Foreign pressures continue to bear down on Syria, though Damascus knows that geopolitical regional balances are on its side, writes Emad Fawzi El-Shueibi* Washington's squeeze campaign on Damascus, set into motion since the fall of Baghdad, stemmed from a particular perception of geopolitical realities in the Middle East and from a neo-conservative military adventurism seized upon by Bush Junior with the zeal of a son purging his conscience of the sin of patricide. Now this policy has landed the US in its worst strategic crisis since the war in Vietnam. The recently released Baker-Hamilton report could not have made this point clearer: the US is in a state of emergency because of the Iraqi quagmire and that urgent action must be taken to overcome the ideological obstructionism of the president and to come up with an exit strategy. Drawn up a team of traditional Republican conservatives and Democratic realists, it voices a broad-based consensus that America has urgently to right the wrongs of Bush's neo conservative evangelism that espoused pre-emptive war, aggressive regime change and spreading of democracy at the barrel of a gun. The Baker-Hamilton group underlined that the lives of American soldiers should not be placed at further unnecessary risk because of the follies of Bush's policy or rivalry between America's two main political parties. It is telling that a decision appears made within Republican Party ranks to impose a form of stricture on Bush in order to keep his administration in check during its last two years in power. The Republicans keenly felt the sting of the loss of the Republican majority in both houses of Congress during the recent mid-term elections. They have no intention of allowing Bush's excesses to cause the presidency to slip out of their grip as well. Although I was sceptical of Bush's ability to restrain his fanatical demagoguery -- his language remains as arrogant as ever and he refuses to admit defeat in Iraq -- a Republican Party official assured me that Bush was toeing the line with regard to the recommendations flooding in, especially from the Baker-headed study group. The best proof, the official said, was Bush's decision to dismiss Rumsfeld and the subsequent departure of John Bolton. Bush's continued rhetoric was his way of securing maximum leeway with respect to the Baker-Hamilton commission's recommendations. By coincidence, the same American official visited me in my Damascus office the day Pierre Gemayel was assassinated in Lebanon. He was talking about how important it was to keep people from taking to the streets in Beirut and that waving carrots before Syria would be better than waving sticks, which anyway had long since lost their former weight. Suddenly, mid-conversation, we were informed of Gemayel's assassination. He shot out angrily, "you people did it! You don't want stability in Lebanon. Any move to overthrow the Lebanese government will be taken as a move against us." The official's remarks were not of the sort that could be shrugged off. He was coming at me from some now distant point in the past, and issuing threats from a position of weakness. While it was obvious that he had no desire for further deterioration on the Iraqi front and that his heavy dose of intimidating verbiage was a way to buy time in the hope of improving the American negotiating position with respect to Syria, it was difficult to determine whether he was under the ideological influence of neo-conservative philosophy and whether he was aware that the rebellion against the Siniora government was, in fact, a rebellion against the neo-conservatives' geopolitical schemes. I informed him that I was a specialist in the American neo-conservative movement and that my students were preparing doctorate theses on Leo Strauss and Alan Bloom. I also expressed my conviction that the policies inspired by these neo-conservative mentors had proven bankrupt and that Washington had no choice but to return to a more realistic foreign policy approach. He agreed, indicating that the US was, indeed, reviving the foreign policy outlook of the likes of Kissinger and Scowcroft. I continued, "however, following the recent defeat of the neo-conservatives, to continue to operate in accordance with the result of a policy that the Americans now declare they intend to rectify is, for all practical purposes, a form of deception. You're still conforming to the old rules in spite of the fact that you've determined that you need a political and military exit strategy from one major component of this policy: Iraq. Then there's a higher level. You've indicated that you need an exit strategy from the neo-conservatives' foreign policy ideology and this entails a political disengagement from Lebanon and a return to realpolitik." Not only did my visitor nod in agreement, but he also appeared to recognise that Hizbullah had effectively emerged victorious from the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. I reminded my visitor of the famous adage, "the victor dictates his own rules," and pointed out that in Lebanon the victor was clearly the coalition of Hizbullah, Aoun and other nationalist forces that may not have actually fought in the war but were instrumental in protecting the back of the resistance. Argument was futile, as genial as our conversation was. The official persisted in his defence of his views on Lebanon as though he were willing to commit every last soldier he had, even though he knew at some level that their lives would be forfeit to a lost cause. On the one hand, I felt that he wanted to reach an understanding -- indeed, that the Americans needed to reach an agreement over Lebanon. On the other hand, he seemed trapped in that hallmark of Bush administration gunboat diplomacy. Syria has steadfastly resisted American pressure tactics and has logged no small measure of success at not being intimidated into making concessions. At the moment, the Americans are firing their last ideological bullet, bearing the name Siniora & Co. Syria is aware of this and also aware that neo-conservative rhetoric with respect to Syria has sidestepped away from regime change to behaviour modification via embargo, and bringing it onboard the political process in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Even at the peak of America's ephemeral façade of might, from the invasion of Iraq through its attempt to trigger domino-like change in the region starting with Lebanon, Syria did not cave in to American pressure. It simply refused -- and still refuses -- to play along with the rhetoric, mouthed in the past by the neo-conservatives in Bush's administration and reverberating in the present in the form of a range of preconditions that are cast as diktat across the airwaves but are less forceful in terms of actual political behaviour. In this context I doubt that Syrian-American dialogue will be productive, that is unless the American intermediary is a person of the calibre of Baker and unless the results of this dialogue can be made binding on the US president via Congress. For the time being, the old ideological/ rhetorical game is still in progress and will remain so at least until February when the newly elected Congress arrives in session. During this interval, Americans are trying to rack up points that can be called into play in negotiations with Syria and which, to a large extent, explains the weight Washington is placing behind the Siniora government. They want to keep the twin swords of Resolution 1559 and an international court on the assassination of Rafik Al-Hariri hovering over Syrian's head until they reach understandings on the Iraqi situation. A superpower such as the US cannot beat a hasty exit out of Iraq without creating for itself and for others any number of unforeseen problems. It is easy to foresee, therefore, a repetition of the Vietnam scenario: although the decision to withdraw was taken in 1968, it was not put into effect until 1973. This is not to suggest that the Americans need a full five years to withdraw from Iraq. In fact, most likely, American forces will withdraw to American bases and disengage from the Iraqis within a matter of months, after which the level of US troops in the country will be reduced rapidly. Still, the Americans want to keep waving sticks and carrots before Syria. This is not a strategy Syria is likely to respond favourably to. Syria rejects the double standards in accordance with which it is now expected to intervene in Lebanon to prevent Hizbullah and the opposition from taking to the streets, but otherwise to desist from playing a regional role. At a broader level, Syria will continue to bide its time because time is on its side. After all, it knows that interested parties will keep trying to court it, for the simple reason that geopolitical realities speak for themselves. * The writer is a professor of political science at Damascus University.
