The Role of Ideology in Syrian-US Relations

Conflict and Cooperation

J. K. Gani

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137358349
• eBook ISBN: 9781137358356
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A study of US-Syria relations, this book analyzes the legacy of mistrust between the two states and continuities and discontinuities over time. It challenges the purely realist and power-political explanation that is dominant and points to a politically embedded set of ideas rooted in anti-colonial Arab nationalist ideology.

Part I

The Emergence of US-Syrian Relations: From Truman to Kennedy

Part I analyzes the long-term roots and evolution of Syrian and American policies, elucidating the regional and postcolonial context in which their bilateral relations developed. It analyzes policies and events, but also deliberately explores the perceptions of the two sides. US-Syrian antipathy did not emerge from a negative reaction to a single policy—their positions were molded by perceptions and evaluations that had developed over time, incrementally, from a series of encounters and strategies from both sides in the region.

The following questions are addressed in the chapters in this part: What were the determinants of Syria’s early foreign policy, and what were its aims? Similarly, what were the aims and strategy of the United States in the Middle East? What policies did it adopt in relation to Syria in particular? The chapters analyze how their respective aims affected their policies toward each other; they explore the historical factors that heightened the possibility of mutual hostility, as well as the immediate policies and actions that confirmed it. Possible avenues for conciliation are also addressed, as well as the reasons they ultimately failed.

The chapters also highlight the distinctive aspects of Washington’s policy toward Syria in comparison to other states in the region, and any changes that emerged; hence, they follow US-Syrian relations from the interwar period, and then through the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations. And finally the chapter will investigate the nascent roots of ideology in Syrian foreign policy during its immediate postcolonial history. Overall, the chapter underscores the longevity of US-Syrian mistrust and demonstrates that latter US-Syrian relations cannot be understood without reference to the region’s history in the early twentieth century.

It is notable that both states in this period viewed the region as a connected whole—Syria from the perspective of Arab nationalism and the United States from the perspective of a global Cold War. Neither shared former colonial links, nor current economic ties; without direct bilateral relations to draw upon, a comprehensive approach to Arab opinion that incorporates the Syrian perspective is at times necessary for this early historical analysis.

1

The Rise of the United States and the Roots of Syrian Mistrust

The Early Syrian State and American Isolationism

The European mandates after the First World War laid the foundations for Syrian politics in the interwar period, thereby producing a legacy of priorities, fears, and aspirations that was built upon by later Arab political actors. It is often easy to neglect the US contribution to these foundations as it played a relatively limited role, but this in itself had a bearing on the policies and perceptions of various regional players.

At the end of the First World War, in line with the general principle of self-determination, President Woodrow Wilson indicated that the United States was sympathetic toward Arab aspirations, stating as the 12th of his “Fourteen Points” that

The other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development.¹

However, while this apparently demonstrated strong American support for Arab sovereignty, the United States made no attempt to thwart the major powers’ quest for control over the Middle East; rather, the mandate system enshrined in the US-inspired Covenant of the League of Nations acted as a green light. The United States held a typically isolationist stance toward the Middle East and saw temporary European control over the region to be in the best interests of all parties involved.

A brief hiatus to its isolationism occurred in May 1919, when the United States sent two prominent businessmen, Henry King and Charles Crane, on a fact-finding mission to Syria (then still incorporating Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon) and Iraq. By sending an academic and a businessman rather than politicians to carry out a report with no binding effect, the United States was signaling its continued political indifference to the region so as to allay both European fears and Arab expectations, without appearing wholly detached from world affairs. Ultimately, their report, outlining a unified Arab state and independence as the overwhelming wish of the people, was virtually ignored and made no contribution to British and French plans for the region; it was subsequently determined that “Syria should go to France and Mesopotamia to Great Britain.”

