22-9-23

Dear Partners in Thought,

After nineteen months of the Ukraine invasion and many pieces on the tragic subject, I decided to focus briefly on another matter carrying its share of upheaval, by writing about Bashar al-Assad. Here is a man who led an improbable life from potential Western-like leader, if only in appearance, to civil war maker and despot. Con Coughlin, a veteran war correspondent since the Beirut of the early 1980s, wrote “Assad – The Triumph of Tyranny”, an eye-opening book on a man of benign appearance behind one of the greatest and bloodiest tragedies of the 21^st century. I have to admit that my knowledge of the Middle East as a child living in Paris in the 1960s and 1970s was limited to “Exodus” with Paul Newman and “Lawrence of Arabia” with Peter O’Toole until the Yom Kippur War suddenly changed that for me into a darker story – all while knowing on the surface, that the region was not a symbol of stability, since the state of Israel had been recreated also to assuage the sins of the Nazi German era. The book about Bashar al-Assad is full of many stories and provides a flood of angles reflecting the complexities of the Middle East. It also sheds some light on a man that we all saw but few knew well. As such, this Book Note will be longer than usual, so as to capture all the key events of the Bashar al-Assad saga.

We all remember Bashar as a nice and mild-mannered individual carrying hopes of modernity. Often with his charming wife Asma (once known by Vogue as “the rose of the desert”), they created a stylish and sympathetic couple in the early 2000s, after he took the leadership of Syria. The impactful couple, boosted by a very photogenic Asma, could have been a strategic tool for Syrian image re-engineering. Asma was a London-born Syrian, part of the refined Sunni elite (quite remote from the Assads’ rough Alawite crowds) and a JP Morgan investment banker. (On a funny side note, Asma, a very bright young lady, forewent Harvard Business School to elope with Bashar, after they had met when he was training as a compulsorily low-profile ophthalmologist in London, studying hard and quietly listening to Phil Collins and Whiney Houston in his flat). French President Jacques Chirac found him to be a nice leadership style-change for the region, and the former French League of Nations protectorate. Queen Elizabeth and the Syrian couple posed together for nice pictures stressing the normalcy of the new Syria, after the often-hard regime of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father. The future would destroy all of this genuine feel-good factor following tragic events in Lebanon post-Iraq invasion, the Arab Spring and the dreadful civil war that ensued—even if Arab states now seem to wish to reintegrate Bashar into the community of regional nations in mid-2023, and as the Middle East is also changing with Saudi Arabia working on a new regional and global role at many levels including sports. Coughlin’s book is a fascinating and often too-horrific story that deserves much reflection.   

Bashar was not destined to be a leader of Syria. He was not the eldest son or even eldest child of Hafez, and had no interest in politics. He indeed studied in London and became an ophthalmologist, something few realise today. The al-Assad family (Assad meaning “lion” and actually not the original family name in the Alawite region) was not destined to lead either, and came from a humble background. But times changed and a new version of Arab “socialism” helped the family seize power gradually from 1963 and fully in 1971. Then as often is the case with strong regimes or monarchies, Hafez’s brother thought he should lead the country instead of Hafez, but was finally exiled (although not shot, due to the intermediation of their mother). When Hafez became gradually ill and thought of succession in the 1990s, his first son, Bassel, who had the characteristics of a strong if not tough leader in the making, died at 31 in a car crash. Hafez’s daughter, Bushra, thought she could lead the country at 41 and was indeed equipped with many of the requisite features. But it was many years before “Me Too”, all the more in an Arab Muslim country, so she was discarded by her father and his senior team. Bashar then became the one left in the shop, with many arguing whether a medical doctor, probably too westernised and with a such a benign appearance, could become the successor of strongman Hafez. But then Bashar was the only Assad with the right seniority left, and when his father died in 2000, the debate was quickly and forcefully closed by him and he became the leader of Syria.    

Syria, since the advent of Hafez, was a country not led by religion and a monarchy as often seen in the Middle East, but by the socialist Baathist party—even if ten families around Hafez controlled the wealth of the country. A phenomenon often seen and lived with in what the West used to call “developing nations” the world over (see the 56-year Bongo dynasty in now coup-ridden Africa). Benign kleptocracy was at work, with all the slogans that the regime naturally worked for the people. Bashar ensured that the succession plans went well, even hiding the death of his father from his mother and family the day it happened, so he could prepare his next steps. While he was seen as a benign and even game-changing moderate when he “took over”, he had made sure he cleaned up the military and security services of dissenters. And he warned others with the wrong aspirations, like Rifaat, Hafez’s brother and perennial would be leader, that he was the one in charge.                          

