FP: Barry Rubin, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Rubin: Glad to be here.

FP: What inspired you to write this book?

Rubin: In dealing with the Middle East today, one often cannot escape a feeling akin to being Alice in Wonderland. Bitter partisan disputes turn any discussion of regional issues into something that has less to do with the Middle East than with domestic American politics. The academic field is plagued both with an abandonment of professional standards—even the most basic ones such as consistency, evidence, fairness—and tremendous power (one might say almost hegemonic control) by Arab nationalist ideology. Instant experts appear on the Middle East and Islam who make the most obvious and silly errors.

Syria is a good case study for what is real and what is ridiculous. Also, there has not been enough good work done on this country, at least in book form, and it is increasingly important. Just to recite the basic facts indicates that: Syria is sponsoring a terror war against Iraqi civilians and American forces in Iraq; it is subverting Lebanon, not even stopping at killing the most popular political leaders there; playing the leading role in being the patron of radical Palestinian forces against Israel; promoting anti-Americanism; formulating the new “resistance” strategy which combines radical Arab nationalism and Islamism; being Iran’s main Arab ally; and even being the main Arab state sponsor of revolutionary Islamism.

To begin with, to understand Syria—like other regional forces—one must first examine the nature of the regime and its real interests. The way to do this is not to cite the latest interview or op-eds by Syrian leaders or propagandists in the Western media or what one of them told some naïve Western “useful idiot” who traveled to Damascus but rather to look at what the Syrian rulers say among themselves, what they do, how they structure the regime and perceive of their interests.

Syria is not a radical regime because it has been mistreated by the West or Israel but because the regime needs radicalism to survive. It is a minority dictatorship of a small non-Muslim minority and it offers neither freedoms nor material benefit. It needs demagoguery, the scapegoats of America and Israel, massive loot taken from Lebanon, an Iraq which is either destabilized or a satellite, and so on.

Take the simple issue of the Golan Heights. It is commonplace to say that Syria wants back the Golan Heights. But one need merely ask the simple question: what happens if Syria gets it back? If Syria’s regime made peace with Israel it has no excuse for having a big military, a dictatorship, and a terrible economy. The day after the deal the Syrian people will start demanding change. The regime knows that.

Or economic reform. Again, many in the West take it for granted that the regime wants to take steps to improve the economy. But it would prefer to keep a tight hold on the economy rather than open it up and face enriched Sunni Muslim Arabs who hate the regime both due to their class status and their religious community.

The list goes on. Yet few of these points figure into the debate over Syria where statements like “engagement,” “a common interest in Iraq,” “getting Syria away from Iran,” “the benefits of peace with Israel,” and the reasonableness of Bashar al-Asad get repeated like mantras. 

This problem is enhanced by the lack of memory. An example, on his first trip to Damascus, Secretary of State Colin Powell was lied to by Bashar—who made him look like a fool—when Powell repeated Bashar’s claim that he had closed the oil pipeline to Saddam Hussein. On his second trip, Powell told reporters that he understood what had happened and would not be fooled again. Yet within hours he was repeating Bashar’s claim that he had closed the terrorist offices in Damascus. A reporter merely called them and found they were open for business as usual. And today Powell—and former Secretary of State James Baker who suffered similar humiliations and failures—proclaim how well they did in negotiating with Bashar.

FP: What policy should the U.S. pursue toward Syria?

Rubin: It is amazing how much Syria gets away with this. A very brave Syrian dissident once asked me, “Why does the whole world seem so afraid of this country?”

A campaign to contain Syria requires aiding those neighbors menaced by it and its allies: the Lebanese majority that opposes Syrian-Hizballah hegemony, Israel, and the majority in Iraq angered by Syria’s role in murdering them. It also means working with Arab regimes like those in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan that stand against the Iran-Syria-Hizballah-Hamas alliance due to their own interests. The United States and the West should show more regard for the interests of more moderate Arabs and Muslims rather than siding with the radicals against them. Likewise, Syrians must be shown that their leaders are failures and can offer neither lasting glory nor material gains. The regime must be contained until it crumbles or retreats. This can be a long process but it is ultimately a less costly one than the alternatives.

The starting point for an effective response is simply to understand the Syrian system on its own terms. The regime does not want to make peace, become moderate, or reform its economy. It wants to stay as it is and preferably to control Lebanon, continue the conflict with Israel forever, buy off the Islamists by supporting Hizballah and the Iraqi insurgency, and thus demagogically make its people cheer for Bashar as the great warrior of resistance.

Anwar al-Bunni, a Syrian democratic dissident, explained in 2003 that the only thing that held back the regime was fear of America. Only due to “the fright it gave our rulers, that we reformers stand a chance here."

