Take Care Of The Big Things

Yesterday's post on the future of Syria drew some interesting discussion.

Make no mistake - I think that the removal of Syria from Lebanon, and the eventual (or sudden, for that matter) fall of Assad can only be good things.

Flynt Leverett in the Times, though, sounds a few cautionary notes.

Does the Bush administration understand that for the foreseeable future, any political order in Lebanon that reflects, as the White House put it, the "country's diversity," will include an important role for Hezbollah? Does the administration feel confident about containing Hezbollah without on-the-ground Syrian management and with the group's sole external guide an increasingly hard-line Iran? Even Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national security adviser recently said that an overly precipitous Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon could pose a threat to Israel.

Lebanese history is indeed crazy stuff. Lebanon was for a time the most stable, prosperous Arab Mediterranean nation. Then, under pressure from the Palestinians and the Syrians, and with internal rifts (between the Christian Phalangists and the Arabs, mostly), the nation dissolved into fifteen years of civil war, an anarchic time when groups like Hezbollah set up massive training camps that launched endless raids against Israel. The civil war ended only when the Syrians essentially imposed control over the country.

Leverett continues:

As Syria retrenches in Lebanon, the United States should use the issue to leverage improved Syrian behavior on issues that arguably matter more to American interests in the region, like Syrian support for insurgents in Iraq and for terrorist activity against Israel. Syria's decision to effect the turnover of Saddam Hussein's half brother and other Iraqi Baathists did not come primarily in response to American jawboning over Iraq. Rather, it was prompted by Syria's interest in deflecting the mounting criticism of its role in Lebanon.

The Bush administration can elicit more sustained improvements in Syrian behavior on Iraq and terrorism by using the threat of intensified criticism of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon - including Security Council action - as a badly needed stick in the repertoire of policy options toward Syria. Washington should also not be afraid to spell out for Mr. Assad the carrots it would offer in return for greater cooperation. In so doing, President Bush could more effectively pursue some of his most important objectives for the region while tangibly improving the lives of ordinary Lebanese.

Sounds reasonable? Hard to say. As Jonah Goldberg says, it seems suspciously Arabist, and seems to put a rather small premium on "improvements in Syrian behavior on Iraq" - an end to Syrian aid to the people who are blowing up Iraqis and Americans - in favor of giving Bashar al-Assad a soft landing.

David Ignatius of the WaPo sounds a similar cautionary note:

We are now watching a glorious catastrophe take place in the Middle East. The old system that had looked so stable is ripping apart, with each beam pulling another down as it falls. The sudden stress that produced the catastrophe was the American invasion of Iraq two years ago. But this Arab power structure has been rotting at the joints for a generation. The real force that's bringing it down is public anger...But catastrophic change is dangerous, even when it's bringing down a system people detest. This is not a time for U.S. triumphalism, or for gloating and lecturing to the Arabs. That kind of arrogance got us into trouble in Iraq during the first year of occupation. It was only when Iraqis began to take control of their own destinies that this project began to go right. The same rule holds for Lebanon, Egypt and the rest. America can help by keeping on the pressure, but it's their revolution.

There are two replies to this: Sincere Mitch and Cynical Mitch.

Cynical Mitch - Mr. Ignatius, you say US triumphalism "got us into trouble in Iraq". I think there may have been some help from the Ba'ath holdouts and a little help from Syria and Iran. And when you say "the real force that's bringing [Arab autarchy] down is public anger", and that it's all been rotting for generations, you echo the post-hoc tush-covering of a generation of liberal reporters who claimed that the seeds of the fall of the USSR were there all along - Really! - without acknowledging that the anger had always been there, and had been for 70 a ticket to the Gulag; it took external pressure to make that anger something productive, rather than something that drove four generations of Russians to the bottle, and that is driving a generation of Arabs into the streets of Tel Aviv wearing dynamite vests.

Sincere Mitch - Gotta go with Cynical Me on this one.

Goldberg adds:

I get the larger argument about how you need to let these revolutionary processes play out and the smaller issues end up fixing themselves. Remember all of the concerns about why we should slow things down, keep Ukraine in the Soviet Union etc, when the Wall came down? I'm open to the idea that the same thing is happening here, but I'd like to see the argument spelled out better on this issue.

I get the larger argument about how you need to let these revolutionary processes play out and the smaller issues end up fixing themselves. Remember all of the concerns about why we should slow things down, keep Ukraine in the Soviet Union etc, when the Wall came down? I'm open to the idea that the same thing is happening here, but I'd like to see the argument spelled out better on this issue. Very true. Remember all the "moderates" who appealed that we should give the Politburo a nice three-point landing, and retard the disintegration of the USSR?

They were wrong then, of course. Are they wrong now? As Goldberg says, we don't know enough.

Posted by Mitch at March 2, 2005 07:47 AM | TrackBack