The Lion in Winter: Bashar Assad’s Self-Destruction

by Gary C. Gambill

You wouldn’t know it from recent headlines, but Syrian President Bashar Assad was once the darling of Europe. Just a few years ago, the young ophthalmologist-turned-autocrat and his beautiful English-born wife received red carpet receptions in Paris, London, and Berlin and a lavish welcome by the king of Spain. Washington never quite fell in love with Assad, but its courtship was steamy – the White House openly discouraged internal opposition to his ascension, turned a blind eye to his illicit oil imports from Saddam Hussein,[1] and tacitly accepted his dominion over Lebanon.[2] Assad’s gilded stature on both sides of the Atlantic was the envy of dictators everywhere.

Today, following the most acute diplomatic reversal of fortune in modern history, these same governments are spearheading an international murder investigation likely to drive the 40-year-old dictator from power. Other tyrants who have run this far afoul of international consensus (e.g. Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi) were invariably viewed as disreputable (if strategically palatable) by the civilized world long before they became pariahs. No “respectable” head of state has ever fallen so far so fast from international grace.

The underlying dynamics of Assad’s descent into the diplomatic netherworld are not widely recognized. He was locked into an escalating confrontation with the international community long before the February 14 car bombing in Beirut that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others. The Valentines Day massacre was a desperate attempt by Assad’s inner circle to combat growing American, French, and Saudi subversion of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon – it was not the genesis of this tripartite overseas alignment. Two critical questions arise from the killing: Why was Assad so desperate to stop Lebanon from slipping away? And why, given the enormous groundswell of foreign support he enjoyed after taking office, was he unable to cut a deal before it came to that?

Time and time again, Assad has rejected opportunities to cut his losses and accommodate the international and regional powers that his policies have antagonized. This pattern of obstinacy is not intelligible in Western media accounts, which almost invariably understate the roles of key players in this drama, confuse official pretexts with underlying motivations, and – most importantly – ignore the Syrian regime’s staggering financial dependence on revenue from Lebanon.