From Success to Crisis in the Middle East

Some Thoughts on Post-Assad Syria

The West is jumping the gun in Syria and giving the new leader the benefit of the doubt before he has proven himself. The assumption is that if there is a change, via popular revolution or military uprising that change will mean, if not a western style democracy, at least a western value friendly government and regime. It is an assumption that more often than not leads to crisis and disaster and the new cruel regime, like the old one becomes the source of “stability” in the eyes of the West.. The new leader of Syria, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, recently of an Al Qaeda offshoot is the new Islamic Jihadist in Western dress. He has reinvented himself as a friend of the west and has even told Israel he has no desire to fight the Jewish country.

There are ex-terrorists and ex-guerrilla fighters who have adopted peaceful, democratic means although very few, if any, have been dedicated to establishing an Islamic caliphate. Julani’s main sponsor is Turkey’s Erdogan and we will have to see what model they have for Syria. Clearly, the Druze do not trust them and the Kurds are already fighting off an incursion by Julani’s Turkish sponsored forces. A western secular country Syria will not be, but there can be models of government where religion and state are not separated but freedom and prosperity reign. Israel is one example – but one Julani will probably not copy.

A second example could be Egypt – not the one under Sadat, Mubarak and Al-Sisi but the one under the short lived Moslem Brotherhood government of Mohamad Morsi. If it is in fact the Brotherhood model that Julani and Erdogan choose there won’t have a powerful, entrenched, corrupt army to limit them and eventually overthrow Julani, as happened in Egypt. If anything, the pressure will be from those like Al-Qaeda and ISIS to be more and not less rigid.

The Moslem Brotherhood model is also a favorite of Obama as he thought Morsi the perfect foil and balance for Israel. It is of course the Moslem Brotherhood model that Hamas has copied in Gaza and it is a model that also threatens the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The West beware yet another Moslem Brotherhood attempt to rule an Arab country.

And looking to Israel’s south, the post-Assad era has been greeted with a good-bye message to Israel by the outgoing US administration, whomever is making foreign policy calls there at the moment, by propping up the corrupt Egytpian military who is purchasing more arms that it needs for any potential war besides that against Israel. Libyan anarchy could try to cross the border and Egypt might still want to fight Ethiopia over water rights, but the naval air and ground forces that Egypt is building – with purchases from Germany, China, Russia and new sales from the United States are for one purpose only – to fight Israel when the time comes.

The peace treaty between Isreal and Egypt is nearly 50 years old and the cold peace still holds. But Egypt has never accepted Israel as a part of the middle east. Those who have, like President Anwar Sadat, have been assassinated. Others, like Naguib Mahfouz, the only writer of Arabic to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (I highly recommend his novels – especially The Cairo Trilogy) was the victim of multiple assassination attempts due to his friendship with Israelis. But this is old news. What is new is a possibility of a return to a Sunni unity of frontline states against Israel – a Turkish backed Moslem Brotherhood government in Syria and a military government in Egypt spending over $5 billion on its military while its per-capita GDP is just $4,000. At some point the Egyptian military will have to justify their enormous budget by using it. But the Al-Sisi government hates the Moslem Brotherhood you will say. My response is that the Hamas Sunni fanatics consider the Shiite rulers of Iran as apostates and yet have no trouble uniting when necessary. There was a Baath-Nasser alliance between Egypt and Syria that made no ideological sense, a new alliance with a Brotherhood run Syria might be enough to satisfy a weak but influential Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt today.

The fall of the House of Assad has brought relief to Israel in the dismantling of the Shiite crescent and the further weakening of Iran and Hezbollah. However, the Islamist nature of the new government and the backing of an irredentist Turkey provides new challenges. Israel has done the world a favor by destroying much of the Syrian army’s hardware and chemical weapons – but that can all be replaced by Turkey. Israel has done itself a favor by taking control of the Syrian side of Mount Hermon and the Golan and it will do itself a greater favor by encouraging the Druze to follow through on their requests to be incorporated into Israel. This will have the dual goal denying a Brotherhood-Turkey controlled Syria with grounds to attack Israel and it will also serve as a defensive buffer for Jordan.

As Israel and the Trump administration move to eliminate the threat of the Islamic Republic of Iran it is time to get ready for the next threat – which will come whether there is or is not a peace treaty signed with Saudi Arabia. As Henry Kissinger said (quoted by his biographer Niall Ferguson) “every success is a ticket to the next crisis”.

We have been stating here that the key to victory in this war is the defeat of Iran. Victory is not yet here but it is closer than ever. A change in the US administration and a change in Israel’s military leadership can bring a swift end to this war by freeing the hostages, ridding Gaza of Hamas and destroying Iranian military power. However, that victory, not yet here, ought yield not a “peace dividend” but an opportunity to prepare for the inevitable next crisis. Saying October 7 will never happen again is not good enough in planning for the next war. The Syrian collapse is not just an opportunity for Israel and the West, it is an opportunity for their enemies, too. As Western countries climb over each other to greet the new terrorist in a suit and tie pretending that that means he is a peace-loving penitent I can only think of the excitement of the” we can’t win” crowd back in the cold war days when they found out that Yuri Andropov loved Jazz. The KBG chief as a lover of Jazz meant that the gulag was not in his interests. Each generation and their own self-deception.

The goal of the US and the West – and the Gulf Arab states for that matter - in Syria ought to be the dismemberment of Syria and the establishment of self-governing ethnic/religious enclaves rather than maintaining its “territorial integrity”. At the least, these countries ought to be cautious to make sure they are not propping up yet another regime dedicated to cruelty and maliciousness before they pour the inevitable billions into it. Regarding Egypt – the US needs to take a step back before selling yet more arms to a country that can’t feed its people and has no real external enemies.

The goal of Israel needs to be to deter potential enemies that are not tied to Iran, from doing what Iran tried to do. The way to do that is to create buffer zones, rebuild its army from “small and smart” to “large and aggressive” and to start realizing that success inevitably leads to crisis – to be delayed if success is taken with more than a few ounces of prevention.