The War for Syria

Regional and International Dimensions of the Syrian Uprising

Raymond Hinnebusch, Adham Saouli, Raymond Hinnebusch, Adham Saouli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367193706
• eBook ISBN: 9780429514067
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Examining the international dimensions of the Syrian conflict, this book studies external factors relating to the Uprising. It explores the involvement of outside powers and the events' impact both on regional and international level.

Syria was widely perceived to be essential to the regional power balance, hence it was a valued prize to be fought over. The book examines the impact of global and regional powers in propelling the conflict in Syria; looks at the motives and strategies of the key regional and international actors (Hizbollah, Palestinians, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, US, Russia, EU); and analyses the impact of the Syrian conflict on key relations between regional states (Turkey-Syria, Turkey-Iran, Iraq-Syria). Finally, several chapters treat the impact on Syria of international sanctions and the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine. This book follows on to The Syrian Uprising: Domestic Origins and Early Trajectory, edited by Raymond Hinnebusch and Omar Imady (2018). Subsequent volumes will examine the later evolution of the conflict.

Taking an innovative and interdisciplinary approach that seeks to capture the full complexity of the phenomenon, this book contributes significantly to our understanding of the Syrian conflict and will therefore be a valuable resource for anyone studying Middle Eastern Politics.

1

THINKING ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL FACTOR IN THE SYRIAN CRISIS

Raymond Hinnebusch

This volume examines the external factor in the Syrian Uprising: it looks at how the regional power struggle and the role of global powers in the conflict led to competitive intervention in Syria; how the latter affected the Syrian conflict; and how that conflict, in turn affected the regional power balance and the global order.

Chapters 2–4 examine the “states system” (international and regional) level, surveying the interactions of the main powers contesting over Syria; examining the impact of global level and regional powers in propelling the conflict in Syria; and showing how they contributed to the sectarianization of the conflict and the region. Chapters 5–16 examine the motives and strategies of the key regional and international actors (Hizbollah, Palestinians, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, US, Russia, EU) or look at the impact of the Uprising on relations between regional states (Turkey–Syria, Turkey–Iran, Iraq–Syria). Chapters 17 and 18 also touch on key issues of global and regional importance for which the Syrian case provides evidence and implications, e.g. power balancing, sectarianization, sanctions, and the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine (R2P).

This book follows on from an earlier volume, The Syrian Uprising: Domestic Origins and Early Trajectory, which focused on the internal features of the Uprising.¹ The time frame of The Syrian Uprising is roughly the first five years of the conflict. The present volume covers the period from the beginning of the Uprising through the regime–opposition stalemate after 2012 and touches on the post-2015 period when Russian intervention started to shift the balance of power toward the Asad regime and the character of the conflict began to change. A snapshot of this period is valuable in itself as part of the documentation of the Uprising and also as a case study of the impact of external powers on civil wars; but additionally, it sets the context for the gradual decline in the intensity of the conflict, a possible negotiated solution, a frozen conflict, or a low intensity conflict. Subsequent volumes will focus on the later years of the Uprising when the defeat of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or Daesh; hereafter, ISIS) in Raqqa seemed to bring the global powers, Russia and the US, face to face in a territorially divided Syria, with implications for the prospects of settlement and reconstruction.

The international (external) dimension of the Syrian Uprising has been profound. The Uprising made Syria a battleground of a regional power struggle which drew in, as well, rival global actors. Phillips, in his magisterial account The Battle for Syria (see also Chapter 3 in this volume), judges that without intervention on the side of the opposition the Asad regime would have repressed the Uprising early on; on the other hand, “balanced intervention,” with multiple rivals competing to support each side, produced an intractable civil war. Such “competitive interference” encouraged all sides in the conflict to keep fighting, obstructed a diplomatic or compromise political solution, and helped produce a partially failing state. Not only did external powers profoundly affect the internal Syrian Uprising, but that Uprising impacted the whole region, spilling out over the neighbourhood—notably in the form of refugees and the ISIS phenomenon. This in turn intensified external powers’ attempts to shape the Syrian conflict, notably to confront the expansion of ISIS but also to use or block Kurdish ambitions.