The book stresses how Hafez’s Syria was not a friend of the West, and preferred to side with the Soviet Union during the Cold War on many issues, as well as post-Shah Iran. Notably when the latter, through its sponsored Hezbollah, sought to exert some control over Lebanon, a neighbour it also saw as its own. Syria’s opposition to Israel, a strong historical US ally in the region, also made the Moscow-Damascus link natural, even if so many Russians (admittedly not Soviet-supporting), emigrated to Israel. On a funny note and a regional scale prelude to how many nations today do not always side with the US or China, preferring to follow an opportunistic approach (like India liking Russian oil, but also getting closer to the West on grand strategic matters due to China), Syria backed the West in the 1990 Gulf War. It never liked its Baathist neighbour Saddam Hussein, while funding and supporting Iranian-led disruption in Lebanon and the region. In the last years of Hafez, Bashar had been in charge of the “Lebanon brief” for Damascus, and had facilitated Iran’s direct and indirect involvement in Lebanese affairs. This included supporting terrorist organisations and their leaders like then well-known Abu Nidal, not to mention Carlos “the jackal” (who liked the Damascus haven) and Islamic Jihad founder Mughniyeh, the man behind many bombings of US and French military barracks in Lebanon in the early 1980s.  When he took over the leadership of Syria in 2000, it seemed that Bashar tried initially to be a man of change (more economically than politically) and was perhaps conflicted by projecting the image of a modernised leader with a Western suited-look, while gradually following the steps of his father. More than likely helped by the not so enlightened Baathist old guard. Most observers would agree that it took one year for Bashar to adopt the old Assad style of power management, thus killing any hopes for a long Damascus Spring. Bashar clearly condemned 9-11 and provided intelligence to the CIA, to the delight of its Director George Tenet. All the while the Pentagon still saw him and Syria as part of the “Axis of Evil” and state sponsors of terrorism like Iran. Even the Blair administration tried very hard to get Syria to change its tack, going as far as for the “glamorous Bashar-Asma couple” to meet with the Queen in 2002 (apparently no trace of the visit can be found in the Buckingham Palace registry). As the 2000s unfolded, Bashar showed signs of not knowing where he wanted to stand, being very foreign affairs progressive on one-on-ones with Blair in Damascus, while attacking Israel publicly with a startled British leader at his side the same day. Or being very open with John Paul II, and then blasting Israel publicly during the same visit for having killed Jesus.  Bashar initially got closer to the Iranians in order to move away from Russia (who would come back in a decisive way during the Civil War, led by the now disgraced, Prigozhin-friendly General Surovikin) and surprisingly get better weaponry and communication systems from Tehran (on a side note, the fact that Moscow goes to Pyongyang today to get ammunitions it is lacking so much for its ill-fated Ukraine invasion, is also telling).    

The first major step in Bashar’s new direction, even if it was not clear or public at the time (nor that it was ever admitted), was the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in 2004, when a suicide bomber threw himself and two tons of explosives (more than what was used at Oklahoma City in 1995) into the politician’s car and his convoy of bodyguards. It turned out that investigations (including from the UN) pointed to Bashar’s brother and other family members being the culprits, even if Damascus always denied the facts. The roots of the assassination (and Bashar’s gradual anti-Western stance) were to be found in Hariri wanting truer independence for Lebanon, while Bashar wanted Syria to stay in the country as it had since 1976 in a controlling mode during the civil war, and make sure Lebanon would be part of Greater Syria as it should always have been historically. Bashar’s move may have also been helped by George W. Bush’s decisions to back a truly independent Lebanon and sanction Syria in 2003 while DoD Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for regime change and keeping Syria as a member of the “Axis of Evil” together with Iran. As a result, Bashar would wish to get closer to Iran and Hamas and take part in making the invasion of Iraq a failure for America, while helping to send Islamic fighters to Iraq to fight Western troops. At the same time even France, not an Iraq war supporter, was now backing the US in wanting Syria out of Lebanon, which stressed a different approach than the one taken by Chirac in 2000 when hopes were high for a new Middle East due to a perceived game-changing Bashar. In 2005, a few months after Hariri’s murder, and as Lebanon had become ungovernable, Syria and its 14,000 troops and intelligence officers left Lebanon after 29 years of “occupation” or “presence”, as Bashar could no longer manage it, and the anti-Syrian political blocks were about to win the elections; pro-Syrian politicians, like the Maronite Christian President Emile Lahoud, were to be gradually removed from office. Even allies and indeed funders like Saudi Arabia, became dismayed by Bashar’s perceived role in Harari’s assassination. Arab diplomats visiting an ally in Damascus also became concerned about Bashar’s erratic behaviour. Even his vice president, Halim Khaddam, a member of the Baathist old guard, decided to resign, while criticising the blunders of the leadership in Lebanon – and flying to Paris to avoid retribution, while becoming a voice for the opposition to Bashar, a dangerous role in itself even from afar. As he was reaching a low ebb, and questions about his political survival were raised, Bashar strengthened his ties with Iran and Hezbollah in a defensive move and further alienated the West, and even Damascus’s allies in the region. Damascus began a clearing house for Jihadi fighters traveling to Iraq, making Syria the clear enemy of the West and a dangerous, if not unstable, player for the region and its leaders. Only the very intense three-week summer 2006 fight between a Syrian ammunition and equipment-supported Hezbollah and an attacking Israel helped Assad to benefit from Hezbollah not losing (even if no side won) and him not to be the main focus of the region, while he gradually recovered from the setback of the Hariri assassination. Boosted by this rise in popularity, that he doubtless played on, he was “re-elected” for a second presidential term with 99% of the votes, in ways that were expected but without any local troubles. The end of the Iraq war would still see Western powers trying to get Bashar to stop his involvement in Iraq (which he eventually did, at least on the previously known scale) and stopping his support of Hezbollah and Hamas (which he did not, perhaps (or not) pressed by the old Baathist guard, his intelligence agencies, and the key strategic link to Iran). Syria was trying to play a leading regional and international role in hosting the Arab League Summit in 2008, while Sarkozy invited Bashar to the 2008 Bastille Day parade, a feat seen with Macron inviting Modi for the same key French celebration in 2023, also driven by clear foreign policy goals. While he still was strongly opposed to Israel also in very practical ways, Bashar wanted to get Syria supporting the never ending Arab-Israeli peace talks as if living in a parallel world of a country.

At the personal level a benign-looking and seemingly happily-married Bashar was also known as a party goer, heavy drinker and womaniser, even having had a regular German mistress according to clear evidence from Western intelligence. His personal life, like his political stances, appeared very conflicted, all the more given the projected image of a glamorous couple with three young children. His family affairs were not too happy either, with his decision to exile his Hariri-friendly brother in law (once shot by one of his brothers in a brawl), head of military intelligence, and putting aside his sister, once a “could have been” leader of Syria, who had remained too vocal in her aspirations. It nevertheless looked like a big public relations campaign was underway when American Vogue focused on Asma in February 2011 with its “Rose of the Desert” issue, and Damascus was trying hard to manage conflictual geostrategic positions while getting more accepted in the Western world.

