A former British prime minister, queried as to the greatest threat to derailing a government, is reputed to have replied: “Events, dear boy, events.”
Though it’s not 100 per cent certain those words were ever spoken, the message is just as acute nonetheless: no matter how diligently a government may prepare itself for its tasks, uncertainty can rear up at any moment and upset it’s entire agenda.
The sudden collapse of the Syrian dictatorship is about as unforeseen as you can get. Two weeks ago Bashar al-Assad looked fully secure in his position as ruthless ruler of a brutalized country, his future assured by a pair of cutthroat backers in Russia and Iran. On Sunday he fled for his life, granted asylum in Moscow while jubilant Syrians looted his palace and set parts of it ablaze.
A well-known adage asserts that regimes like Syria’s collapse gradually, and then suddenly. The Soviet Union, the Iranian monarchy, the 600-year Habsburg dynasty, the Ottoman empire … there are plenty of precedents. What they shared was the uncertainty of what would come next. The answer was usually chaos. The death of the Warsaw Pact was supposed to be the end of history, in yet another famous phrase, as communist totalitarianism disintegrated, leaving liberal democracy triumphant. Yet 30 years later Vladimir Putin has rebuilt Russia as something resembling a latter-day czarist state seeking to spread its militaristic ambitions across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
The 1914 assassination of the heir to the Habsburg throne set off a world war and ultimately Austria’s dismemberment into a dozen or more independent states fated to a century of blood and turmoil. Syria under half a century of iron-fisted Assad control had devolved into both a vicious tyranny and a vassal state, oppressing its own people while helping Russia and Iran undermine neighbouring powers in pursuit of anti-democratic ambitions.
Israel, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, all had reason to worry about the threat of Syria. In like manner, Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah … pick your poison, each in its way is linked to Iran, and through its tentacles to its client regime in Damascus. Lebanon in particular has all but ceased to exist as a viable state, so helpless has it become in the face of exterior meddling and Hezbollah violence.
It should follow, then, that the end of Assad and the collapse of his regime must be a positive development. Moscow has been embarrassed and bloodied, forced to withdraw military assets vital to its regional empire-building. Putin’s Ukraine adventure has so diminished his war machine he can no longer afford the cost of propping up his puppet. The loss of its naval facility at Tartus robs it of its only accessible Mediterranean base and demonstrates that, yes, there are indeed limits to his capacity to sow disorder and destruction.
Iran, meanwhile, has lost a key proxy and valuable weapon, even as Israel reduces its terrorist affiliate in Gaza to rubble and presses an overmatched Hezbollah into a ceasefire.
Yet the outlook for Syria, and thereby of the region, is the opposite of certain, much less deserving of optimism. Experts and analysts are already weighing in, seeking to divine what is patently unseeable. Take what for generations has ranked among the world’s most explosive regions, soak it in gasoline and strike a match, and good luck on anything positive emerging as a result.
Start with the new rulers in Damascus, an Islamist rebel army that may or may not have left its terrorist affiliations and instincts behind it. So limited is understanding of its aims and operations that not a single western power caught even a whiff of a hint that it was about to launch a surprise uprising, and succeed with astonishing ease.
Add in the array of competing, far-from-friendly interests that line its borders. Even before he escaped to Moscow, Assad lacked full control of the country. Turkey, Israel, the U.S. and their affiliates; various unidentified opposition groups and factions, and remnants of the defeated ISIS terrorist “caliphate,” all lay claim to parts or parcels of the Syrian “state.” Not to mention the unofficial semi-state of Kurdistan that sprawls across northern Syria and large parts of Turkey and Iraq and rejects any suggestion it is beholden to any power but its own.
Israel’s year-old war in Gaza and Lebanon has killed tens of thousands, displaced perhaps two million people, sharply divided Israel itself and set off a wave of virulent antisemitism elsewhere. Turkey is a NATO member supposedly aligned with western interests, but entertaining a simultaneous dalliance with the Kremlin. Lebanon fears the disappearance of one foreign overlord may open the way to another, perhaps even worse. Israel has already grabbed a piece of Syrian territory as a buffer zone, while U.S. President Joe Biden hailed Assad’s fall as an “historic opportunity” but has just weeks remaining before his ability to affect history ends.
In his place comes Donald Trump, the very epitome of unpredictability. The president-to-be, who has repeatedly stated his admiration for Putin while claiming he could bring peace to Kyiv in a day, strayed from his playbook Sunday long enough to blame Moscow’s strongman for abandoning Syria, mock Russia as “weakened” and warn that the Ukraine war now “could go on forever.”
A failed but heavily armed state now in the hands of an unfamiliar power, located in the heart of a war-racked and volatile region. Prospects for peace lay in the lap of a reckless, mercurial, erratic and impulsive president. Anyone who thinks they know where this goes from here is kidding themselves, but greater conflagrations have resulted from less combustible beginnings.
National Post