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