THE SYRIAN JOKER

THE SYRIAN JOKER

As if the Arab labyrinth was not complicated enough, Bashar Assad has added a poisonous card to the deck.  Muammar Quadafi is an unpredictable hybrid who represents a derailment of minor consequence if one chooses not to take into account the human toll.  Otherwise Libya is “oil cum nothing”.

Syria is another cup of tea.  The Assads kept the country under control, while creating havoc by proxy, via Hamas and Hizbullah.  The vacuum which followed the fall of Saddam Hussein has never been properly addressed. Syria has been able to reset its relationship with post Mubarak Egypt and an assertive Turkey.  Lebanon is becoming a client state and the rejectionist camp in the Middle East gravitates around Syria, which acts for Iran’s interests. As much as the Libyan situation verges on the primitive, the Syrian events present the West, and especially Israel, with a far more perverse conundrum.  It is hard to imagine a similar scenario as Libya because Syria, while poor in natural resources is a geopolitical “trap” in the region.  Any intervention might set in motion unforeseeable consequences and involve multiple actors.  A NATO intervention would be politically suicidal and is unrealistic given the fact that Turkey will not be the passive onlooker in what happens in its backyard.  Israel must be alarmed by further instability in a region where the question marks start to abound.  After the fall of Mubarak Saudi Arabia is left with a hangover and fear of the Shia tsunami.

The West--the USA in the first place--finds itself in a quasi-impossible situation. Its policy is a patchwork of many ineffective or semi-improvised short term gestures and actions that are incoherent. They reinforce their foes and alienate their allies; they are ill-timed, poorly executed and risk alienating  a whole region. Wisely, Israel has chosen to play the Cheshire Cat (“You must be mad, otherwise you wouldn’t have come here”). 

It is too easy to be critical and not to offer an alternative. Quasi-inaction in Egypt, non action in Tunisia, hesitation in Yemen, bombing in Libya , voyeurism in Syria don’t add up.  The situations differ but they all have potentially similar consequences. What unites them is that they are all threatening.  Rather than getting involved in these fratricide wars that run amok, it is better to let the Arabs deal with their own problems. In Turkey we have a unique player that is both in and out.  To encourage Ankara to intervene politically and to maximize its influence in what is its zone of influence might have a double advantage.  It is a carrot hard to refuse for a power that is on the rise.  It is a stick that cannot be ignored by countries that share a similar DNA.  Both the EU and NATO still have some credit in Turkey  and policies can to some extent still be co-managed without being tainted by what the Arabs consider as the Western “Wild West behavior” towards Arab  dysfunctions. The West must not delocalize its responsibilities but neither must it shoulder what is not in its own direct geopolitical interest. Countries have to share the burden and assume the consequences of globalization in a multi-polar world.  Europeans intervened militarily in the Balkans without asking others to come to rescue their “brethren”. The same applies here.  The Arabs have to be first in line to disentangle themselves from a historical shift that might harm them if it is not timely controlled.  Meanwhile diplomacy must be set in overdrive so that Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan receive the assurance that the “Shah syndrome”, which was repeated in Egypt and will probably affect Yemen, is not a fixture but a fatality.  Such diplomatic endeavor could follow the EU model of the Troika to deflect any chance of hypothermia, which would again target the USA.