Tilting Toward Assad: Lebanon's Gone. Is Jordan Next?
SHARED, HAIM
TILTING TOWARD ASSAD Lebanon's Gone. Is Jordan Next? HAIM SHAKED In the name of pragmatism and expediency the United States has decided to tilt toward Damascus. In the aftermath of President...
...Should the opportunity arise—and it can be encouraged from the outside—Assad will be there to take advantage of it...
...Assad finds inspiration in Saladin, the great Kurdish fighter who destroyed the Crusaders' state in Jerusalem in the 12th century and founded the Ayyubid dynasty...
...Many of the moves and counter-moves made by the various players take on a life of their own...
...In the process, Assad's troops killed at least 750 Lebanese...
...The former president inquired of my friend, "What is this battle...
...he has just gained control of Lebanon...
...The result was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait...
...This policy subsumes principle to expediency and compromises the interests of a long-standing American ally, democratic Israel, for the dubious gain of the favor of a tyrannical thug...
...With hindsight, it is clear that the American ult toward Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war gave Saddam the wrong signal...
...apparently concluded we must maintain the Arab coalition against Iraq's President Saddam Hussein, even at the cost of an alignment with Syria...
...It erroneously led him to believe that he could snuff out Kuwait's existence with impunity as a stepping stone to the realization of his dream of Baghdad as the capital of all Arabs...
...The justification for this tilt was that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend...
...Like Saddam, Muammar Gadhafi and, before them, the late Gamal Abdul Nasser, Assad dreams of unifying the Arab world with its epicenter his capital...
...For, while Saddam was becoming more and more aggressive—the United States ignored his atrocities, turned a blind eye to those who continued providing him with materiel for his military build-up, removed Iraq from the list of terrorist states, renewed commerce and aid and sent him encouraging messages...
...My friend replied that it was the batde of Hittin, near Tiberias, in 1187, in which Saladin broke the backbone of the Crusaders' military might, the victory led eventually to the Crusaders' withdrawal from Jerusalem If my friend were responding to the ex-president today, he would undoubtedly add "By the way, Saladin was born in Taknt, Saddam Hussein's birthplace...
...If American policy, as defined by President Bush, is completely successful and Saddam is defanged, Assad will have rid himself of a major threat on his eastern flank...
...Like Saddam, Assad harbors and supports state and Palestinian terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere...
...in the case of Syria, however, Assad's troops recendy took control of Lebanon by forcefully crushing the Christian-led and Iraqi-supported opposition of General Michel Aoun...
...is now aligning itself with Syria.Will the result be Syria's invasion of Jordan...
...The Syrian peasant is never spontaneous—he is always calculating, always suspicious...
...Israel is strong militarily, stable politically and resolute in its determination to defend itself, Assad will not strike there—at least for the time being However, his other southern neighbor, Jordan, is fragile and potentially unstable...
...Like Saddam, Assad has been deeply immersed in a major, protracted, bloody war involving a neighboring Middle Eastern country—Lebanon...
...What next' A wise, long-term Amencan policy in the Middle East should be based on maintaining a high level of credibility and expanding the number of those of its friends who are at peace with each other: Turkey, Israel and Egypt...
...Then, when Saddam made his move, all hell broke loose Doesn't Saddam have the right to feel double-crossed' Learning nothing from its mistakes, the United States is now repeaung the same script—except that this time there is a new enemy of the new enemy: Assad Because he is the enemy of Saddam, Assad is suddenly America's friend...
...President Bush is engaged in a subde game with a wily player...
...In Syria, man is not young or innocent or naive Man is old and cynical...
...Any dealings with Syna that are1 nof...
...He has been saying this quite explicidy for years...
...It is the United States that should demand, and be paid, a price for its major commitment to protect the interests of its Arab friends, not the other way around...
...Once this occurs, Assad will have a free hand to tram his sights southward...
...friend in the region—Israel...
...has embarked, yet again, on an erroneous, opportunistic policy...
...he entered with the sanction of the Arab League...
...In his thinking and by his lights, Saddam Hussein no doubt accuses the United States of being the biggest double-crosser in history...
...American military forces are now in a Sitzknegiike (standoff) deployment in the sands of Araby, but it would be wrong to assume that nothing major is happening...
...More than 20,000 people were reportedly annihilated...
