Syria has thus become a part of a region-wide tussle that is essentially about the re-calibration of two interrelated balances of power: one between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf; the second the overall regional balance of power between the American-Israeli axis and Iran. Syria is merely a sideshow of these wider and strategically much more important struggles. Iran’s support for Assad and the US-Saudi support for his opponents can only be understood in the context of these larger struggles for power and influence. The resolution of the Syrian crisis is, therefore, linked to what happens in these other arenas and cannot be separated from them.
This paper formed the basis of a presentation at an international conference on “Resolving the Syrian Crisis” organized by the Center for Middle East Studies, University of Denver, January 10-11, 2013.
Mohammed Ayoob, author of The Many Faces of Political Islam(University of Michigan Press, 2008), is University Distinguished Professor of International Relations, Michigan State University, and Adjunct Scholar, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. His edited volume Assessing the War on Terror will be published later this year. He is currently working on a book Will the Middle East Implode? which is scheduled for publication in early 2014.
Image: Flickr/Khalid Albaih. CC BY 2.0.
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Comments
Dr. Ayoob’s analysis is one of the best presentations of the complexity of the Syrian disaster. What passes in the major media outlets as examination of the fighting mostly adheres to Washington’s interpretation that the “Arab Spring” is bringing democracy to the dictatorial rule of the Asad family. It is interesting that Prof. Ayoob should use the designation of “cold war” to describe the stakeholders in the bloody conflict. British historian Malcolm Kerr’s The Arab Cold War: Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958-1970 portrayed very similar opponents--the nationalists of Egypt, Syria and Iraq versus the traditional monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states. Even todays US involvement in covert as well as overt assistance to Asad’s enemies is reminiscent of Washington’s policy some sixty years ago. Dr. Peter L. Hahn, in his Caught in the Middle East, concluded that President Eisenhower’s Doctrine, which he presented in a speech in 1957, was more directed against the radical Arab states such as Egypt and Syria in defense of the conservative monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf kingdoms. The US also used both apparent and clandestine strategies--from providing financial and military aid to joint efforts with Britain to protect Jordan’s King Hussein to interventions as in Lebanon in 1958 to subvert, weaken and overthrow governments as in Iran, Egypt and Syria. Civil wars are perhaps the most devastating of conflicts. The destruction is only exceeded by the human cost. Moreover, the consequences of the bitterness that inflames the participants lingers in post-conflict retributions as in the aftermath of Russian revolution or in formation of political character and culture as reflected in the US. As terrible as the Asad dictatorship was prior to 2011, the material damaged done and the toll of lives--with no apparent end in sight--does raise the question of was it worth it?