At the same time, the Obama administration—in a hopeful gambit—was trying to adopt a more pragmatic approach to Bashar and Syria than his predecessor. And then the Arab Spring erupted following a street vendor setting fire to himself in Tunis in December 2011, as he could no longer stand police harassment. Protests and riots started all over the Arab world, across monarchies and secular countries. Leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya would fall, at times paying the ultimate price, while Saudi Arabia and Jordan weathered the storm. Syria’s descent into chaos started with misbehaving children suffering very seriously at the hands of the local police led by Bashar’s cousin Najib in Deraa, which led to mass protests all across the country in a local replica of the Arab Spring. Bashar, who blamed the Muslim Brotherhood, seemed initially hesitant in how to deal with the unrest, likely due to the new image he was trying to project, but went for usual and tested force (while keeping for himself USD 200m that Saudi Arabia had just given to help him mend fences in Deraa through the funding of community projects). His youngest brother, Maher, also known for his heavy drinking and womanizing, was put in charge of the repressions of the protests. The first international victim of the repressions was the Vogue article that disappeared from the magazine’s website. While what was left of the Syrian opposition hoped that protests might have led Bashar to start implementing his old Damascus Spring reforms, he went to the Syrian Parliament to denounce a conspiracy to destabilise the Syrian government, stressing under the standing ovation of state-appointed delegates that Syria would not be Iraq.        

The Syrian civil war, which we all remember unfolding, was deemed by Con Coughlin to be worst war he experienced in forty years of reporting since Beirut in the early eighties. It started with the Arab Spring protests that mutated into a war at home. The difference with other Arab Spring war-like developments, like in Libya, was that chemical weapons were used to defend the regime, likely since December 2012 in Homs, this without clear evidence in spite of suspicions from the international communities and various NGOs. Of historical note, Syria in the 1980s had the third largest chemical weapons stockpile in the world after the US and the Soviet Union. Iran had then contributed in the Bashar years to Syria’s ability to keep using such weapons.  In August 2013 various parts of Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, were massively attacked by chemical weapons which, while the strike was always officially denied by the regime, reflected Bashar’s determination to defeat the rebel forces and his gambling drive in extreme circumstances. The attack was launched as a UN inspection team was in the Damascus Four Seasons hotel to investigate such matters under challenging terms and conditions, so as to seed the fact that they could only be the result of rebel actions even if Ghouta itself, under siege for six months, was an opposition stronghold. Chemical weapons had been Obama’s red line which if crossed would lead to US military intervention of an Iraq war nature ten years before. However, Obama did not want to experience an Iraq 2.0 in Syria, nor follow the Franco-British approach that overthrew Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, even if he made clear in December 2011 that Bashar should step aside for the sake of the Syrian people. The UN officially designated the conflict in Syria as a civil war in June 2012, while Obama would forget his chemical weapons red line – at a personal political cost, even if many at home did not want another far away war – while sanctioning Bashar and his brother Maher and funding pro-Western rebel groups. Chemical weapons were one terrible feature of the overtly new Bashar Syrian management style – intelligence was another.

By 2011, the Mukahbarat, the leading domestic intelligence agency and all other security organisations comprising up to 70,000 agents became coordinated under the CCMC or Central Crisis Management Cell that had been created in March of that year, days after the initial Deraa uprising. Most security officials were Alawites as they could be trusted to preserve the Assad regime, and controlled one third of the USD 9bn annual defence budget. At this time, there was one intelligence officer for every 240 Syrian nationals. At some point the regime also turned to irregular militias or “shabiha”, usually from poor Alawite extraction and in the drug trade or racket business, to control the unrest through industrial murder, rape and torture. This very powerful security and repression apparatus was completed by the Baathist Party, set up to control the country, while its local leaders were known to enrich themselves, as seen in many developing countries the world over, via endemic corruption (and knowing that 30% of Syrians were living below the poverty line while 11% were below subsistence levels while the leadership was seen at the opening of the new Opera House in Damascus to cater to the needs of the ruling elite). Bashar would not get involved in details of the repression, but was aware of them and giving a clear freedom of action to his security services to act as they saw fit irrespective of the horrors that would ensue, like with barrel bombs and the targeting of hospitals.      

The West was not the only party asking for Syrian reform, as Turkey and Saudi Arabia started to request it, fearing a meltdown of Syria. This prompted Bashar to speak about reforms of many institutions, including the constitution, but keeping the repression which only fostered the civil war. The repression involved death, torture and rape of men, women and children by the Syrian security services to break the opposition, which it only strengthened. Bashar kept arguing that Jihadists and foreign powers wanting to topple his government were responsible for the unrest, insisting it was not another wave of the Arab Spring. He went as far as freeing many Jihadists, only to point to them later, and not the actual secular opposition, as the enemy in order to justify, if not rationalise, the hard repression. At some point, this new turn became more real than Damascus wanted, as Jihadist fighters left Iraq to fight in Syria in an internationalisation of the local conflict. And then these fighters became funded by Turkey, Qatar and even Saudi Arabia as Jabhat al-Nusra, a local al-Qaeda franchise, was created and al-Qaeda chief al-Zawahiri declared a jihad against the regime, leading to Islamist fighters from the whole region including Libyans and Chechens to come to Syria. The internationalisation of the conflict came at a point when a US-Russia initiative would eventually make Damascus agree to destroy its chemical weapons arsenal. Obama, using Putin’s initiative as likely excuse, would step away from a direct US involvement to remove Bashar, even if many US foreign policy pundits stressed the opposite (as would Britain, as the Commons did not back PM Cameron who would have joined Obama). The US non-involvement made Russia and Iran de facto the only foreign powers involved, this on the side of Bashar in dealing with Sunni Islamist fighters in what was an unexpected salvation. The civil war – and war it had become – saw Damascus losing gradually against the secular and Islamist opposition forces, this prompting Iran and especially Russia now to take a step Obama had not been able to take – direct intervention on the side of Damascus – all the more given the American void and the rise of a new Sunni Islamist group known as Daesh. Russia had been an ally of Syria since the Soviet days, and was the main provider of military equipment to Damascus, also enjoying two bases in Syria. Putin, however, did not seem to be keen on getting involved directly in the conflict, seeing Syria as a side show even if Russia kept vetoing UN resolutions against Syria and was badly in need of an influence-booster globally, but also in the Middle East.   