Though the United States distanced itself from colonial projects, it did not object to the French mandate over Syria in a meeting of the Council of Four just a few days before all mandates were authorized and fixed, despite the fact that of all the great powers, France and its history of colonial rule was the most resented by the Arabs.² As King and Crane candidly concluded in their report, the Syrian mandate would go to France, “frankly based, not on the primary desires of the people, but on the international need of preserving friendly relations between France and Great Britain.”³

Besides the ultimately ineffective King-Crane initiative, US interest in the Middle East during the interwar period did not extend further than commercial investment in the region’s relatively untapped oil assets.⁴ The Syrians, in turn, had little interest in the activities of the United States. Syria had three major concerns at this time: maintaining continued resistance to the great powers in the Middle East; opposing a growing Zionist movement, particularly since the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and increased Jewish immigration into Palestine; and resolving the internal factional strife that allowed the French to exploit their differences. In response to these concerns, Arab nationalist sentiment reached even greater levels during the 1930s, exacerbated by the Palestinian uprising in 1936 and the enactment of yet more treaties to prolong informal mandates in the Arab states.⁵ In Syria, this unrest was notably manifested at a popular level.⁶

By the 1940s, this popular movement was being channeled into political organizations, first through the formation of Arab nationalist parties—the foremost of which was the Baʿth—and second via the Arab League. The Baʿth party, meaning “resurrection” in Arabic, was formally established in 1944 by two Syrian intellectuals, Salah al-Din Bitar, a Sunni Muslim, and Michel Aflaq, a Christian. For them, Arab nationalism symbolized first and foremost a struggle against colonizers. As Bitar and Aflaq reflected of the movement at the time:

[W]e saw nationalism simply as a struggle between the nation and the colonizer . . . In the country those who helped the foreigner were called traitors and those who opposed them nationalists.⁷

The Baʿth claimed to present a comprehensive political program with its three fundamental principles being “Freedom from occupation; Arab independence and unity; socialism at home”; alongside other groups, it focused on increasing its support base and challenging any signs of prowesternism in the government in the postwar years.⁸ Meanwhile, the Arab League pact targeted Arab unity, and was formally signed by Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia on March 22, 1945. It prohibited any resort to force among member states, provided for the consultation and mutual assistance in the event of aggression against a member state, set up a council and a secretary-general with headquarters in Cairo, and provided for cooperation between member states in other nonpolitical fields.

However, such was the lack of US political involvement in the region at the time that, in the words of the US Director of Office of the Near East, “relations with the Arabs remained in general unaffected by these developments.”⁹ Only when pressed by the Saudis for a view on Arab unity, Washington stated in general terms:

The policy of the United States Government toward the Near Eastern nations has not formally been stated, but its general attitude is well known. This Government desires to see the independent countries of the Near East retain their freedom and strengthen their economic and social condition, and fully sympathises with the aspirations of other Near Eastern countries for complete liberty . . . ¹⁰

Outwardly, then, the United States adopted an early policy of sympathy and support for Arab unity, independence, and greater prominence in world affairs.

In accordance with this policy, the United States recognized Syria’s struggle for independence against the French and that it would need financial assistance to overcome disorder and French obstructionism as the Syrians came closer to their goal. Anticipating conflict, Syrian leaders appealed to the United States to provide policing equipment and training to enable them to maintain internal order. The US ministers based in the Middle East with their knowledge of the situation were keen to meet such requests. Thus, in early August 1945, Merriam, head of the US Near East Department, proposed “in the interest of peace and security” the allocation of up to $100,000,000 a year for several years, administered jointly by the State, War, and Navy Departments, until the region became politically and strategically stabilized¹¹—the plan, however, was rejected by Secretary of State George Marshall as unfeasible.¹²

Unable to provide Arab states like Syria with the necessary financial backing for long-term stabilization, a frustrated Merriam acknowledged that “our policies in these situations are not worth the paper they are written on because we have not prompt and effective means of carrying them out.” The notion of empty promises and lack of real help when needed was to be a recurring theme in Arab nationalist rhetoric against the United States in later years, ironically based on the same assessment Merriam had made of his own government.

