On Wednesday, some Syrians went to the polls to elect a new president. The result, of course, is preordained: a victory for Bashar Assad.
Perhaps the world’s most infamous pariah, Assad has ruled Syria for the last 21 years. And this week, he will be reelected to a new, seven-year term by a handsome margin. Syria’s presidential election is far less a legitimate contest than it is a self-organized reaffirmation of Assad family rule. But it’s also icing on the cake for a man who nearly lost his throne during earlier periods of Syria’s now 10-year running civil war.
The United States and its allies are naturally displeased about Syria’s current state of affairs. A day before Syrians cast their ballots under the watchful eye of Assad’s security services, the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, and Italy issued a joint statement denouncing the election as a sham. These allies have a point: There is no such thing as a free and honest election in Syria. Many Syrians would agree with the sentiment. Yet, while accurate, Western statements such as these are meaningless in terms of the cold, hard reality. And that reality is clear: Assad has essentially won the civil war through brute force and an uncompromising approach to his political opponents. The 55-year-old Assad is now more concerned with consolidating his own power and eliminating erstwhile allies turned rivals (a top target being his wealthy first cousin, Rami Makhlouf).
After 10 years of civil war, Syria today is a poor, broken, desperate country with millions of people in poverty, millions more internally displaced, and society badly broken — perhaps irreparably. Trapped between a severe banking crisis in Lebanon and Western sanctions, the Syrian government now relies on mafia-like tactics to generate cash. The armed opposition, which once held some of Damascus’s suburbs and launched mortars into the center of the capital, is now cloaked in extremism and confined to running its own pseudo-state in Idlib province. Syrian Kurds and certain Sunni Arab tribes, thanks in large part to the protection of the U.S. Air Force and the presence of nearly 1,000 U.S. troops, are hunkered down in the northeast and east.
Syria’s neighbors, meanwhile, are slowly acknowledging that Assad isn’t going anywhere fast. Traditional Assad adversaries in the civil war, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, have already reopened their embassies. Oman has sent its ambassador back to the Syrian capital. Saudi Arabia, one of Assad’s fiercest foes and an early bankroller of the opposition movement, is apparently exploring what it will take to let bygones be bygones.
Back in Washington, reality still hasn’t set in.
U.S. officials are still waxing eloquently about the necessity of a compromise. This is to pretend that negotiations are even plausible at this late stage in the game. The U.N.-led peace process, which aims to bring the Assad government and his centrist opposition foes together, is in a coma. Assad has filibustered the U.N.-facilitated attempt to rewrite Syria’s constitution and reorganize Syria’s political system.
The Biden administration may not use the phrase “regime change” to describe its Syria policy, but this is what Washington is still seeking to accomplish. Whether it’s by squeezing the Syrian government’s finances through sanctions, scaring off foreign reconstruction funds, or using U.S. troops to prevent Damascus from accessing eastern oil fields, the objective is clear. Sure, Washington may no longer be running a chaotic covert assistance program for anti-Assad factions (former President Donald Trump had the good sense to terminate this $1 billion program, which, if anything, convinced Russia and Iran to redouble its military support to the Syrian government). But U.S. policy in Syria is still operating in a different time, even if most of the Middle East has moved on.
Assad will win this election by a landslide. He will continue firming up his power and keeping his key constituents in line, whether by extortion, threats, or force. Syria itself will be semi-independent, with Russia and Iran scooping up key industries and competing for lucrative contracts as payment for saving Assad from death, exile, or a war crimes tribunal.
For the U.S., this is a repugnant end to a repugnant story. Strategically, however, Assad’s survival won’t make a difference in U.S. power, prestige, or prosperity. Washington shouldn’t pretend otherwise. It’s time to wake up to reality.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