At some point, the war involved up to 150,000 opposition fighters, 80% coming from 100 countries on the secular and mostly Jihadist side, while the Syrian forces, initially 200,000 strong were down to 50,000 (always comprising Sunni conscripts led by Alawite commanders) due to casualties and increasingly mass desertions. It was estimated that 1,000 opposition groups were fighting the Assad regime, some very small and local. The Assad regime was losing and was about to go away. By 2015, there was an assumption that the Assad regime could not survive while the West, that wanted Bashar out, was concerned about who would replace him, a Jihadist takeover not being seen as a viable option in what was increasingly viewed as a lose-lose game. In what could be seen as a bad joke given the Prigozhin story years later, Belarus was deemed to be a viable relocation option for Bashar and his family. While the tide was not good for Bashar, his mother Anisa would have reprimanded him, stressing that if his father and older brother had been around, this defeatist scenario would never have happened. All while Asma would seem to live in another parallel world, focused on design and artistic projects, and trying to defend her husband with her lady friends part of the leading families ruling the Middle East.    

Iran had been the reason why Bashar could cling to power as the war was not going his way. Iran’s conservative Islam was at odds with a secular Baathist ideology (even if only power really mattered), but it took a wider view of the conflict and its opposition to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region. Iran was not enough for Syria to prevail, which drove Qds Forces Commander Soleimani (who would meet his death in January 2020 with a US drone strike in Baghdad) to convince Russia’s Putin to get involved to stop the debacle that might also hurt Russian interests and see them lose two bases in which they had heavily invested. A Russian-Iranian cooperation pact was signed in July 2015. Putin’s masterstroke was to go to the UN after ten years of absence and announce Russia would be ready to lead the fight against international terrorists in Syria, very much stressing Daesh at the main target (on a quasi-funny note, there had been some 2,400 Russians identified as Daesh members but to be fair the terrorist organisation also included British Jihadists known as “The Beatles” due to their strong Liverpudlian accents).

When the first Russian bombings started, the targets turned out to be US-backed rebel forces. While Russia wanted to support a vital strategic ally, even if Putin held the Syrian leader in low esteem, its key motivation was also to challenge the West in what few saw as a proxy war. All of this only a few months before Russia went into Crimea, thus helping to refocus Western minds about what Russia really was about, and which Putin stressed again following his February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It should be stated that the US national security apparatus was not all enamoured by Obama’s cautious approach, since the red line had been crossed and nothing happened, even if his approach was also motivated by the instability seen in Iraq again with Daesh – the likes of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and new CIA David Petraeus wanted some direct intervention on the side of the “secular” opposition. But the problem was that Syrian anti-aircraft defences were Russian-made, and also operated, which the new direct Russian officially anti-terror groups involvement was making impossible to consider lest WW3 was possibly an option.    

As Coughlin aptly notes, Russian military’s preferred tactic is to apply brute force to achieve its objectives, irrespective of destruction and misery it may cause (including on its own). 4,000 artillery shells were fired per day at the city of Grozny during the Chechen war. Georgia in 2008 had also been a case of military ineptitude, which would be found again 15 years later in Ukraine. As Russia was increasingly looking at a direct intervention, the Libyan conflict, that had seen a mainly Franco-British operation successfully ejecting Gaddafi, was reviewed by Moscow as it essentially involved support to local militias that carried out the operations, a model William Hague had stressed as “the paradigm for future military interventions to remove rogue regimes”. Russia was very wary of committing ground forces, preferring to follow the Libyan business model, which led to the Gerasimov Doctrine of hybrid warfare. Thus Crimea became the test in 2014, when “little green men” did the initial job, allowing Putin to deny anything until Russia was effectively in control of the peninsula. Crimea, and the lack of Western response, doubtless bolstered Russia’s confidence in going into Syria in the Autumn of 2015, even if 3,000 miles away. Russia would lead a massive air campaign against both the secular and Daesh forces led by now well known if removed General Sergei Surovikin, assisted by the Wagner mercenary group which built its reputation in Syria before venturing into Africa. In a novel development, Russia and its leading officers were also financially rewarded for their support of Bashar in a model adopted later by Wagner Group’s Prigozhin and his various mines in the African Sahel.

