On Engaging Syria

In his landmark June 24, 2002 speech on the Middle East, George W. Bush invited Syria to join the right side in the war on terror:

Every nation actually committed to peace will stop the flow of money, equipment and recruits to terrorist groups seeking the destruction of Israel — including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah. Every nation actually committed to peace must block the shipment of Iranian supplies to these groups, and oppose regimes that promote terror, like Iraq. And Syria must choose the right side in the war on terror by closing terrorist camps and expelling terrorist organizations.

After that, Syria (1) sided with Saddam Hussein just before the 2003 Iraq war, (2) provided refuge in 2003 (and since) to Ba’athist extremists trying to undermine the new Iraqi government, (3) rejected multiple overtures during 2003-2005 from senior officials of the Bush administration who traveled to Damascus to meet with Bashar al-Asad, (4) was undoubtedly involved in the February 2005 murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, (5) supported Hezbollah in its 2006 war with Israel, (6) has been restocking Hezbollah since 2006 with more rockets than it had before, in direct violation of the UN Resolution that ended the war, (6) was building during all this time a nuclear facility in secret with the help of North Korea, and (7) has been providing the headquarters for the leaders of Hamas. 

It sure seems like Syria made its choice.

Last week, Martin Indyk appeared before a House Foreign Affairs Committee subcommittee and noted that:

The dominant view of Syria that has developed in Washington during [the past seven years] is that of a country ruled by an unreliable leader, with ruthless ambitions to dominate its smaller Lebanese neighbor, harboring Palestinian terrorists and Iraqi insurgents, and maintaining an alliance with Iran – a strategic adversary of the United States.

Notwithstanding the Syrian response over seven years, Indyk offered the subcommittee his suggestion — “pursuing engagement” with Syria, an idea he called “worth testing” by “the next president.”  Indyk had “one caveat” about deciding to pursue “this option of engaging Syria via peace negotiations”:

Just about every leader that has attempted to deal with President Bashar al-Assad has come away frustrated.  The list includes Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Nicholas Sarkozy, Hosni Mubarak and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.

Maybe if a U.S. president just offers Syria change it can believe in (and throws in Lebanon and the Golan Heights while deserting Iraq), the results will be different.

Peter Rodman also testified before the House subcommittee on April 24.  Here is how he described the Bush administration trips to Syria after the Iraq war:

Secretary of State Colin Powell went in May 2003; I had the privilege of visiting myself in September 2004 as part of an interagency delegation with Assistant Secretary of State William Burns; and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had a similar meeting with Asad in early 2005.

In each case, the Syrians’ response was that destabilizing Iraq and killing Americans were the furthest things from their minds; they did confess to having trouble controlling the Syrian-Iraqi border, and asked for our technical assistance. The concern that the American side expressed, however, was that the main problem was not border control but the evident policy of the Syrian government to allow sanctuary inside Syria for political organizing by Iraqi extremists directly involved in those hostile activities.

We even gave them names of senior Iraqi extremists who we knew were operating out of Syria. As we told President Asad, we had a hard time believing that the Syrian government did not have control over these kinds of activities on its territory. In response, they turned over one Iraqi radical, if I recall correctly.

And the Syrians are masters of spin. Each of these visits by senior Americans was meant to convey a serious warning and to ratchet up pressures on Damascus to reverse its disruptive and destructive policy. Our talking points, I recall on my own visit, were as blunt and tough as any talking points I have seen in many years (and we let President Asad know they had been cleared by President Bush). But the Syrians always publicized the fact of the high-level meetings as a sign that U.S.-Syrian relations were excellent.

This conveyed a wrong impression to everyone, including our friends in the region.  In other words, while our tough talking points were meant to ratchet up pressures, the Syrians spun the visits into relief from pressures.

Rodman’s testimony is the subject of several extraordinarily interesting comments over at Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH).  Michael Young notes that:

Syria sees Iran as the regional superpower of the future, an impression Asad has little reason to discard when the debate in the United States so foolishly ignores the regional implications of a substantial American drawdown in Iraq. . . . He prefers to take his chances with a fight, with Iran on his side.

Eyal Zisser, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, comments that:

The problem would seem to be not only Syria’s behavior, but the very nature of the regime, especially that of the Asad dynasty. It is useful to consider Syria as another Cuba or North Korea, with which it bears many similarities. All three countries are ruled by dictatorial family dynasties cloaked in anti-Western ideologies that legitimate them and ensure their survival. For this reason, Bashar Asad is unlikely to be “bought” by the West. . . .

What Bashar is proposing to the United States is an honorable capitulation: that it depart from Iraq, abandon Lebanon, pressure Israel to return the entire Golan Heights, and acquiesce in Syria’s continued membership in the region’s Iran-centered “axis of evil” (with no more than a vague Syrian hint of a possible future withdrawal from that axis).

Itamar Rabinovich, who was Israel’s chief negotiator with Syria and is currently visiting professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, commented that when Ehud Olmert began to talk about resuming negotiations with Syria, “he was told by the Bush administration that this was not a good idea.”  But “Olmert has his own domestic political reasons for flaunting this prospect.” 

If Martin Indyk is in the next administration, the U.S. will undoubtedly encourage him.