“The time has come for President Assad to step aside.” With those words in 2011, President Barack Obama pronounced a political death sentence on Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then announced sanctions that would “tighten the circle of isolation,” “strike at the heart of the regime,” and push Assad “out of the way.”
Whether that was a good idea is highly debatable. What is certain is that Assad has survived. Other countries that joined our campaign to overthrow him have given up and are reestablishing ties to his government. We should do the same.
Ending our regime-change policy toward Syria would allow Assad, whose regime is corrupt and stained with innocent blood, to begin reasserting control of his country. Even more frustrating, it would vindicate Assad’s strategy of allying with Iran and Russia. This is hardly an ideal outcome, but ideals are elusive in world politics.
For the United States, this decision is psychological as well as geopolitical. Pulling the plug on our long anti-Assad campaign would require Americans to do something that many find anathema: admit failure.
“We lost” is a phrase that rarely appears in the American strategic vocabulary. When we set out to achieve a goal, like overthrowing a foreign government, we are supposed to succeed. That makes it exceedingly difficult for us to acknowledge losses when they occur. Syria is the latest example. We cling to a regime-change policy that we have been following for more than a decade even though it has little or no chance of succeeding. Washington seems entranced by the voice in the back of our collective consciousness that whispers: “Never give up. Just keep trying.”
Other countries are more realistic. They see that the intense and costly US-led campaign against Assad has failed, so they’re throwing in the proverbial towel. Saudi Arabia, which once supported anti-Assad militias, has restored diplomatic relations with Syria after a 12-year break. The United Arab Emirates has restored relations as well. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who has been one of Assad’s bitterest foes for more than a decade, has offered to meet him and patch up their differences. Eight countries in the European Union have joined to recommend that the EU also restore relations with Syria, which it broke in 2012.
These turnabouts recall words of wisdom from Pervez Musharraf, who was president of Pakistan during the 9/11 era. Asked why he supported a US invasion of Afghanistan after first opposing it, Musharraf replied: “Policies are made in accordance with environments. The environment changed, our policy changed.”
The Syria environment has decisively changed since President Obama and Secretary Clinton demanded Assad’s head. They were caught up in the fantasy called “the Arab Spring,” which seemed to promise that tyrannical regimes in the Middle East would be swept away by a wave of democratic uprisings. That was tragically unrealistic, as events in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Syria have shown. Civil society in those countries has been so decimated, and entrenched systems are so powerful, that tyrants either stayed in power or were deposed and left vacuums that terrorist gangs filled.
The United States has done almost everything possible to dislodge Assad. In 2012 the CIA launched its largest known train-and-supply program for foreign fighters, Timber Sycamore, under which it sent thousands of rebel soldiers to make war against Assad. Sometimes these rebel soldiers fought alongside troops from al-Qaeda, which detests Assad’s secular regime and wants to replace it with an Islamic caliphate. The CIA halted Timber Sycamore in 2017, partly out of fear that the war it promoted might lead to an ISIS takeover of Syria.
To this day the United States, through its proxies, controls about one-fourth of Syria. This occupied region has traditionally been the country’s breadbasket. It is also where most of its oil is extracted. About 900 American soldiers are based there. In August one of their bases was attacked by drones — belying Vice President Kamala Harris’s recent assertion that “not one member of the US military is in active duty in a combat zone.”
American sanctions on Syria became even more intense under President Trump. His administration not only forbade any US aid for reconstruction but also threatened punishment for any company in the world that sends building supplies or anything else to Syria. These “secondary sanctions” are still in effect. Millions of Syrians have fled the country in desperation, creating refugee crises in several countries.
In September the United States reached an agreement to withdraw troops from Iraq, where they have been deployed for two decades. We should do the same in Syria. Most of Syria’s neighbors are ahead of us in recognizing the failure of the long effort to depose Assad. By refusing to join them, we write ourselves out of much regional diplomacy and influence.
Recent history shows the folly of believing that if long-ruling dictators are overthrown, they will be replaced by gentle reformers and human rights advocates. Allowing devastated countries to reunite under a central government, even a bad one, is a more promising path toward peace and security. Syria would be a fine place to start.
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