While Russia was effectively a war gamechanger, and as Bashar was nominally in charge of Syria, he was no longer leading the war (even if he never was in practical terms and as Iran’s Qds Commander Soleimani had done it before). Russia decided every aspect of the war, making him likely feel he could be replaced if unhappy. Bashar maintained the appearance of being in control of the war for internal purposes, and kept to his state of denial about any atrocity committed in the name of his regime, even during BBC and CBS interviews in the midst of the onslaught. He increasingly stressed to the West that it was better for them that he kept leading Syria than Daesh as the nature of the war had changed its key dynamics. He even kept stressing that diplomacy was the best option, even inviting a French delegation to review what sensible settlement of the war could be achieved. The war was a complex military and foreign policy matter as allies were not liking each other, and foes were also not clear. Turkey supported both the secular opposition and Islamist terror groups, while the latter like Daesh would attack the former alongside Russia which it also fought against. The war had taken a turn in becoming an extension of the now old “war on terror” more than one focused on the current Syrian regime. The West wanted regime change in Damascus but did not want to be helping Daesh. This situation helped Russia (and Iran) take the lead out of a lack of clear Western commitment (based on rational reasons), which eventually led to Bashar staying in power against all odds when Racca, the Syrian capital of Daesh, was taken in October 2017 marking the real end of a conflict that would go on in various small locations for months to come. Bashar’s main challenge to his rule had been destroyed, and he thought he had won, even if in a pyrrhic mode, actually not making much mention of Russian and Iranian assistance.  Perhaps the only real winners in this conflict were Russia and Iran.  But did the Kremlin use that experience in the best of ways when looking at what came next?         

The Syrian tragedy deserves many studies, on too many awful topics, as there are so many questions left. The philosopher in each of us could ask whether “Bashar created the tragedy” or “the tragedy created Bashar” but it is far beyond the point today. How can Syria come back in the world of nations – even if the old-fashioned Western term may seem obsolete? (The same could be asked about Russia of course.) How can half a million dead be forgotten? How can 13 million displaced Syrians, nearly 60% of its 2012 population, many having unwittingly created immigration and refugee havoc in Europe since the mid-2010s, be humanly but also realistically dealt with? (the UN officially stated in August that there were 40 million asylum seekers in the world today, Syrians likely taking first place.) Will Assad be ever forgiven, even on tactical grounds, for what we know, this even as he shows some caution in dealing with the Druze these days? Will his re-joining the Arab community, as seen with the “practical” welcoming back from the Arab League in mid-2023 after 12 years of being shunned, be a sign of things to come? How will Israel, Qatar or even Egypt and Jordan react, not to mention the investment community? There are many questions around Assad, but the region seems to be also on another path with a different Israel, led by a Netanyahu captive of his never seen before coalition. Or, come to that, a Saudi Arabia and an Iran finally being on talking terms, thanks to a more foreign policy assertive Beijing, primarily focused on its world leadership rise and its features, all the more at a time of serious economic and demographic problems at home. It is clear that Saudi Arabia, now a BRICS member (with the UAE and fragile Egypt), and the Gulf states, redefining their economic and existential roots, are taking a more proactive leadership role in the region that would go beyond leading world golf and football for one, and luxury havens for the others. A visionary Saudi MBS stated a few years ago that the Middle East was the new Europe, even if the dream proved to be hard on the economic and political front recently, as seen with protests in Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and the deepening civil war in Sudan. 

One of the major Syrian issues we can see today for the region (and thus the world) is the Damascus regime having become a major exporter of drugs, its slow path in taking back refugees, and the Iranian-backed militias running around the country. While the UAE was a leading promoter of Syrian rehabilitation, other countries like anti-Bashar Qatar or US-following Kuwait were not keen, while Egypt and Jordan had strong question marks. Saudi Arabia changed its mood in the context of its own leadership rationale, lesser tensions with nemesis Iran and wanting the region more stable, taking the February 2023 earthquake as an opportunity to also change its tune and restart a dialogue with Bashar.

These developments have been indirectly a victory for both the Russian-Iran team and war as a viable option given that it secured Bashar’s regime. Russia also hopes that the Arab League’s rehabilitation will allow it to keep its gains while not focusing as much on Syria going forward, given its other main focus. While the US has reduced its military presence in the Middle East since Obama, the West seems to keep sanctioning Syria, but is too busy today with Ukraine to really care about a regional rehabilitation or trying to stop it. As for Syria itself, Bashar who stands “for Arab identity against Western hegemony” (his speech in Riyadh last May) does not seem apologetic for anything, and would even seek apologies from those in the region who opposed him, while likely using the drug trade as leverage in discussions with its neighbours and their deep concerns about its impact on their own countries. All in all, Bashar has not changed and has benefitted from a complex, and at times strange, geopolitical chessboard to keep ruling Syria, even if at times in vacillating ways. And today some Western analysts see Syria potentially as the last and odd addition to the new anti-Western axis in the making, though not yet very firm, comprising Russia/Belarus, China, North Korea and Iran.         

Coughlin’s book is very useful to remember Bashar’s journey and better understand the many features that led to the Syrian tragedy, even if it is full of facts and at times going back and forth with events, making the chronology harder to grasp, especially in the last twelve years. A thorough reading is required, all the more for those not being Middle East old hands, as events, especially during the civil war were plentiful. The story of Bashar and his family could have been one crafted by Shakespeare, and reminds us that freedom and democracy are rare features in today’s world, and that they are worth actively defending and strengthening, unless we all end up becoming residents of Ghouta.    

Warmest regards,

Serge

4-11-22

Dear Partners in Thought,

As we are living through times reminiscent not only of the forgotten Cold War, but also of the gradual rise to WW2, it should be useful to review “Danger Zone”, the new book on the collision course of China with the West by American scholars Hal Brands (Johns Hopkins, American Enterprise Institute) and Michael Beckley (Tufts, American Enterprise Institute). 2022 has seen a return to old geopolitical ways in the middle of Europe, with Russia’s failed rapid invasion of Ukraine and, more globally, with a China, under the leadership of an increasingly Mao-like Xi Jinping, that seemed ready to assert its ambitions through old ways at a time when it is also faced with serious internal challenges. The dual threat to both the West and the world order as we knew it was surprising to many (like me and…Angela Merkel amongst others) who genuinely thought that globalisation and the “economy first” would create enough incentives to (relatively, for some) powerful autocratic states never to return to old ways of supremacy assertion. Ukraine changed everything rapidly, putting Taiwan on the map of serious potential world issues. While Russia leads an ill-fated and, so far, unsuccessful existential drive not to be relegated to what it actually is, energy and nuclear weapons aside, China is the “potential” and “eventual” world leader in the making, the question being in how many years. While the world is getting upside down due to an erratic Russia and a soul-searching China, the West is getting weaker by the year led by a Civil War-like-divided America. Even the European Union, weakened by a Brexit that that never made Britain stronger, is divided among its members on many issues and policies, the latest being the funding of its energy needs. At this stage, China may be a factor of stability or one of crisis enhancement globally, the latter being the topic covered by Brands & Beckley.