But once U.S. members of Congress flocked to Damascus, offering words of praise and advocating détente, Bunni was proven right. A few weeks later, he was sentenced on trumped-up charges to five years’ imprisonment.

Being nice to Syria will lead nowhere because the regime thrives on conflict and its demands—including a recolonized Lebanon--are too much against Western interests to meet. U.S. policy should treat Syria’s regime as a determined adversary whose interests are diametrically opposed to those of America, no matter who sits in the White House.

In this book, I try to show how Syria works, how the regime has maneuvered so brilliantly--and so ruthlessly to survive--and how it has much too often gotten away with this strategy. If you want to know why the region continues to be so unstable and beset by radicals and dictators--as well as why Western policies have often been inadequate and Western analyses remarkably wrong--this book answers those questions.  

FP: Is there any real hope that the Lebanese people can free themselves from Syrian-Hizballah hegemony? What must be done to help them in this effort?

Rubin: Yes. The majority Sunni, Christian, and Druze leadership—and most people in Lebanon want their country to be free of foreign control and from the Islamism of Hizballah. They see it as a civilizational and nationalist as well as communal struggle. But of course many Shias also don’t support Hizballah. There is a lot of hatred toward Syria and much resentment of the Palestinians. We hear all the time about the conflict with Israel, of course, but not these factors.

It is important to remember that every day the Lebanese majority leadership, especially politicians and journalists, are risking their lives every day. There have been at least 15 major assassination attacks, inspired by Syria, since the February 14, 2005, killing of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. It should also be remembered that this was the event which ended American diplomatic contacts with Syria, after strenuous efforts by the Bush administration during the four previous years.

At the center of events today is the effort to put together a tribunal on the Hariri murder. The investigation’s interim reports clearly indicate that the killing was planned at the highest level of the Syrian government. The Lebanese government has cooperated with the UN on trying to hold a joint tribunal. Hizballah, as a Syrian client, has made its highest priority to kill the tribunal. Note that this was the issue about which Hizballah walked out of the Lebanese cabinet.

Thus, the Lebanese government and majority deserve international support in terms of aid, diplomatic help, and moral support. Why is the aid money flowing to the radical, terrorist Palestinian forces rather than the democratic moderate Lebanese? Why should Lebanese risk their lives to combat radical Islamism and the growing power of Iran and Syria if the West won’t help them?

This means the pressure on Syria should continue—and that includes its isolation and economic sanctions—the tribunal should move forward, too. In addition, the Syrian government has repeatedly hinted that unless the UNIFIL forces--sent by the UN to preserve the truce with Israel--cave in and accept Hizballah’s rearmament and reoccupation of the south, they will face attack by mysterious “independent” terrorist forces. The West must show guts in defending UNIFIL.

FP: You refer to “more moderate Arabs and Muslims” that the U.S. should be supporting. Who exactly are they and why are we not already fully supporting them?

Rubin: There is a terrible truth most people don’t want to discuss. There are no good policies and no solutions in the Middle East. That is a long discussion, which I have dealt with in such previous books as The Tragedy of the Middle East and The Long War for Freedom. If a solution to the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts is decades off shouldn’t that fact be taken into account by policymakers? If liberal forces are too weak—no matter how virtuous—to triumph must not that be factored into the equation?

So here is the paradox: no good options, no perfect policies, and yet great dangers. How to cope with this situation? A starting point is five basic principles.

First, support for Israel. It has become a mantra often stripped of meaning but the fact is that Israel is the only reliable ally in the region and its relative power does remain strong.

Second, it is very useful to have a united front against radical Islamism even though to some extent this is a fiction. One should have no illusions about the nature or steadfastness of the allies in this situation. On one level, Iran, Syria, and the various radical Islamist and the remaining radical Arab nationalist groups are the main enemy and threat. The interests of other Arab states are contrary to this axis. Yet, of course, to give one example, the Saudis are a repressive, retrograde dictatorship who themselves bankroll radical Islamism. They will cut separate deals with the “enemy” and do things like broker the Hamas-Fatah deal for a Palestinian coalition government. One must have no illusions and not become apologist for allies. But this was also true of the Cold War, wasn’t it? 

There are some relatively more moderate regimes—Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon—that is a reality, and courageous liberal forces. There are governments which face extremist threats like Algeria and Iraq. Consider Tunisia, arguably the most progressive Arab state in social and educational terms yet ruled by a nasty dictatorship, though far less murderous than those on the other side. How about Egypt, a dictatorship that takes U.S. aid with one hand and promotes anti-American propaganda with the other?

