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Why The U.S. Should Leave the Syrian Crisis Alone

Joshua Landis critiques a recent call for an activist U.S. policy on Syria in The American Interest, and he advises the U.S. to leave Syrian regime change to the Syrians: But by helping to “fast forward” the Syrian revolution, the U.S. could be creating a Frankenstein. If the opposition doesn’t have time to produce a […]

Joshua Landis critiques a recent call for an activist U.S. policy on Syria in The American Interest, and he advises the U.S. to leave Syrian regime change to the Syrians:

But by helping to “fast forward” the Syrian revolution, the U.S. could be creating a Frankenstein. If the opposition doesn’t have time to produce a leadership that emerges organically out of struggle, Syria may never unite. The U.S. may cause more destruction and death, not less. To be truly successful, the opposition must come together under one set of leaders who win the confidence of the people by their intelligence, canniness, and most importantly, by their success.

As Prof. Landis notes, the Syrian opposition is currently neither united nor does it have any overall leadership. While this is often considered one of the virtues of the Syrian opposition, because it prevents the regime from targeting opposition leaders with arrest and violence, it reflects the severe limitations of opposition forces. More important, it gives the Syrian business community no incentive to take any risks on behalf of an opposition that it does not trust or respect:

Before they will help overthrow the Assads, they need a safe alternative. They are not going to embrace — not to mention fund — a leaderless bunch of young activists who want to smash everything that smells of Baathist privilege, corruption, and cronyism. After all, who are the CEOs of Syria’s crony capitalism if not the business elites of Aleppo and Damascus?

The Doran/Shaikh article that Landis critiques makes one major assumption that he does not address directly, and it does not seem to be well-founded. They believe that it is possible to ensure the rise of “a new order hospitable to the United States” in Syria. I suppose it depends on what they mean by hospitable, but the idea that post-Assad Syria could be more well-disposed towards the U.S. seems to be little more than wishful thinking. Syrian public opinion has been and continues to be overwhelmingly disapproving of the U.S. Why should the Syrian opposition accept American help, and why would any “hospitable” transitional government survive for any length of time?

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