Brands & Beckley start the book with a bang in January 2025, and a Taiwan invasion at a time when a truly-divided America is arguing anew who won the 2024 presidential race, with fights in the streets in a super-January 6 mode—this time across the whole land. The USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier is also hit by a missile, while Chinese special forces target Taiwanese leaders, and cyberattacks take down Taiwan’s power grid and an amphibious assault begins. While this scenario seemed outlandish in the early to mid-2010s, the world changed as China started to assert itself more forcefully but also Russia gradually changed the game, first starting via “little green men” and local Russian nationalists in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014 and then more clearly in February 2022 with the direct invasion of its European neighbour. Brands & Beckley put forward a sound explanation for China’s potential bellicose assertiveness, that would not be driven by seeking world leadership (as often stated) but more as a result of serious internal weaknesses, like poor demographics, slow economic growth and a more autocratic leadership style—as seen with the new (life?) term of Xi Jinping. China is still relatively strong, if only due to its size and its role in the world economy, but actually not so much as seen with the inept Zero Covid policies in large urban centres, that create economic and social havoc, with no real health basis, annoying the local population, and stressing a rather incompetent Chinese political leadership. Some should question the relevance of the Chinese Communist Party in 2022 in terms of its current relevance and societal usefulness—in the same way the out-of-this-world Iranian theocratic regime and its inept policies, that could likely fall at some point as younger and even older Iranians who want to live in the real world “don’t want it anymore”. The deal between the CCP and the middle class based on “travel the world and buy Western goods” is under potential threat (hopefully not, especially for Toorbee, a start-up I am close to and which is focused on making Chinese travel the world better as well as bringing good ideas back home). According to Brands & Beckley, the key Chinese problem lies in its “peaking power” status that makes it very dangerous. One of Beijing’s problems, that could accelerate a conflict, is that it has reached a point of historical weakness in its competition with the US for world supremacy, which might trigger a more hostile stance. Insecurity would be a driver, as it may have been for Putin, arguing that his Ukraine move (once the childish Peter the Great points are cast aside) is driven by the eastern NATO expansion and the direct threat to Russia (as if the West wanted to invade it… which makes eyes roll across all Western capitals). It would seem that China’s problems may be linked to its earlier economic successes that were not skilfully managed by a CCP leadership, also going back to a Mao-like era, with Xi Jinping who drew a line over the recent past (what was to be gained from the public dismissal “for health reasons” of former Premier Hu Jintao as if to make things of a new era clearer?). Brands & Beckley point to declining economic performance, misallocation of capital on a grand scale, an oversized property sector and rising uncontrolled debt—to which could be added issues with its grand “Belt and Road Initiative” scheme of investing in developing nations, like across Africa, and suffering many financial setbacks—all reminding observers of many of the lethal pitfalls that made the former Soviet Union eventually fall. This last point opens the debate on whether autocracies can really manage the economy well and, again, whether loyalty to the leader(s) is not always accompanied by incompetence that eventually destroys the leader(s)—Russia and Iran being ongoing cases in point.

China should be engaged more forcefully—not to make it more dangerous but to remind it that its best interests are to be part of the concert of key nations in a globalised world. China should learn from Turkey’s Erdoğan who seized the Ukraine crisis to play a positive moderating world role, at a time its image had not been very positive for years. It looks like China was taken by surprise by the Ukraine invasion, right after a warm declaration of mutual friendship with Putin’s Russia a few days before the invasion. China had to be neutral and not condemn Moscow but grew increasingly concerned as months went by and Putin failed militarily (both on the battlefield, and with his ill-fated mobilisation drive, that showed more Russians leaving the motherland than joining the army) and found itself gradually isolated, only finding firm support from the likes of North Korea or Iran. It should be noted that the US is not the only party to have issues with China, as seen with the recent visit of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Beijing, as he deals with the massive and increasingly Berlin-uncomfortable trade between the two countries. The West, as a whole, has good reasons to ensure that China stays on a globalised course and avoids Putin’s delusions that will mark Russia for generations likely after he is gone, willingly or not.

There are other books on China today that are worth mentioning, namely from Mandarin-speaking former Australian Premier Kevin Rudd’s “The Avoidable War”, which presents a more optimistic future of the challenging US/Western -China relationship. While always being attentive to the hostility of autocracies, and fighting its overt expressions like with Russia, the united West (hopefully also at home in the case of America) should always remain positive when dealing with China, as it is too big an opponent to have regardless of its many own challenges. A Western-China conflict would be a lose-lose scenario, which does not mean that the West should be too accommodating or forgetful of its founding values. The world should concentrate on stability, and sound globalisation should be its focus as a way of maintaining mutually-beneficial peace.

