by Max Abrahms Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2003
Very long analytical piece, well worth the time to read the whole thing. Here’s the "Ranter’s Digest Condensed Version:"
Even after the extraordinary U.S.-British military display of last spring, rogue states and terrorists continue to threaten U.S. national security. While this observation may seem prosaic, the White House predicted that victory in Iraq would convince our adversaries to fall into line, i.e., moderate their ways to avoid becoming the next U.S. target. It was a kind of domino theory in reverse. The original Cold War version of the domino theory held that if Vietnam went communist, the entire Asian continent would go Red. The Bush administration inverted the theory by contending that victory in Iraq would lead the rest of the Middle East to tumble in the United States’ political direction.
| I don't think anyone ever went that far, at least not this early in the game. The long term trend is going to be in that direction, but we're only two steps down the road... |
The problem with this latest version of the domino theory is that it flatly contradicts the logic of the preemption doctrine, the cornerstone of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 strategic policy. The domino theory is at odds with the preemption doctrine on the critical question of rationality. The policy of preemption presumes that terrorist organizations and rogue states by definition frequently do not engage in logical cost-benefit calculations (and for this reason cannot be deterred by U.S. threats).
| That's why the diplos refer to them as "rogue states" and "terrorists." Here, we refer to them as lunatics, asshats, krazed killers, snuffies, gunnies, and fundos. We've observed on many occasions that there's no recognition of laws of cause and effect and they're not real sure about things like gravity... |
The domino theory presumes the opposite: if the U.S. displays its might and resolve, its adversaries will restrain themselves and accept the pax Americana.
| I think the basic idea is that even if they don't believe in cause->effect, repeated demonstrations might help them catch on. I don't have an awful lot of hope, either, but we'll have to see if it works. There are a few rational minds in the Muslim world. They're just likely to be bumped off when they open their mouths... |
The war against Saddam Hussein, and the buildup that preceded it, have reinforced the logic of the preemption doctrine by highlighting that rogue states and terrorists frequently do not respond rationally to the prospect of U.S. military intervention. Saddam Hussein chose certain defeat over disarmament, even though the former also guaranteed the latter; Hizbullah and Hamas began threatening Washington in February, just as the Bush administration began to openly discuss whether these terrorist groups posed a danger to the United States.
| You have to allow for repeated demonstrations. The Afghans defeated everybody from Alexander the Great onward, to hear the nay-sayers tell it. It took us a month to clobber them. Sammy told us in no uncertain terms — twice — that it wasn't going to be a cakewalk. We clobbered him in a month. Iran and Syria are making faces and saying this isn't going to be Iraq. Meanwhile, Sudan is saying something that roughly translates as "Don't kill me, please." Libya has decided they'd rather be Africans than an Arab terror state. Somalia is saying "We only kill each other, please don't kill us." Yemen is saying "See what good allies we are? We're cracking down — please don't kill us." And even Soddy Arabia is saying what great friends we've always been, it's all been a misunderstanding, and oh, by the way, please don't kill us. These states know we can take them apart in a month, where Syria and Iran are trying to talk themselves into believing we can't. Bush's policies are getting down to the core of unreason in the terror machine. Assuming we clobber Syria next, Iran's not going to make quite such fearsome faces. If we clobber Iran next, Syria will rediscover the joys of the multiparty state, as grudgingly as possible... |
Perhaps the greatest example of irrational behavior is Syria. In marked contrast to its pro-U.S. stance during the 1991 Kuwait war, which dramatically improved its strategic position, this time Syria backed Iraq—even after U.S. victory was a foregone conclusion. Instead of trying to distance itself from regimes like Iraq, Syria went out of its way to irk the United States by siding with Saddam. In the words of one Middle East expert, Syria chose a "seemingly suicidal policy"; it "swam toward the sinking ship."
| The driver there was that Bashar's more afraid of the terror machine the Syrians have helped create than he is of us. We're reasonable, we can be negotiated with; they're nuts... |
The theoretical shortcomings of the domino theory, strikingly exemplified by Syria’s irrational foreign policy under President Bashar al-Assad, suggest that terrorists and rogue states will continue to be a menace.
| The currents going to continue running for awhile, but with decreasing amplitude... |
More importantly, this faulty assumption of rational enemies reminds us why the post-9/11 preemption doctrine is both a valid and indispensable policy option to thwart enemies who cannot be deterred.