...Israel's Minister of Defense Moshe Arens expressed his indignation at President Bush's November meeung with Assad, poinhng out that "in the Middle East, the meeting is the message...
...He is not in danger from the north, for Turkey is that rarity in the region—a stable, nonaggres-sive neighbor...
...The White House may indeed be sowing the seeds of a new Middle Eastern debacle by emitting yet again the wrong signal American policy makers should not forget that it is the United States that has come to the rescue of its Arab friends—not vice versa...
...That is likely to be true in the case of America's cozying up to Assad...
...Department of State...
...Although Saddam used chemical weapons against his Kurdish populauon, Syria's Assad has outdone him, at least numerically: In 1982 Assad leveled a large part of the Syrian city of Hamma to crush fundamentalist Moslem opposition to his regime...
...In one of Assad's waiting rooms was a large wall painung depicting a batde...
...Greater Syria, he says, is a term that the Allies invented to conceal their partition from the world and to convey the false impression that whoever tries to reunite the country is somehow an aggressor...
...The Iran-Iraq war concluded with Iraq's total withdrawal...
...Assad's intentions are no secret...
...The peasant asks, "What does he want, and how can I use it to my advantage'" He is trained to play the parties he deals with against one another, so that in the end he is on the side of the winner...
...Opportunities, however, are not the same as opportunism '8* This article is adapted from a presentation Professor Shaked made to an independent panel of the International Security Council m Washington, D C...
...Syria's Assad is much more subde and cautious than Iraq's Saddam, although just as formidable and dangerous a player Assad does not do things hurriedly He did not invade Lebanon in 1975-1976...
...In a recent article in the New Yorker, Milton Viorst quotes a Lebanese professor, Antun Maledissi, as saying: To understand Assad you must see him as a link in the chain of Syrian peasants who lived with the Ottoman pashas for centunes...
...Here there is a difference, however...
...All other things being equal, Assad will simply consolidate his hold on Lebanon with his special mix of brutality and enticenient...
...In that sense, Assad is totally Syrian In many respects, Syria's Assad is much like Iraq's Saddam Hussein Although mortal enemies, they even share the same Ba'ath ideology "one Arab naUon with an eternal mission...
...In the previously cited New Yorker arucle, Milton Viorst writesWhen Assad is asked if he plans to build a greater Syria, he pretends to be baffled...
...The European, in dealing with others, learns to ask, "What does he mean...
...several hundred were brutally murdered after their surrender...
...denned and constrained by these condmons will eventually undermine America's long-range position in the region...
...There is no Greater Syria, he answers—only Syria, which was divided and subdivided by the Allies after the First World War...
...Like Saddam, Assad has pursued a ruthless and tyrannical domesQc policy since his takeover in 1970 The policy is a long, sad series of human rights violations of the worst kind—as denounced by Amnesty Internauonal and the U.S...
...By the same logic, the U.S...
...Instead, the United States, the protector of its Arab friends, is being presented with a bill by Syria's Assad for protection money—a free hand in Lebanon...
...In the aftermath of President George Bush's November 23, 1990, summit meeting in Geneva with Syria's President Hafez Assad, the U.S...
...Every crisis also portends an opportunity...
...I use the term tilt advisedly...
...Assad does not annex neighboring states—he simply controls them Assad does not use apocalyptic threats against his enemies—he simply prepares the tools needed to destroy them, calling the process "building a strategic parity...
...More recently, Assad stated that while it is imperative that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait, its military might should not be destroyed because it will be needed to reinforce the real Arab battle against Zionism In the war between Iran and Iraq, the United States aligned itself with Iraq...
...And the currency in which such price should be paid is peace with another solid U.S...
...Predictions of this kind are always dangerous, especially m the Middle East, but it is abundantly clear that the U.S...
...This was the catchword used to describe the policy the U S pursued for several years in favor of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war...
...Assad maintains that what the West pretends are four separate peoples—Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians and Palestinians—are actually one—Nonetheless, he claims to have no plans to reunite this land mass, dismissing Syrian unity in favor of the Ba'ath Party's grander vision of Arab unity...
...A friend of mine accompanied a former U. S. president on a visit to Assad in Damascus...
...The concept that is an obstacle to peace Assad argues is not Greater Syria at all but Greater Israel...
...On his west, Assad has nothing to worry about...
Vol. 16 • February 1991 • No. 1
