera-
tion of much of the American policy establish-
ments common wisdom. Obama will have been
right to believe that the oil-rich Middle East and
Americas long-standing allies there, from Israel
and Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Jordan, were for
a number of factors no longer as important as
US policy-makers had come to believe over the
past half-century. Among other things, with the
United States perhaps on the verge of energy
7
THE CONSEQUENCES OF SYRIA
G
independence, it will mean Obama was right to
see that the region was still important but no
longer vital to American interests, and the US
could aford to draw down. And in minimizing
the American footprint, Obama will have been
right to have bequeathed to the region a new
arrangement balancing Washingtons traditional
Sunni Arab allies in the Persian Gulf against
Iran. Although it will continue to be impossible
to regard the Syrian civil war as anything but a
tragedy, in balancing the Gulf s two great pow-
ers, Obamas success here will be to have pre-
cluded the possibility of a similar confict from
ever erupting again. If the Middle East was still
nothing like Scandinavia, Obamas big idea had
nonetheless worked to stabilize it.
If on the other hand Obama turns out to be
wrong, then failing to stop Bashar al-Assad will
forever stain his historical legacy. It will have
been the broad mainstream of the US policy
establishment and Americas Middle East allies
who were right. Sure Obama stood frm, but for
what purpose? By allowing the Syrian civil war
to drag on and Assad to stay in power, he was idle
as Syrias neighbors, including US allies, sufered
8
L E E SMI T H
G
catastrophic refugee crises, while Iran extended
its reach across the Levant. Obamas manifest
weakness, underscored by his dealings with
Russia, his treatment of allies, and his exertions to
shrink Americas profle in the region unraveled
the American-backed order of the Middle East.
Washingtons position as a great power and a
power broker was established and maintained
by generations of Americanspresidents, policy-
makers, diplomats, soldiers, educators, business-
men, and missionarieswho understood the
region not only in terms of the energy resources
that made postwar America possible, but also as a
testing ground of the countrys political, military,
historical, and cultural role in the world. What
right did Obama have to toss away a national pat-
rimony, and for what purpose?
II: HISTORYS SEEDS
Te seeds of both the Syrian rebellion and the
Obama administrations response were planted
long before the uprising started. Regarding the
former, its useful to turn to the postWorld War I
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