March 20, 2005
KEEP SHAKING THE TREE 'TIL ALL THE NUTS FALL OUT:
Nonstop Turbulence: Rather than Iraq, it could be Syria that ends up collapsing. (ROBERT D. KAPLAN, March 20, 2005, Opinion Journal)
Syria is but a Levantine version of the former Yugoslavia--without the intellectual class which that other post-Ottoman state could claim at the time of its break-up (since Hafez al-Assad's rule was so much more stultifying than Tito's). In Syria, as in the former Yugoslavia, each sect and religion has a specific geography. Aleppo in the north is a bazaar city with greater historical links to Mosul and Baghdad than to Damascus. Between Aleppo and Damascus is the increasingly Islamist Sunni heartland. Between Damascus and the Jordanian border are the Druze. Free and fair elections in 1947, 1949 and 1954 exacerbated these divisions by dividing the vote along sectarian lines. Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970 after 21 changes of government in the previous 24 years. For three decades he was the Leonid Brezhnev of the Arab world, staving off the future while failing to build a national consciousness by virtue of a suffocating and calcifying tyranny. The question is: As President Bush humiliates Assad's son-and-successor into weakness, will Syria become a larger version of Civil War-era Lebanon?The implications of this for neighboring Lebanon and Jordan are vast. A weakened Syria could mean the emergence of Beirut as the cultural and economic capital of Greater Syria, with Damascus finally paying the price for its decades-long, Soviet-like removal from the modern world. Of course, Greater Syria would not be a new state, but once again a vague geographical expression as in Ottoman times.
Jordan would survive such a cataclysm better than many suppose, because the Hashemite dynasty--unlike the Alawite one--has spent decades building a state consciousness through the development of a unified national elite. Amman is filled with ex-government ministers loyal to the Jordanian monarchy--people who were not imprisoned or killed as a result of cabinet reshuffles, but who were merely allowed to become rich. Jordan's problem, however, will be the integration of its urban Palestinian majority, once it feels the pull of the new Palestinian state to materialize from negotiations between Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas.
The weakening of Syria cannot bode well for its regional ally Iran, now virtually surrounded by pro-American governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and new democracies to the north in places like Georgia. When the Shah fell in 1979 and was replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini, one strong and well-organized bureaucratic fear machine replaced another, as the Shiite clerisy--due to its highly defined hierarchal nature--already constituted a state within a state. But the next political evolution in Iran must lead to a weaker and less centralized polity--opening a Pandora's box of ethnic issues in the north related to the Azeri Turks, Turkomans and others who straddle the border between Iran and the former Soviet Union.
Throughout much of history, Iran has been less a state than an amorphous empire, reflecting the richness and dynamism of Persian culture. Once Iran is liberated from the mullahs' puritanical and religious straitjacket, which has little appeal in neighboring Central Asian republics (where vodka is drunk in liberal amounts), Greater Persia could resurface in a cultural sense, even as Tehran's ability to project power contracts.
Think of the changes that would unfold from a democratic evolution in the Arab and Persian worlds as the Mexicanization of the Middle East: Rather than one-party rule with only a few men in control, there would be a whole political class of people who would need to be influenced in each country, in order for American diplomats to make progress on one issue after another. Weak states mean more work for diplomats, but not anarchy necessarily. There would be so many internal problems to keep parliaments busy that hatred of the United States would recede--especially if such a democratic evolution happened coterminously with a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal-of-sorts.
Mr. Kaplan is one of those who's always thought calling himself a Realist was a boast; if he's abandoning Realism it's in dire straits. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 20, 2005 4:12 PM
Kaplan was the only guy to write intelligently about the Balkans, and he is among the very few who understand the dynamics of America's southern border. He's been telling us for years that Syria will be a real mess when it collapses.(See his Eastward to Tartary).
I don't know whether I'd call him a Realist, but he certainly has been realistic over the years. Even where I disagree with him and those areas are frequent, I still have respect for his research and field work. He's not some Robert Fisk or State Department type who staggers from the hotel bar to the local dictator's briefing and then staggers back for some more single malt and calls that 'foreign correspondence' or being 'in-country.'
Posted by: bart at March 20, 2005 4:34 PMbart:
Read his french kisses of Kennan and Kissinger in the Atlantic.
Posted by: oj at March 20, 2005 4:56 PMThis is all quite wonderful, assuming the center holds. Damn, that W is one helluva riverboat gambler.
Posted by: ghostcat at March 20, 2005 5:01 PMWe need to be careful using the term 'realist.'
It used to mean somebody who plays pure power politics in pursuit of the national interest. By this definition, in the current conflict, a true realist would be all for spreading liberty and fomenting instability in the Arab world as long as he believed it would cause the removal threatening governments. He might also be in favor of occupying the strategically important country of Iraq regardless of whether there were WMD.
Bush campaigned as a realist in 2000 and has acted as one since then in the sense that he is not afraid to press for the national interest. However, he has been able to do this without abandoning his sense of morality, unlike some of the Cold War 'realists' who now criticize him. Many are beginning to understand that realism and the desire to spread liberty are not mutually exclusive strategies and are, in fact, mutually reinforcing because they may let us win in Syria and Iran without fighting.
The leftist bozos who now claim to be realists are not even worthy of that amoral moniker in the sense that they do not support the national interest and did not play to win in the Cold War. They are fundamentally uncomfortable with all manifestations of American power because they do not see the good in their own society and therefore consider it unworthy of extending its influence.
Ironic that they now claim to be hard headed realpolitikers like Kissinger, who they once despised for bombing Cambodia or supporting Pinochet, while Kissinger himself has been far more supportive of our grand strategy.
I like Bush's strategy on both moral and strategic grounds. Helping people gain liberty is a form of moral due diligence if nothing else. If things continued the way they were going they'd eventually nuke us and we'd have to fry them all -- something we must work to avoid if at all possible. Because I believe in the basic 'end of history' arguments often made here, I am very optimistic that these folks will do OK once they realize the prosperity and fulfilment that comes with liberty.
The current crop of neo-realists' are realist only in their amorality. They differ from the Kissingers of the Cold War in that they do not believe their own country should prevail. What's scary is that their poster boy almost got elected president.
Posted by: JAB at March 20, 2005 9:56 PM