In the aftermath of 9/11, Syria provided the United States with actionable intelligence on al Qaeda affiliates, as administration officials publicly acknowledge. While I was serving on the National Security Council, this information let U.S. and allied authorities thwart planned operations that, had they been carried out, would have resulted in the deaths of Americans.
Nonetheless, neoconservative theology prevented the Bush administration from using carrots and sticks to transform tactical cooperation with Syria against al Qaeda into a broader rapprochement. Some influential neoconservative administration members scorned past relations with Mideast autocrats. They argued that strategic accommodation, exchanging better relations for policy shifts in Damascus, would effectively reward Syria's support for terrorism. Following the Iraq war, with U.S. troops at Syria's doorstep, relations plummeted further over Syria's unwillingness, absent a broader strategic understanding with Washington, to stem the flow of people and supplies into Iraq in support of insurgent activity there.
Throughout this period, Bashar Assad has been climbing a slow learning curve as diplomat and strategist. He has been forced by changing circumstances to adapt the foreign policy script he inherited from his father -- with some dismal results. His overly aggressive handling of the Lebanon "file," documented in the U.N. report, alienated French President Jacques Chirac and set the stage for the passage of Security Council Resolution 1559 in 2004, which mandated the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. The draft resolution that the Security Council is debating, threatening sanctions if Syria does not cooperate with the U.N. investigation, is endorsed by the Bush administration -- but it is sponsored by France.
Yet it remains unclear what outcome France, Britain and the United States are ultimately seeking. If the international community imposes sanctions on Syria, the regime may be able to hunker down like Saddam did in the 1990s, an unsatisfactory outcome for the West as well as for the Syrian people. If, on the other hand, the regime implodes, that could pose even greater dangers. Ethnic and sectarian violence could feed into and off of instability in Iraq while an anti-American, heavily Islamist leadership could fill the political vacuum in Damascus. Even if Bashar did order Hariri's killing, do we want to treat him like a Milosevic-type criminal figure? Or do we want to offer him a way out as an inducement for Syria's strategic realignment, much as we made a deal with Libya's Moammar Gaddafi, whose regime killed not 22 people, but 270 people (mostly Americans) in the bombing of Pan Am 103?
It may be tempting to see Bashar as a Macbeth-like figure, driven to paralysis by his victim's ghost and doomed. But policymakers are not just passive members of the audience in this drama. On the real world's stage, they share responsibility for what happens next, regardless of Bashar's fate.
Author's e-mail:
fleverett@brookings.edu
Flynt Leverett, author of "Inheriting Syria: Bashar's Trial by Fire," is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He served as senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council from 2002 to 2003 and as a senior CIA Middle East analyst from 1992 to 2001.
