WASHINGTON, 16 March 2004 — For the first two years of his term, President George W. Bush opposed passage of the Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (SAA). He did so despite mixed signals from Damascus, heated debate within his administration, and political flak from AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) that had made passage of this legislation its No. 1 priority.
Fast-forward to December 2003. President Bush has signed the bill, which overwhelmingly passed the House and Senate. Since then, the NSC has conducted a number of interagency meetings, bringing together senior officials from half a dozen government agencies to craft a unified strategy for implementing SAA. Insiders acknowledge that there is broad consensus on next steps. On March 10 in testimonies before the House International Relations Committee, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns said, “I think you will see the implementation very shortly and I think it will be a very firm implementation of the Syria Accountability Act and the intent behind it.”
While congressional agitation for the legislation did reach a fevered pitch after Sept. 11, this outcome was far from inevitable. After Sept. 11, when Syria offered considerable and credible intelligence assistance in the hunt for Al-Qaeda, US-Syrian relations seemed poised for a dramatic breakthrough. Both leaders have a great deal in common, from their unexpected political inheritances to their outsider status in their respective capitals to the formative role their fathers’ advisors play in shaping policy. In fact, it is ideologues on both sides, fueled by their hard-line opposing views to the war in Iraq, who effectively ended the warming trend.
Now, even moderates in Damascus and Washington are exasperated by the perceived failings of the other party. Former State Department officials cite Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit to Damascus last spring as the final straw. Believing he had achieved a shift in Syrian policy, Powell publicly announced that President Assad had agreed to shut down Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas offices. Yet the change appeared to Washington to be merely cosmetic, signs over offices came down, not the groups’ infrastructure. Something was definitely lost in translation. The administration retorted to this perceived slap in the face by dropping its objections to the SAA.
Even Syria’s reluctant vote in favor of UNSC 1441 failed to earn much political capital in Washington. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accused Syria of meddling in Iraq in the early days of the war and there was talk of a military strike. In September, Israel bombed an alleged PIJ training camp just 15 km from Damascus.
Going from bad to worse is a well-worn pattern in US-Syrian relations. But during the reign of President Hafez Al-Assad, there was a sense that he understood brinkmanship diplomacy — and when to pull back — better than anyone else. Promises, though rarely made, were kept. Now, even Arab diplomats are incredulous and often frustrated by the array of signals emanating from the ancient capital. One Saudi friend told me that the political scene in Syria could be summed up by the Arab expression “one hand alone can’t clap.” Theories abound about the stability of President Assad, the power of his circle of advisors, the fate of the ruling Baath Party, the strength of the Beirut-Damascus-Tehran axis, and the motivation for concluding the long-stalled EU Association Agreement as well as the highly publicized visit to Istanbul.
In Washington as well as some foreign capitals, there is a common perception that Damascus reacted too late to the shift in political direction that Sept. 11 produced within the Bush administration. The rise of the “neoconservative” agenda, while distasteful to many, is unmistakable. Conventional wisdom in Damascus may have held that the influence of Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and their advisors would fade into the background after a few months. But the horror of the attack on symbols of American power and the loss of almost 3,000 lives left the nation reeling. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, all of whom worked in the Ford administration against Secretary of State Kissinger’s policy of “detente,” seized the day and successfully advanced the centerpiece of America’s national security strategy: Pre-emption. Their approach was a matter of public record. While President Clinton was in office, many in Bush’s inner circle wrote extensively on the need to curb Syria’s influence in the region, the dangers of the “land for peace” formulation, the case for Saddam’s removal, and the imperative to protect America’s sole superpower status. As Damascus wrestled with these new realities, EU and Arab officials, and even some former American officials, concede that Washington is less interested in diplomacy than giving orders. One former US senior official posted to an Arab capital described receiving marching orders in the morning and a call in the afternoon to check on progress. Senior Arab officials openly scoffed at the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative. Few Arab recommendations were ever incorporated into the final draft.
Worse still, President Musharraf is treated with kid gloves after an alarming international nuclear black-market scandal while President Assad is admonished for failings that seem, in comparison, less troubling. Qaddafi’s startling comeback, and the praise heaped on him by both Bush and Blair, was also a bit contradictory. Libya’s considerable oil reserves are one reason; another, the smoking gun that inspections of Libyan facilities pointed at Pakistan. According to Sy Hersh in the New Yorker magazine, the Libyan connection forced Musharraf to accept a plea bargain of sorts: A.Q. Khan would be fingered, promptly pardoned and the case against him (and Pakistan) dropped in exchange for a blind eye to US special forces who plan to launch a major spring offensive from Pakistan and scour the mountainous region along the Afghan border for Osama Bin Laden.
Bush justified the war on Iraq on WMD that may not exist. Yet in countries where he has found compelling evidence of WMD and rampant proliferation, he exchanges favors instead of crossing swords. Damascus is well aware of the contradiction. For all the talk of transforming the Middle East and beyond, the Bush administration seems to find itself constrained by the same dilemma that confronted previous administrations: The need to reconcile idealistic ambitions with less noble but more vital national security interests. Will SAA implementation show similar signs of pragmatism despite all signs to the contrary? Stay tuned.
— Maggie Mitchel Salem is a public affairs and media consultant in Washington D.C.