Warmest regards,

Serge

19-8-22

Dear Partners in Thought,

As I wrote about leadership-making in David Gergen’s recent book “Hearts Touched with Fire,” where leadership was deemed “good” in essence, I also stressed that some leaders were not always good in nature, often leading their countries and the world to a dangerous path. As such, I thought it would be good to do a Book Note on “The Age of the Strongman – How the Cult of the Leader threatens Democracy around the World” from the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman. The very gifted journalist and author (one of the best columnists at the FT today) tells us about those leaders who are easily identified as strongmen—and there are many today. These men (there is no woman yet) are household names, and sadly represent a large segment of the world population, usually in the developing world or (in the case of China) as the aspiring world leader. Rachman tells us more about Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Xi Jinping, but also Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro and others like daringly, Boris Johnson for whom he makes a strong case for strongmen club membership—however mild he may be in comparison to the others. He reminds us of earlier times, when many of those leaders in the developing or actually rising world, showed a more Western-like democratic flavor in their governing style (and policies) when they fully played the global cooperative game—unlike today also, in the new cold war scenarios we see unfolding.

The picture we get is worrying at two levels: i) these leaders, often representing very large countries, seem to increasingly rule the world or have a great impact on its events and ii) the democratic West is not healthy today, due to a combination of the rise of the extremes, a loss of basic values that made it, and the initially-unplanned adverse impact of tech, via truth-distorting and opinion-shaping social media: all affecting how people, and then voters, think. These leaders at both macro (country) and micro (corporates, business and investments) levels also create never-seen post-Cold War geopolitical risks, this including in parts of the West, when leadership can at times slip into practical authoritarianism in style, and increasingly in substance—as seen on a few occasions in post-Brexit Britain and in Trump’s America, even if in a mild way given the democratic context.

Vladimir Putin is emblematic of the old-fashioned strongman as seen with the invasion of Ukraine but also in the way Russia was governed since 2000, and especially since “Georgia” in 2008—not that Russia ever was a beacon of freedom and peaceful foreign policy-making. Even if George W. Bush in post-9-11 shock was able to “get a sense of his soul” in 2001. Twenty-two years is a long time in politics, though strongmen tend to stay in power forever—as shown with Xi’s plans for life ruling, or Erdoğan’s tenure in Ankara, that mirrors Putin’s. While Putin is naturally the first strongman to be addressed by Rachman, there is a large number of them that he focuses on. Rather than going into the features of each of them, I thought it was better to list them and their short chapters (about 15 pages on average) so as to let readers discover their details, while focusing on interesting aspects of the world of strongmen. The main feeling, admittedly very worrisome, arising from reading Rachman’s book, is that the West is not the world, and that the world is not democratic—also at a time when Western democracy is in peril due to its own issues today.

Rachman’s strongmen list starts with i) Putin – aptly named the archetype (2000); followed by ii) Erdoğan– from liberal reformer to authoritarian strongman (2003); iii) Xi Jinping – China and the return of the cult of personality à la Mao (2012); iv) Modi – strongman politics in the world’s largest, still-called, democracy (2014); v) Orban, Kaczynski and the rise of illiberal Europe; vi) Boris Johnson and Brexit Britain (2016); vii) Donald Trump – American strongman (2016); viii) Rodrigo Duterte and the erosion of democracy in South East Asia; ix) the rise of Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and the Netanyahu phenomenon (2017); x) far rightist Bolsonaro, in Brazil, radical leftist “Amlo” in Mexico and the return of the Latin American caudillo (2018); xi) Abiy Ahmed and democratic disillusionment in Africa (2019); xii) lonely Merkel, Macron and Europe’s struggle against the strongmen; xiii) George Soros, Steve Bannon and the battle of ideas. The book finishes with an epilogue on President Biden in the Age of the Strongman. It is worth noting that some strongmen like Lukashenko in Belarus, Hun Sen in Cambodia or Kim Jong-un in North Korea are not addressed, not as they are gentle ones, but as they do not play a key role (so far) in changing the climate of global politics (one could disagree with the erratic Kim, but selection is key when dealing with such a large population of leaders that would give political commentator and author David Gergen a strong headache).

While the stories of these strongmen make for fascinating reading in terms of how they got to power and managed their often evolving “leaderships,” Rachman makes very useful points as to the nature of these types of leaders and their times, as follows:

• The general backdrop is clear. Over the last 20 years, liberal values like freedom of speech, independent courts, and minority rights have been under assault all over the world and especially as strongmen developed their autocratic style and/or rule.

• The West and its elites, especially political and mediatic, mistook many future strongmen like Putin, Erdoğan, Modi, Orban, and even Xi as reformers who could take their countries on a Western liberal path, that was deemed the universal way post-Cold war. These future strongmen, some who changed very quickly like MBS, also showed unusual liberal and reformist “tendencies” as they started leading their countries when compared with past leadership, this for a short time as the “Riyadh hotel jail” episode showed. The West did not see what was coming.

• The strongmen are different in nature from the unchallenged autocrats (Xi in China, MBS in Saudi Arabia) to those in the middle (Putin in Russia—this arguably— , Erdoğan in Turkey) who are subject to some increasingly-vanishing forms of democratic constraints like elections, and limited press freedom—to those who operate in democracies, but show contempt for its norms, and keep eroding them (Orbán in Hungary, clearly Trump in the US, and even Johnson in Britain, who showed perhaps the mildest, but a real strongman-case on many occasions).

• The strongman model was furthered even among clear authoritarian regimes like China or Saudi Arabia, where the likes of Xi and MBS gradually concentrated power around them, and away from a more collective leadership, either from the Communist Party or the Saudi Royal family. Today Xi is becoming a new Mao with no term limits.

• The two emerging powers of the 21st century, China and India, have both gradually adopted strongman politics, while representing an immense part of the world population that, so far, seem to accept such a political modus operandi that projects nationalism, strength, and a strong hostility to weak (Western) liberalism.

