Transcript
FLYNT LEVERETT: But by whatever means this book has come to be put out now, I think this is really a critical moment for Syria. It's a critical moment both in terms of the strategic challenges that Syria is facing. And it's also a critical moment, I think, in terms of U.S. policy toward Syria. I want to talk about each of those things for just a moment.
First of all, it seems to me this is a critical time in terms of the strategic challenges facing Syria. As I have given interviews and done speaking engagements, I'm oftentimes asked if Bashar al-Asad is in charge in Syria. And I usually answer yes. Often, there is a kind of challenging follow-up: "Well, is he in charge in the same way that his father was in charge?" And to that I usually say, "Well, of course not, and why at this point in his evolution as a national leader would you expect him to have the same level of authority that his father enjoyed for the last 15 or so years that he was President?"
Hafez al-Asad, if you look at his career, didn't really become the uncontested master of Syria and this perceived brilliant player of the regional game until at least a decade or so into his Presidency after he had gone through a series of defining challenges. He established Syrian hegemony in Lebanon. He defended that hegemony against both Israel and the United States. He put down a challenge to his regime from Sunni fundamentalists. And he put down a challenge to his own position from his brother. It was after that that he was Hafez al-Asad, the Lion of Damascus, but not before.
Bashar, not quite five years into his Presidency, I don't think has gone through those kinds of defining challenges. I think he is going through one now. And how he handled that defining crisis will, I think, say a lot about his future as a national leader and about the future of Syrian politics and Syria's regional position. That's why I say it's a critical moment in terms of Syria's strategic situation.
I also think it's a critical moment in terms of the evolution of U.S. policy towards Syria. Since I left government two years ago, I have often criticized the Bush administration for not having a Syria policy during its first term in office. Like its predecessors, the Bush administration has had a long list of complaints about Syrian behaviors--support for terrorism, pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, hegemony in Lebanon, shall we say not cooperating with U.S. goals in Iraq, all these things. We've had a long list of complaints, but we've not had a policy, if by policy you mean an integrated set of public positions, diplomatic initiatives, other measures all rooted in a strategy for changing Syrian behaviors that we think are problematic.
Now, though, I think the administration may be inching toward a policy, but basically a policy of regime change in Syria. We certainly haven't adopted a declaratory policy of regime change, but I think more and more, people in the administration are inclined in that direction.
So at this critical moment, I put out "Inheriting Syria," and I hope it does make a contribution to the policy discussion. The book from my perspective has two objectives: First of all, I wanted to provide an actionable analytic portrait of Bashar al-Asad as a national leader. This is something that I think is very much needed.
If you look at the really outstanding books that have been written on Syria in the last 20 years, you would certainly include the political biographies of Hafez al-Asad by Moshe Maoz and Patrick Seale, but both of those books are more than 15 years old.
There has been some very good writing on the Israeli-Syrian negotiations by Itamar Rabinovich, by Dennis Ross, others. The Israeli scholar Eyal Zisser wrote a nice book on the last decade of Hafez's Presidency. But there's really nothing out there on Syrian politics and policymaking under Bashar. So I thought it was time that something tried to fill that void, and I hope "Inheriting Syria" does that.
The second objective of the book, though, is to take that actionable analytic portrait developed in the book and draw the implications for U.S. policy.
Read the complete event transcript (PDF—82kb)
View Full Transcript »