WASHINGTON - While US President George W
Bush appeared last week to reject suggestions that
Washington directly engage the government of
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, pressure for the
United States to work out some accommodation with
Damascus is rising both at home and abroad.
While never officially designated part of
the "axis of evil" with Iran, Iraq and North
Korea, Syria has received the same "silent
treatment" as Washington has given its two
surviving members, Iran and North Korea, since the
assassination of former Lebanese
prime
minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, allegedly
by Syrian agents.
But Syria's geostrategic
relevance, particularly in the wake of last
summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah and
growing popular sentiment for withdrawing the more
than 140,000 US troops bogged down in Iraq, is
making it increasingly difficult to reject appeals
for a new diplomatic tack.
"In all of the
major challenges we have in the Middle East -
Iraq, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the role of
Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran - things are more
complicated without Syria's cooperation," Edward
Djerejian, who served as US ambassador to Damascus
under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H W
Bush, recently told the National Journal.
That reasoning is being made by Republican
"realists" such as Djerejian, who currently heads
the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy
in Houston, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee
chairman Richard Lugar, as well as some of
Washington's closest European allies, notably
Britain.
A number of prominent Israelis,
including even cabinet-level members of Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert's government, who believe
that Assad's recent appeals via Germany's Der
Spiegel magazine and the British Broadcasting
Corp, as well as other media, for a peace
agreement with the Jewish state should be tested,
have also called for Washington to engage Assad,
if for no other reason than to try to pry Damascus
loose from its alliance with Iran and Hezbollah.
"Assad is very keen to get the Golan
[Heights] back [from Israel], but he is even more
keen to engage the United States," David Kimche, a
former head of Israel's Foreign Ministry and
president of the Israel Council on Foreign
Relations, said at a recent dinner in Washington
sponsored by the New America Foundation.
"It is in America's interest to wean away
Syria from Iran's embrace, [a move that] would
also be appreciated by moderate Arabs" in the
region, he said, adding that renewed engagement
between Washington and Damascus could also
facilitate the resumption of talks between
Israelis and Palestinians.
The fact that
the White House cleared a meeting last month
between former secretary of state James Baker, who
heads the congressionally appointed task force the
Iraq Study Group, and Syrian Foreign Minister
Walid Muallem in New York has added to speculation
that Bush may prove more flexible than he has been
to date, especially after next month's mid-term
elections.
Nonetheless, asked at a press
conference last Wednesday about his willingness to
"work with" Syria, as well as Iran, if it would
improve the situation in Iraq, Bush echoed his
administration's customary mantra that both
countries "understand full well" what they have to
do to get back in Washington's good graces.
"Our message to Syria is consistent," he
said. "Do not undermine the [Prime Minister Hanna]
Siniora government [in Lebanon] ... help Israel
get back the prisoner that was captured by Hamas;
don't allow Hamas and Hezbollah to plot attacks
against democracies in the Middle East; help
inside of Iraq. They know our position," he
declared, suggesting that all of these were
preconditions for the kind of engagement that the
critics have been urging.
Behind Bush's
latest statement, however, lies a familiar divide
within his administration. From the first days of
the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict last summer, the
State Department was urging the White House to
engage Damascus, particularly after Olmert
reportedly asked Washington to enlist Syria in an
effort to secure the release of the two Israeli
soldiers captured by Hezbollah.
But hawks
centered in the National Security Council,
particularly assistant secretary of state Elliot
Abrams, and Vice President Dick Cheney's office,
notably his national security adviser, John
Hannah, and Middle East specialist David Wurmser
successfully opposed such a move, and Olmert's
request was rejected.
Two months later,
when an attack, apparently by Islamist militants,
on the US Embassy in Damascus was repelled by
Syrian security forces, the State Department's
Near East Bureau again reportedly pushed for some
kind of opening to the regime, only to be checked
by the hawks, most of whom have long favored a
policy of regime change in Syria.
In their
view, Assad is not only insincere in his recent
appeals for a peace settlement with Israel, but
his hold on power is weak and growing weaker. That
weakness has made him so reliant on Iran that
Damascus has in effect become a client regime of
Tehran and should be treated accordingly.
Moreover, according to this view, engaging
the regime would not only provide it with a form
of legitimacy it doesn't deserve, but would also
undermine the moderate opposition in Syria and,
even worse, discourage pro-Western forces in
Lebanon, which would see it as a first step toward
the re-establishment of Syrian hegemony over their
country.
But these arguments appear to
have been losing ground - at least in the public
debate - in recent weeks as the situation in Iraq
has deteriorated and demands, particularly among
Republicans, for a "course correction" both there
and in the region as a whole have mushroomed.
In the first place, Assad's hold on power
is seen as much more secure than the hawks have
suggested. "It's pretty clear to me that the
regime is not on its last legs," said Dennis Ross,
Washington's top Middle East peace envoy under
former presidents George H W Bush and Bill Clinton
and currently counselor to the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, a think-tank that
has generally been hawkish on Syria.
Moreover, a growing number of experts
believe that Syria's relationship with Iran is
tactical rather than strategic and hence much
weaker than the hawks believe. In the view of
these experts, to the extent that the Bush
administration now sees Iran as the greatest
threat to US influence in the region, it should be
willing to offer all kinds of carrots to begin
prying Damascus from Tehran's influence.
"The United States should convey its
interest in a broader strategic dialogue [with]
Assad, with the aim of re-establishing US-Syrian
cooperation on important regional issues and with
the promise of significant strategic benefits for
Syria clearly on the table," said Flynt Leverett,
who served as the National Security Council's top
Middle East expert under Clinton and for the first
two years of the current administration.
"I remain absolutely convinced that Bashar
wants to realign towards the US," he noted
recently.