He’s right, I think, about the utility of deterrence and "domino theory" persuasion vs. thugocracies like Kim’s North Korea, Assad’s Syria, and Saddam’s Iraq, but I think the "domino theory" is aimed, not at the thugs who rule these thugocracies, but the people imprisoned in them. The presence of a free, prosperous, democratic Iraq sends a message to the people of neighboring countries that there is something better available than the status quo. This undermines support for the Dear Leader/Father of the People/Ayatollah and hastens the fall, if only because the people are marginally less accepting of their lot in life. To continue:
At first it appeared that Syria recognized how to play the United States in the post-9/11 world. Following the terrorist attacks against America, Syria did provide some useful intelligence to U.S. authorities about al-Qaeda cells operating in Syria and Europe (though not as much as was widely reported). In response, the Bush administration rewarded Syria by excluding it from the "axis of evil" and stayed mum about its ongoing military occupation of Lebanon and election to the United Nations Security Council in October 2001. When Congress threatened to impose sanctions against Syria, the Bush team argued successfully against this punitive measure. In other words, Syria had recently reaped the fruits of supporting the United States in the war on terrorism. And even greater rewards awaited those governments that supported U.S. efforts to disarm the Iraqi dictator.
| I don't think Bashar doubted he was on the list. We never did here. He also realized that as soon as Sammy went out of business, he was in trouble, even if we take no military action against him. Iraq ten years from now, assuming it develops as we expect here and that Bashar's Baathists continue in power there, is going to make Syria look like a rathole run by a junior-grade tin-hat. People will still be coming across the border in droves, but ten years from now they'll be looking for work. Same applies to Iran. They'll be coming from Soddy Arabia, too, though more for the hookers and booze, but that's just a difference in work ethic... |
Yet Bashar not only decided against distancing himself from the pariah state, he went out of his way to highlight their proximity. While Syria grudgingly voted in support of United Nations Resolution 1441, giving Saddam one "final opportunity" to disarm or face "serious consequences" (legalese for war), within a week the Syrian foreign minister Farouq al-Sharaa abrogated this commitment. By late November, Bashar had become the face of opposition to the United States in the Arab world, regularly lambasting "American aggression" and "Zionist invaders."
| He was playing to the terror machine, which was committed to Sammy... |
Bashar’s anti-U.S., antiwar rhetoric was the exact opposite of that of his father during the previous clash with Saddam. And it had not been heard from Damascus since the buildup to the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war—Syria’s greatest blunder in modern history.
| And now they've got another one in the making. It's a function of letting ideology influence your real thought processes... |
Bashar did not reflect the Arab world so much as try to influence it, egging on moderate Arab states to join his effort to derail the impending war. True, Operation Iraqi Freedom did not have the overwhelmingly broad-based international support of Operation Desert Storm. But at a time when Syria should have underlined its differences from the "axis of evil" countries, such rhetorical support for Iraq highlighted—even bolstered—the impression that the two Baathist regimes were fraternal twins.
| That can be put down to the need to strut for Hezbollah. Note what the Lebanese have been able to do to control Hezbollah, now in the process of dragging them into war with Israel. The Syrians, with a lot of help and even more money from Iran, built the Lebanon terror machine and had much to do with the development of the Paleo machines. But having built them, they've got a life of their own, and they're not subordinate — they've grown to become equal partners. |
Syria’s prewar provocations would pale in comparison to its wartime conduct. Once Operation Iraqi Freedom began, Bashar did everything he could to place himself in the anti-U.S. camp. Prior to the war, Rumsfeld warned that interfering in the impending U.S. mission would be a "hostile act held accountable." Astonishingly, only one week into the mission, Rumsfeld reported, "We have information that shipments of military supplies are crossing the border from Syria to Iraq, including night-vision goggles 
We consider such trafficking hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government accountable." The night-vision goggles allegation attracted the most media attention, but Syria was also found guilty of supplying Saddam with antitank weapons, aircraft parts, and ammunition, which could "pose a direct threat to the lives of coalition forces," as the defense secretary warned at the time.
| Had the Syrians not done so, Hezbollah would have — and probably did... |
This was just the beginning. In week two of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Assad dramatically upped the ante. He began allowing foreign jihadists to enter Iraq through Syrian territory.
| A magnificently stoopid move on his part... |
As a result, throughout the greater Baghdad region, thousands of "foreign irregulars"—trained and untrained—from Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Somalia now waged war against coalition forces. The largest busloads of jihadists were of Syrian origin, ensuring that if detected, Damascus would pay the highest price. Incredibly, Assad took no actions to conceal Syria’s aggressive conduct. Not only did cavalcades of buses stream into Iraq in early April, thousands of jihadists were caught in Iraq—carrying their Syrian identification cards.
| One might even wonder if he's helping those who might pose a threat to his regime go off and fight the Merkins on the off chance they might all get killed... |
. . . it is hard to see how Syria’s wartime conduct has made any positive contributions to Bashar’s regime. Many have argued that Syria’s support for Saddam was intended to preserve their unofficial oil pipeline. Yet this amount of revenue ($500 million a year) pales in comparison to the rewards Damascus would have received from an appreciative U.S. administration. Furthermore, because Bashar’s wartime stance never stood a chance of scuttling the war, Syria would have lost this easy (and illegal) oil revenue anyway. In sum, after Saddam, Bashar lost more from the war than any other leader—and any rational actor would have recognized this fact.
Discuss. |