Syria was such a valued prize to be fought over because it was widely perceived to be pivotal to the regional power balance. As in the original “struggle for Syria” of the 1950s, whoever won in Syria was thought likely to prevail in the region; also, too, as in the fifties, the warring parties were trying to pull Syria either toward or against the West.² However, while the earlier struggle for Syria was mostly non-violent (media wars, inciting bloodless coups in Syria) and Egypt’s victory in the struggle with Iraq over Syria led to extended Egyptian regional hegemony, in the current struggle, massive violence produced stalemate. As Phillips shows, at least some of those intervening expected to score a zero-sum win but this proved to be a gross miscalculation: no side has been able to sweep the board—an outcome actually to be expected in a multi-polar system like the Middle East and North Africa’s (MENA).³

This introductory chapter provides the overall context for the chapters that follow. It first examines the main durable features of the regional system that shaped the power struggle over Syria. The evolution of the regional power struggle, whose main issues and alignments date back to the 2000s, continuing in much intensified form after 2011, provides the context for intervention in Syria; it is outlined, showing how the Syrian conflict was affected by and affected this struggle. Competitive external intervention is then examined, showing how the solicitation of intervention by the warring Syrian parties brought the regional and Syrian conflicts into alignment; and how this, in turn, led to much increased violence and stalemate in Syria. It will be shown, too, how competitive intervention frustrated efforts to resolve the conflict. Finally the consequences of intervention are adumbrated—a penetrated and fragmented state, sectarianization, empowerment of transnational non-state actors, and challenges to Syria’s borders and sovereignty.

MENA regional politics

Durable features of the regional system

MENA regional politics can only be understood by bringing together the material and ideational factors treated in realism and constructivism, respectively, as Chapter 2, building on Buzan and Wæver, undertakes to do.⁴ Firstly, in the region’s multi-polar system, inter-state rivalry and insecurity are, as realists expect, endemic, although less from anarchy, per se, than the flawed construction of the regional system—a function of arbitrary boundary drawing that built irredentism and contested borders into the system, leading most states to feel threatened by their neighbours. Among the most durable and recurring alignment patterns in MENA has been power-balancing among the stronger regional powers, often exhibiting a checkerboard pattern—e.g. in the 1990s, Turkey and Israel vs. Iran and Syria—which blunted hegemonic ambitions and sustained a multi-polar regional order.⁵

This “realist” inter-state system is, however, embedded in a trans-state public sphere. MENA states are exceptionally penetrated by supra-state identities and trans-state networks that compete with loyalties to the territorial states; and norms rooted in these identities constrain, enable, and even shape the pursuit of state interests.⁶ These factors inject several enduring and distinctive features into regional politics. First, inter-state rivalry for leadership of supra-state communities—the Arab nation, the Islamic umma—is endemic, expressed in recurring “Cold Wars”⁷ in which stronger states deploy ideology and identity discourses to win over allies and subvert rival governments by manipulating trans-state networks and discourses; with each bidding for hegemony by claiming to champion the putative shared interests of the identity community. Second, the chief threat that most Arab states face from each other is less from armies than subversion—challenging each other’s legitimacy and backing disaffected internal opposition by manipulating identity claims. Balancing is therefore as much against ideational threats as hard military threats and consequently often takes a “soft” form, i.e. promoting an ideology meant to buttress one’s legitimacy and forming alliances with states sharing ideological kinship and shared perceptions of threat from an ideological “other.”⁸ This ideational contest normally remains at the level of discourse and low-level subversion, but always has the potential to help destabilize target states and when this happens the power struggle takes a hybrid form—involving discourses and often armed proxies in failing states.

Finally, as realists expect, what order exists in MENA rests largely on a power balance but the power struggle, hence the degree of order, may also either be enhanced or muted by shared norms; thus, norms constructed out of a widely shared trans-state, pan-Arab identity have long constrained the power struggle, such that the system approximated a Lockean order, while Arabism’s displacement by sectarianism has pushed the region toward a Hobbesian order in which rivals are demonized.⁹

As such, the struggle for power in MENA has dual dimensions and requires dual assets. The main contenders are those states with hard power—population, resources, military forces; but ideational power used to win over allies or subvert rivals matters just as much. Indeed, while hard power only changes over the long term, alliance formation via soft power can much more quickly alter the power balance in a state’s favour: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been the most enduring players in the struggle for regional hegemony. Smaller, poorer, or more identity-fragmented states tend to be the victims of power struggles; except for a brief period under Hafiz al-Asad when Syria became a regional player, the country has usually been a target, by virtue of both its weakness and its pivotal position, of what this chapter calls “competitive interference.”

The evolution of the regional power struggle

A new regional cold/proxy war: the early Arab Uprising years

The regional power struggle just before the Uprising—itself a function of the destabilizing US invasion of Iraq—pitted the moderate pro-Western Arab regimes led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, tacitly aligned with Israel and the US, against the Shi’a-leavened Resistance camp, led by Iran and including Syria and Hizbollah, with Turkey balancing between the two camps. Before the Uprising, the power balance was tilting toward the Resistance axis owing to two factors: the declining soft power of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as a result of their failure to condemn the Israeli assaults on Lebanon and Gaza, and the US pull back from its intervention in Iraq and interference in Lebanon, leaving both heavily under Iranian influence. Turkey and Qatar were tilting toward the Resistance axis.