• The strongmen are not all the same, but they are similar through four cross-cutting common features: i) the creation of a cult of personality; ii) contempt for the rule of law; iii) the claim to represent the real people against the elite a.k.a. populism, well shown with Donald Trump even today and; iv) a politics driven by fear and nationalism.

• Strongmen sell themselves as indispensable and the only ones to save the nation, making little or no distinction between the state and the leader. They stress their nationalism, cultural conservatism, little tolerance for minorities, and dissent for the interests of foreigners, however fair and valid.

• Very often, strongmen rule as a family, with Erdoğan having appointed his son-in-law as finance minister and Trump his own son-in-law to take a key role in foreign and domestic politics. Bolsonaro appointed his three sons to key official positions, including one as Ambassador to the US. Duterte’s candidate to succeed him in Manila was his daughter (but then a young Marcos also came in). Even Boris Johnson appointed his brother Jo to the cabinet and then the House of Lords, as an aside (my comment), not the most democratic or meritocratic of institutions.

• Strongmen, unlike the dictators of the 1930s, operate in a challenged but still globalized world, where international law theoretically prevails, though take advantage of the technologies of the 21st century, allowing them to connect directly with the masses and, in many ways, shape their views and/or control them. These developments can take different forms, with two extremes in motion: in the West, actual and aspiring populist strongmen rely on social media and the likes to shape and control the minds of voters, while in true autocracies like China, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube (the latter used by Alexei Navalny in Russia in earlier days to post online videos of the corruption of Putin and his inner circle) are blocked, and the internet is under strict online social control.

• Long periods of power allow strongmen to appoint loyalists in key positions, including in the courts, that have an impact on the daily life of their citizens. Duterte “restructured” the Filipino Supreme Court to his liking, while 4,000 judges were purged in Turkey during a state of post-coup emergency in 2016. Although not in the same environment, Trump (admittedly due to his timing in office and following a legal process) ensured the US Supreme Court became very conservative for some time, resulting in decisions (or no decisions) not reflecting the views of a vast majority of Americans today.

• Strongmen disdain institutions but love “the people”—this being associated with populism as still seen in 2022 with Trump and his die-hard base. Simple solutions for complex issues are put forward also, as they can be understood by the largest number, many of whom are not troubled with analytical processes. Simple messages like “Get Brexit Done” and “Build that Wall” were famously heard in recent years with great results for the strongmen.

• Legal and state institutions are often portrayed by strongmen as obfuscation tools used by the elites and a “Deep State” to protect themselves, and need to be broken when the ends justify the means. Similarly, shadowy foreigners are often portrayed by strongmen as plotting against the interests of the people, George Soros having been a case in point in Orbán’s Hungary.

• In most cases, strongmen fight for the people living in small towns and the countryside against the urban elites, often splitting the vote—when there is one—like in the US in 2016 and 2020—on educational lines. Trump lost heavily among college graduates, but gained 80% of the vote of non-college educated white men in both presidential elections. In the UK, 73% of school leavers without any qualifications voted Leave while 75% of voters with post-graduate degrees voted Remain.

• Nostalgic nationalism works also for the strongmen, hence the famous “Making America Great Again”, as they attract those poorly educated voters who have not benefitted the most, if at all, from globalization and experienced standards of living declines in recent decades. Bringing back the good times also works well in America or Britain, whatever the precise message. Similar messages are heard in Turkey, Hungary or Russia, with the Peter the Great approach about regaining territories, therefore past grandeur. Even Global Britain, that drove Brexit is linked to some nostalgia for an era when Britain was ruling the global waves, a sentiment not lost on the oldest voters even if they should remember the dreadful seventies better than a Victorian era they only read about.

To look at this week’s world, the already-disputed election of William Ruto in Kenya, a self-styled “hustler” and former chicken street farmer, also known as an African Bolsonaro, is a potential additional sign of a slide into authoritarianism and strongman ethos in Africa—even if resulting from an official democratic process. The news that former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison took over “discreetly” five ministries during the peak of the Covid era, this whatever the rationale for doing so, is another (admittedly mild as Western-flavored) example—very unusual for Australia—of the rising strongman era, even in the democratic West.

The Age of the Strongman brings three additional remarks: i) there were many strongmen in history in recent centuries like Louis XIV or Napoléon Bonaparte. If anything, strongmen always ruled “their” world; ii) the current era may make us realize that democracy, as we used to know it even in its more natural incarnation and fullest form in the West, is a very short and thus fragile experience in world history. There were only 12 democracies in the world in 1945; and iii) while being nationalist first, strongmen can work together especially against the West and its positions, as seen with their effective support or lack of condemnation of Russia, also for tactical reasons, in the context of the Ukraine invasion. In a rather low-key though telling development, China will send troops to a Russia-led military exercise in the Russian Far East where India, Mongolia and Tajikistan will also take part.

Liberal democracy was only ascendant for 20 years following the end of the Cold War, also reflecting a unipolar US world that non-Western strongmen started to attack as they built their power at home. The financial crisis of 2008, the ill-fated Iraq war, and rapid rise of China stopped taken-for-granted Western world dominance, even if the US stayed the leading world player. The rise of the strongmen and the fragility of Western style-democracy is also why it is imperative for liberal democrats not to be weak, and defend democracy with the utmost vigor. This fight is implying a renewed Western focus on education in order to best fight against the domestic dangers of social media-driven populism and its vote-grabbing and skill-less politicians of our times.

Gideon Rachman’s book is very dense, going through all the key strongmen of the moment and their main themes, like migration, which became a central tactical focus of the far-right parties in Europe since 2015. The Age of the Strongman is a book that needs to be read thoroughly and in a focused way, so rich are its contents and consequential its essence—all the more for the West, as we would like it to be, and how it should react to stop the authoritarian tide.

Warmest regards,

Serge