In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [2]
This book is also a personal account of an American’s engagement with the regime of the “Lion of Damascus”—“Assad” being Arabic for “lion.” While I wouldn’t compare my experience to that of the Bible’s Daniel, my sojourn in Syria was a series of crises and dilemmas that sculpted my view of engagement and confrontation with what are commonly referred to in America as “rogue regimes.” My personal and professional experiences in Syria were so intertwined I didn’t know how else to write a book that wasn’t a hybrid of memoir and foreign policy analysis. Following my departure from Syria in the autumn of 2008, the regime began its harshest crackdown on dissidents and journalists during Bashar al Assad’s reign. With an eye toward protecting my friends and associates in Syria, in this book I have changed nearly all their names and some details of their identities.
I went to Syria in 2001 with an open mind about a country and a regime that the United States and the West had struggled to change the behavior of for decades. (This long process even gave birth to “Syriana”—the term for the idea that a big power can remake nation-states in its own image. The term was made internationally famous when it was adopted as the title for the 2005 box-office thriller of the same name.) The regime’s long alliance with the Soviet Union; its support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and other groups on the US list of terrorist organizations; its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMD); and its horrible human rights record had led some US administrations and their allies over the years to attempt to change the Assad regime’s behavior via confrontation or sanctions. Other administrations had attempted to engage Syria diplomatically, most notably centered on Arab-Israeli and Syrian-Israeli peace talks, based on the idea that America could gain more with rewards than punishments. Neither approach solved the problems. Underlying each policy was the idea that the Assad regime only cared about politics. As Damascus’s oil revenues declined and Assad opened his country to the outside world, I watched firsthand as economics became a bigger and bigger part of the Assad regime’s calculations for survival.
Multilateral pressure shepherded by the Bush administration brought about some of the greatest changes in Syrian policies in decades. Damascus withdrew its troops from Lebanon, implemented long-delayed economic reforms, and eased—at least for a time—restrictions on the Syrian opposition. A major impetus for these changes is the fact that Syria, like all globalizing rogue regimes, increasingly needs the international community more than the international community needs Syria.
Other changes in Syrian policy were not to Washington’s liking, however. Damascus deepened its alliance with Iran, turned a blind eye to jihadi fighters entering Iraq, and stepped up a nuclear program now under investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). While Washington and its allies’ responses to the latter two policies ultimately curbed their impact, the Bush administration proved far less skillful in countering Assad’s moves in Syria and Lebanon—historically a key battleground between Iran and the United States.
Engaging regimes like Assad’s might seem an easy solution to America’s problems in the Middle East, including dealing with Iran’s nuclear program or fostering Arab-Israeli peace. But engaging the Assad regime is historically far harder done than said. It’s not just that Syrian and US policies are now more opposed to each other than ever. Based on my experiences in Syria, the prospects of America’s underwriting a Syrian-Israeli peace treaty are not promising unless Damascus acts decisively to support human rights, institute rule of law, and curb corruption in the country. This is particularly the case following the outbreak of protests throughout Syria in March 2011. Meanwhile, Washington policy makers and analysts are also finding difficulty moving