So let’s not romanticize this into a “good” and “bad” guy’s situation. Again, no illusions. One can work the most with the better elements, do what is necessary with the more ambiguous figures, and struggle against the extremists. And let’s remember those latter forces are not going to be talked into moderation. Beyond ideology, they have interests that set them directly against the West and that is not going to change. This is a conflict, not a failure of communications.

Third, the central problem of the Middle East is the dictatorial regimes and dogmatic ideology of radical nationalism and Islamism. Rather than deal with their social problems, build good institutions, expand freedom, move toward democracy, set economic reforms, and so on, they blame all their problems on Zionism and imperialism. Demagogic appeals mobilize the masses behind them. The answer is not reform, they say, but struggle. The struggle never ends. And the resulting victims are said to create the need and justification for still more struggle.

This paradox, then, is that the dictatorships are the problems, breeding radicalism intentionally and also through the frustration created by their bad policies. Yet the West needs to work with many of them. A balance must be struck adjusted to every specific state and situation, all of which are different.

Fourth, a liberal, democratic Middle East must be the long-term goal. The democrats are on the right path, not only because they are friendlier to the West but since they are the only ones with real solutions. Yet the real danger of destabilizing societies and bringing in radical Islamist regimes is a real one, as the liberals themselves recognize. So these groups must be helped to survive and to flourish but this is a complex and long-term task.

Finally, a large element of policy must be public relations. Of course, the United States has to show Europeans and Arabs and domestic critics that it is trying to reconcile hostile forces, make peace, and so on. But public relations should never be confused with strategic policy, which means real concessions should not be given to generate good publicity.

FP: What do you think of the state of the war in Iraq?

Rubin: I was never a big fan of the whole idea of invading Iraq. One of the ideas I presented in 2003 was that President George W. Bush go to the Europeans and UN and say that he really wanted to invade Iraq so what would they give him not to do it. This especially related to keeping up the sanctions on Saddam Hussein. I can tell you from first-hand knowledge that contrary to mythology, virtually nobody in Israel wanted this war and did not view it as beneficial to Israel’s interests. At one point, cabinet ministers were so opposed that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered them to shut up so as not to undermine the U.S. ally.

In briefings, I warned that the United States had a limited time in Iraq and should get out as soon as possible. It is certainly arguable that the United States must help ensure a stable regime in Iraq but this is an endless task. Both victory and defeat are impossible in Iraq, since the United States can neither defeat or be defeated by the insurgency. My view is that once the Iraqi regime—which in large part means the vast majority of the Shia and Kurds—has a strong communal basis. It will fight to preserve itself and not lose. But there is no good purpose for a continued U.S. presence, protecting an ultimately ungrateful regime.

The irony here is that the Bush administration could not depend on the Middle East experts, most of whom are at best indifferent to U.S. interests or the welfare of the region’s peoples. But it then generated its own very poor expertise which did not understand how the region worked either. Or to put it another way, I agree that dictatorship is the problem and democracy is the solution in theory, Practice is something else entirely.

The whole debate on the war is conducted by two bitterly contentious sides both of which are not properly framing the issues. A lot of the anti-war side is also repugnant, hostile to America, and basically repeating Arab nationalist and even Islamist arguments. And yet that does not make the advocates of the war—much less those who have conducted it so badly—right either.

My concern is that the Iraq affair has undermined the very important lessons deriving from Saddam’s 1991 invasion of Kuwait; the rejection of the peace process by Iran and Syria; the September 11 attacks; and the failures of the dictatorial regimes. There are many differences between Iraq and Vietnam, but one parallel is how both discredited important, correct ideas and policies. In Vietnam, these included the justice of the Free World’s cause, the need to fight the Cold War, tough strategic thinking, the need to be willing to use force when necessary, and anti-Communism.  

But, of course, that is why the Middle East is so complicated. When I say that I was against the war, I also have to think about the Iraqis themselves who, as much as they were suffering now, were treated so terribly under Saddam Hussein.

One of the most brilliant French political analysts said to me at the war’s start that when mass graves were uncovered and people discovered how French policy had been a defender and apologist for such a brutal dictatorship, they would rebel against their government’s policy. Generally, the international effect was to make hatred of Bush and America the main issue; make people conclude that force never works; and discredit Arab liberals who backed the war.

Often, the history of the Middle East does seem one tragedy after another. Still, I remain optimistic in the Middle East rather than in the American sense of the word. American optimism is to believe in peace, prosperity, and people liking each other. Middle Eastern optimism is that the extremists will lose and things won’t get much worse.

FP: Thanks for being with us.

Rubin: As always, thanks.