By Kelly Sloan | Contributing Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
Few tears, if any, will be shed for the demise of the Assad regime in Syria, save perhaps a few in Moscow and Tehran.
The rapid success of the Syrian rebels last weekend took most everyone by surprise, not just the Biden administration to whom any world event not thoroughly discoursed upon The View or plastered on the front page of the New York Times apparently comes as a surprise.
The fall of the Syrian regime is a strategic boon for the U.S.A., even though the U.S.A. had little, if anything, to do with bringing it about. The survival of the brutish, terror-sponsoring regime in Damascus was made possible only by the will and backing of Moscow and, later, Tehran. Syria was the Soviet Union’s key middle eastern proxy during the Cold War, and a useful conduit for the Iranian Mullahcracy to wage its perennial war on Israel. To that end it was indirectly a product of the weakness and appeasement that defined what passed for a foreign policy during the Obama administration, a policy adopted verbatim by Biden.
Obama’s foolish “give peace a chance” naivety, expressed most dim-wittedly in the Iran nuclear deal, extended the life of the Assad regime by needlessly throwing their Iranian benefactors a lifeline, in an apparent desire to, I guess, not appear too mean to tyrannical adversaries. Obama’s worldview, tinged by post-modernist utopianism and trendy left-wing anti-colonialism, rejected any notion that Western civilization might be worth defending, and imposed a false moral equivalence (i.e., that life in America is not objectively preferable to life under a different order).
This was the animating philosophy that guided the anti-U.S. “peace” movement from the 1960s through the fall of the Berlin Wall and found new life under Barack Obama. It was this ideological myopia which prompted him to derisively dismiss Mitt Romney’s warnings about a revanchist Russia during the 2012 election by quipping that “the 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back.”
Well, as it turns out, the world does not work the way that Noam Chomsky and marijuana-infused college kids think it ought to, and “the answer is blowin’ in the wind” did not hack it as a foreign policy. But those seeds planted by Obama, and tendered by Biden, were dug deep and they sprung a garden through which Russia, Iran and other international miscreants romped, interrupted briefly by a rather successful second half of Trump’s first presidency.
So what happened to bring about the events of last weekend? What happened was that Syria’s benefactors both miscalculated rather badly, Russia in invading Ukraine, and Iran in siccing Hamas on Israeli women and children on Oct. 7, 2023. Russia’s misadventure has all but depleted the resources it had available to keep propping up Assad, while Israel’s righteous retaliation – and brilliant strokes of military intelligence and sheer warrior genius in combatting Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon – has systematically dismantled Iran’s proxy army, weakening Tehran sufficiently to prohibit effect support for their BFF in Damascus.
A great historical irony is present, in that the same observed American weakness that incentivized the Russian and Iranian miscalculations – displayed vividly in the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan – has also come close to allowing both to succeed. It is amusing to listen to Biden try to take credit for the fall of Assad. The fact is that Hezbollah’s decimation, the prerequisite for the Syrian regime’s collapse, occurred in spite of, not due to, President Biden. Had Netanyahu caved to Biden’s arrogant demands to “not escalate the conflict” – demands which he backed by interrupting weapons deliveries to Tel Aviv – then Hezbollah would be regrouping, reloading, and be back in business. Fortunately, Netanyahu ignored Biden, much to the administration’s displeasure, and crushed the terrorist army on their own terms, not Washington’s or the UN’s.
So what now for the region? Assad is gone, yes; that’s a good thing. But the impacts of the Obama/Biden doctrine linger, meaning we have no idea who is in position to replace him. The vacuum that is left in the wake could indeed be a great opportunity for Israel and the West, but is also riddled with chaotic uncertainty, in a region of the world where chaotic uncertainty generally breeds dangers which resist containment.
For Russia, the fall of Assad is a serious strategic blow, as Moscow is now denied a warm water port. Their war in Ukraine has lost them control of the Black Sea, and with the departure of their ally in Syria comes the loss of their naval base at Tartus. They now have no reliable access to the Mediterranean.
President-elect Trump is confronted with a mess that could turn out to be a tremendous opportunity, if he plays the cards right. Much will center on the approach to Iran, which remains hell-bent on reifying their animosity to the West by the elegant expedientcy of acquiring the bomb. If they do this, no one, including Trump himself, will be able to hammer out rearrangements in the Middle East that induce tranquility and guarantee the independence and longevity of Israel.
Complete U.S. disengagement from the Middle East is as unthinkable as it is unwise, for reasons that inhere in the preservation of our own security. Trump’s instincts to let things play out in Syria may be correct, but in the meantime it would make good sense to bring our fleet up to good order.
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