The Arab Uprisings reanimated the inter-regional power struggle between these blocs, although they were somewhat reconfigured as revolts in Egypt and Syria (combined with the prior debilitation of Iraq by the US invasion) knocked the historic powers of the Arab core out of the power game, leaving a vacuum that those more on the regional periphery—Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia— competed to fill. Moreover, because the power balance could potentially be quickly shifted through regime change (taking some players out of the game) and consequent changes in alliances, the Uprising opened up massive opportunities for both gains and losses in this game. This new cold war initially resembled the classic one of the 1950–1960s in the discourse wars initially deployed among the rival contenders; via e.g. Al-Jazeera’s stirring up of protest in Egypt and Syria, and the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) financial and ideological backing of clients, notably trans-state Islamist movements. The main battlegrounds were the states that experienced uprisings: Egypt and Syria were the main prizes but lesser prizes included Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. Yemen, on Saudi Arabia’s southern flank, was crucial to its security and Bahrain, although tiny, was also crucial since overthrow of the Sunni monarchy in a Shi’a uprising could spread Shi’a revolt to the rest of the Gulf and empower Iran. Iraq and Lebanon, although not experiencing full-scale uprisings, had unconsolidated regimes and fragmented societies highly vulnerable to external penetration and magnets for it.

The shifting power balance in the early Uprising

During the early Uprising years, the power balance shifted from the Iran-led Resistance axis toward the pro-Western Saudi-led bloc, as indicated by the defection of Turkey, Hamas, and Qatar from their tilt toward the Resistance axis. The Gulf monarchies turned the GCC into a sort of Holy Alliance to effectively block change within the monarchic camp (e.g. intervening in Bahrain) and take advantage of the vacuum left by the marginalization of the key Arab republics (Egypt, Syria, Iraq) to become the only effective agency in inter-Arab politics; they aggressively used their media and financial power to affect outcomes in uprising states and brought the Arab League to condemn Asad’s repression of the Syrian Uprising. Turkey, initially seen as a model in what then seemed emerging new Islamist democracies in Egypt and Tunisia, backed the Syrian opposition in a bid to become the main influence in Damascus as well. The Uprising in Syria threatened to replace the Asad regime, the linchpin connecting the eastern and western wings of the Resistance axis, with a Sunni ruling group aligned with Turkey and/or Saudi Arabia. The former soft power of Hizbollah and Iran in the Arab world from their stand against Israel was dissipated by their defence of the Asad regime. Israel stood to benefit from the weakening of Iran, Syria, and Hizbollah, the only regional bloc that balanced against it.

The late Uprising—Hobbesian proxy wars

The arena of the MENA power struggle had significantly altered by the third year of the Uprising. The discourse wars of the early Uprising morphed into proxy wars—competitive arming and financing of armed client groups. This, together with a slew of (at least partly) failing states that had lost control of their borders and their monopolies of violence, widespread mobilization of populati...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Praise
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Thinking About the International Factor in the Syrian Crisis
• 2 The Middle East Regional Security Complex and the Syrian Civil War
• 3 The International and Regional Battle for Syria
• 4 The Regional Sectarian War and Syria
• 5 Hizbollah’s Intervention in Syria: Causes and Consequences
• 6 Palestinian Refugees and the Syrian Uprising: Subjectivities, Mobilizations and Challenges
• 7 Qatar and Its Rivals in Syria’s Conflict
• 8 Saudi Policies in the Syrian Crisis
• 9 Iran and the Syrian Civil War
• 10 Iraqi–syrian Relations and the Syrian Uprising
• 11 Turkish–Iranian Relations in Syria: Between Rivalry and Engagement
• 12 The 2011 Collapse of Syria–Turkey Relations: Through a Realist-Constructivist Lens
• 13 Us Policy Towards the Syrian Conflict Under Obama: Strategic Patience and Miscalculation
• 14 Russian Foreign Policy in the Early Syrian Conflict: Traditional Factors and the Role of Syria in the Kremlin’s Wider Domestic and International Goals
• 15 From Russia’s Military Deployment in Syria to the Astana Process
• 16 The European Union and Syria: From Constructive Engagement to Marginalization and Back?
• 17 Contextualizing Economic Sanctions on Syria
• 18 The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in Syria: A Critical Analysis of R2P as an Interactional Process
• Index