A CIA document recommends that the “US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad” through the orchestration of “simultaneous military threats against Syria.” Three years later, that same conviction was materialized in a memorandum that “explores alternative scenarios that could lead to the ouster of President…al-Assad in Syria.”
These are not excerpts from Clinton’s email server nor are they CIA documents from 2011. Rather, these are excerpts from memorandums from 1983 and 1986 detailing the United States’s political prospects in Syria, entitled “Syria: Scenarios of Dramatic Political Change” and “Bringing Real Muscle to Bear Against Syria.”
Forced regime change had been a template of US policy in post Cold War Middle East. While the most notorious of these incidents involved the deposition of democratically elected progressive Mohammed Mosadegh in 1953 in a CIA coup, Syria set the template for Middle East regime change four years prior when President Shrukli al-Quwalti was overthrown in a CIA-supported coup.
The US had aspirations for a US-sponsored pipeline that ran from Saudi Arabia to the Mediterranean, and Syria had been an obstacle throughout its construction, especially under al-Quwalti, who opposed the pipeline.
The document also outlined the US’s desire to counterbalance Syrian influence via Iraq, Israel and Turkey. In rousing three bordering states against Syria, the “orchestra[tion] of a credible military threat against Syria” would possibly, “induce at least some moderate change in its policies.”
The 1983 document also showed that the foreign commitment towards the pipeline had not waned, nor had its dedication to instigating proxy conflicts for its sake. Even then, the “opening of the pipeline” was expected to “be a sharp blow to Syria’s winning streak” and its “prestige and authority would sustain significant damage.”
Iraq was encouraged to poise itself to war against Syria to divide its attention during its then-involvement in Lebanon. Israel was recommended to “welcome the chance to humble Assad” and Turkey’s existing contention with Syria was seen as an opportunity to sustain geopolitical containment without much work or interference on that front.
Yet the four decades of the al-Assad dynasty had failed to thwart any regime change. Additionally, the US approach to Syria engendered a considerable amount of nuance during this stretch of time.
“US policy shifted from hostility-but not regime change-in the 1980s to cooperation in the 1990s,” said Daniel Neep, Assistant Professor in the Politics of the Arab World at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in Georgetown.
At this time, the Reagan administration remained engaged with the Syrian regime, maintaining a relationship that reflected a tense Cold-War approach where bitter contention against the Soviet Ally was met with tense trepidation in an approach that sought to contain the fragile balance of power.
As foreign policy realists, the US was exemplary in maintaining their regional interests over focusing on making friends. The 1990s wrung in a comparatively more cooperative period with Syria, marked in part by then-US Secretary of State James Baker’s frequent meetings with Assad as priorities shifted from containing Russia to curtailing Iraq in the advent of the Gulf War.
Need added that between 2001 and 2003, Syria and the US “saw cooperation in the War on Terror” before “a dramatic worsening of relations after the US invaded Iraq.” Syria, despite maintaining its 1979 designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, was a partner in military intelligence sharing after the September 11th attacks.
Of the most treacherous instances of the US’s complicit collaboration with Syrian military intelligence was evident through the case study of Maher Arar, a telecommunications expert and Canadian national who had fled Syria fifteen years prior to his unfortunate detainment.
It was during this time that the curious feature of US-Syrian collaboration in torture was evidenced by Arar’s detainment without charge to a prison in Syria, where he was tortured for 10 months in a three by six foot cell.
Arar also claimed that the interrogations in Syria mirrored those he received upon detainment at the JFK in New York.
Nonetheless, numerous US officials continued to seek military involvement against Syria, such as then-Undersecretary of State John Bolton, accusing Syria as well as Cuba and Libya, of seeking to acquire or being in the possession of weapons of mass destruction.
State Department intelligence official met Bolton’s alarmist claims with disagreement, dismissing his accusations as exaggerated.
Nonetheless, US relations with Syria soured following the post 9/11 period of relative detente after yet another pretext of international coalition building waned as it had post Gulf War. Bush cited ties to terrorism as a reason for slapping sanctions on Syria in 2004, returning back to business in re-instating a decades long hawkish stance against the regime.
A more aggressive pursuit of regime change followed Bush’s complete cessation of diplomatic ties with Syria in 2005, where the US continued to fund opposition groups though to the 2011 Arab Spring protests. Months before the 2007 elections, “election monitoring,” public opinion polling and secret funding of opposition parties to be spearheaded through the National Salvation Front, according to a proposal from late 2006.
Englishman Lord Palmerston described nations having permanent interest rather than permanent friends. The US in its approach to Syria embodies this cynical realism of over seven decades of intervention, where a bitter ongoing extension of cold war hostility was punctuated only by brief bouts of counterterrorist collusion before resuming to another chapter of austerity. Rinse and repeat.
glutenfreehummus 