Since the United States could not or was not willing to provide any concrete support via finances or military help, it was left to the British to intervene with its forces when clashes between the Syrians and the French reached serious levels and threatened to destabilize neighboring states. Nevertheless, the records show significant US concern over France’s inflammatory policy, prompting strong condemnation and unequivocal instructions to the French that they should evacuate Syria without conditions.¹³ Through these collective efforts, the UN in April 1946 finally terminated the French mandate, demanded their immediate withdrawal, and declared Syria an independent state. Shukri Al-Quwatli, the head of the Syrian National Party, and the incumbent president under the French mandate since 1943, stayed on in the role as Syria entered independence. Thus, it is fair to say that, ultimately, the United States played a late but important role in aiding Syrian independence; indeed, it is arguable that this constitutes the single most significant act of US assistance toward the Syrians throughout their modern relations.

Notwithstanding this positive intervention for Syrian independence, it should be noted that ending Europe’s monopoly over the Middle East’s resources was a key motive in the US policy to support Arab independence. US interests remained focused on the region’s economic potential, despite the major political developments taking place in this period. Hence, even during the high point of nationalist unrest during the Second World War, American correspondence and documentation on all regional affairs were dominated by the issue of access to Saudi and Iraqi petroleum.¹⁴

Thus, the United States’ major interaction with the Syrians in this formative era was to support their independence and to engage in active diplomacy to oust the French. It represented a positive beginning from which Syria and the United States, on the face of it, had the opportunity to form more substantive and durable bilateral relations. However, it is also clear that US policy in the Middle East was focused on forging relations with oil-rich and economically strategic countries; the United States largely remained passive to the region’s major political developments, not yet perceiving the implications they would have for its own global and ideological strategy after the Second World War. This demonstrates how crucial the next period would be in molding the direction of future US-Arab relations.

Increased American Involvement and Arab Disappointment

As the physical presence and political influence of France and Britain began to recede in the Middle East, the role and participation of the United States in the region as a western, yet historically neutral, force became more significant and came under greater scrutiny. The significance of its role lay in its coinciding rise as a superpower, and through that its increased potential to act as a fair arbiter in the region’s affairs, with the political leverage and military might needed to defend state sovereignty and individual rights. At first, there had been ample hope among Syria’s Arab nationalist movements based on the United States’ minimal and relatively unsullied record of involvement in the region, as well as its public chastisement of European colonialism as an obstacle to democracy and freedom.¹⁵ The Atlantic Charter, extolling the need for democracy and independence in all parts of the world, signed by US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1941, had given further cause for optimism in the Arab world.¹⁶

Arab political actors did not immediately shun the United States through a simple anti-western prejudice; rather, they observed and judged the United States on its policies and reactions to regional issues, hoping to see a departure from the old Anglo-French approach.¹⁷ In a conference between US ministers to the Middle East and Harry Truman shortly after he became president in 1945 after the death of Roosevelt, US Minister to Syria and Lebanon George Wadsworth spoke of the Arab world and its importance to the United States. He warned that the United States needed to form a positive postwar policy prioritizing Arab independence and unity as a primary objective, and not to merely view the region in an instrumentalist light. He argued:

[I]t seems vital to recognize that the whole Arab world is in ferment, that its peoples are on the threshold of a new renaissance, that each one of them wants forthrightly to run its own show, as the countries of the Western Hemisphere run theirs, without imperialistic interference, be it British or French, in their internal affairs. They say: “You have your Pan-American Union; we want our Arab Unity. Relations...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Acronyms
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: The Emergence of US-Syrian Relations: From Truman to Kennedy
• Part II: Syria’s Isolation and the Birth of the US-Israeli Special Relationship
• Part III: US-Syrian Engagement: Disengagement Talks 1973–1975
• Part IV: US-Syrian Cooperation in the Post-Cold War Era
• Conclusions
• Selected References
• Index