“U.S. Policy and the Road to Damascus: Who’s Converting Whom?”

Gary L. Ackerman, Chairman

House Subcommittee on the Middle East & South Asia

Some time not too long ago, I asked a U.S. ambassador serving in the Middle East, “What is our Syria policy?” A clever diplomat, and an honest person, that U.S. ambassador chuckled, and told me that an answer would have to come at a later date. It’s an amusing anecdote, but a troubling one. Syria may be an economic backwater and an autocratic desert of cheap concrete and crumbling past glories, but it remains a key actor in the Middle East, and one that has, for the duration of the Bush Administration, been getting away with murder. That’s not a figure of speech. During the Bush Administration, Damascus has literally been getting away with murder.

Syria has been facilitating the movement of jihadis in Iraq who are killing our troops and murdering innocent Iraqis. Syria facilitated the movement of jihadis into Lebanon, armed them, and set them to make war against the Lebanese state. Many brave Lebanese soldiers and Palestinian refugees died in the fighting in Nahr al Bared in order to preserve Lebanon’s sovereignty.

Together with Iran, Syria is responsible for the arming and rearming of Hezbollah, a terrorist group that started a war with Israel in 2006 and then hid behind civilian skirts leading to billions of dollars of destruction in Lebanon and hundreds of innocent deaths in both Lebanon and Israel. In defiance of UN Security Council mandates, Syria is continuing to provide arms and to facilitate the movement of arms from Iran to Hezbollah in order facilitate that group’s efforts to undermine Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence.

In its attempt to restore Lebanon to its previous position as Syria’s footstool, Damascus has almost certainly been responsible for the wave of murders of Lebanon’ s pro-independence leaders beginning in 2005, with Rafic Hariri and including cabinet ministers, parliamentarians, prominent journalists and dozens of innocent civilians. Today, as has been the case since November 2007, Lebanon’s government remains without a president and unable to resolve its political crisis because too many Lebanese in positions of power–namely the leaders of Hezbollah, Amal and the cult of Aoun–are more committed to the interests of Syria, Iran and themselves than they are too their own country.

Syria may be counting on its continued ability to make trouble and to upset the situation in Lebanon as leverage to avoid accountability. They’re deluding themselves if they think so. Some–including a prominent U.S. senator–have suggested that Syria needs to be appeased by watering down, or even neutering the UN Security Council mandated Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Damascus, they say, has to be recognized as a power, and we have to acknowledge their interests in Lebanon. The past is the past they say, let the living not suffer for the dead.

It is tempting to believe. But it’s not true. Peace can not be purchased by rewarding aggression. There will be no deal with the dictator in Damascus. Lebanon is not for sale and justice is not a commodity in which the United States should trade. The Special Tribunal will proceed and the guilty will pay for their crimes. Neither bombs, nor threats, nor hollow promises of peace will avert the justice that is coming. The Assad regime must know that salvation will not come from well-intentioned American politicians ready to sell the freedom of others to buy the illusion of security for themselves.

The future of U.S.-Syrian relations remains to be written; this is because so much will change in the next few years. There will be a change of administration in the United States; there will have to be elections in Lebanon in 2009; and the Special Tribunal will do its work–with who knows what consequences. The next President will not start with a clean sheet, but nonetheless, will certainly have to make a fresh start. Our current policy is not to have a policy. Instead, we have a shopping list of behaviors we want Syria to change. Yet again, the Bush Administration has chosen hope and prayer as an alternative to strategy.

So what should the next Administration seek from Syria? What’s possible? The answer depends chiefly on how the next President decides a key question: Can the marriage between Damascus and Tehran be broken up, or are these two parties too committed to a shared vision of Middle East reordered to their liking? Many analysts believe that the relationship between Iran and Syria is a purely tactical and transactional one. Implicit in this belief is the idea that if only the United States would make Syria an offer of sufficient size and sweetness, the axis from Tehran to Damascus could be shattered and the Middle East transformed. Syria, in this view, might even join our team.

In exchange for the return of the Golan Heights, and the restoration of its overlordship of Lebanon, Syria would renege on its relationship with Hezbollah, give Hamas the boot, and slam the door shut on Iran. The mullahs would be cut-off from their Lebanese and Palestinian terrorist proxies and isolated completely in the region. The flow of jihadis from Syria would dry up–perhaps in return for a restoration of Saddam’s old largess with Iraq’s oil–and the situation in Iraq would settle down, further isolating Iran from the Arab hinterland. Faced with a united Middle East, the ayatollahs would set their dreams of hegemony and Islamic revolution aside, and give up their nuclear program in exchange for international security guarantees.

I’m not convinced. It sounds lovely, and it has a sort of logic to it. But it’s a fantasy. The relationship between Iran and Syria is longstanding, durable, and is based on a bedrock of shared interests. This relationship is meant to fulfill each party’s deepest strategic aspirations and regional ambitions. Neither state wishes to live as a second class citizen in a Middle East ordered, organized and run by Washington, Cairo, and Riyadh. They have bigger dreams.

And it is these dreams against which we must struggle. A deal with Syria and Iran may be possible, but I sincerely doubt that it can be bought or sustained by sacrificing others, or by offering just carrots and no sticks. It should go without saying that a deal would also mean some kind of purposeful and principled engagement. We shouldn’t expect either Syria or Iran to get on their knees, and there is certainly no need for us to do so either. Engagement is NOT synonymous with capitulation. A peaceful Middle East may, or may not be possible; but cannot be achieved solely by holding our breath, demanding obedience, or sending in the Marines. It’s more than past time for the United States to get back into the foreign policy business. We could start by having a Syria policy again.

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