That we have carried three editorials on the Syrian uprising in the course of this year, indicates how this issue has dominated the news and the attention of the major powers. The uprising which commenced in January of 2011, will be going into its third year. At that time it was really the conservative Middle Eastern powers which were initially focusing attention on it, and providing assistance to the rebel groups.
The transformation, this month, of the various rebel groupings into a Syrian National Coalition, recently given global recognition by the so-called Friends of Syria conference in Morocco, and promised further help through an Assistance Coordination Unit, indicates a Western perception that the momentum is shifting more decisively towards the rebels, though the powers still retain concern about their cohesiveness. And that decision has itself been given force by a recent statement from Moscow intimating that the point at which the Syrian government could have prevailed in the struggle has now passed and that, by implication, President Assad needs to reconsider its position.
Over time, therefore, the relative loneliness of Saudi Arabia and other small conservative Arabian regimes, mainly monarchies, has now ended, with these countries now finding persistent support from, in particular the European Union. The EU leaders have resisted a recent call from Britain and France to lift the embargo established on arms support for the rebels. But the fact that these two countries are in the forefront of such an initiative, which the United States does not, up to now, support, suggests that they perceive possibilities for another Libyan intervention, though initially limited.
So the major powers, in effect led by the EU, and as in some degree occurred during the uprising against Gaddafi in Libya, are beginning to align themselves, in anticipation of a defeat of Assad. Their aim is clearly to achieve an influential role in developments in a post-Assad Syria, a country, which while not a major oil producer, has always been considered geopolitically critical. That the Russians, who had themselves long recognized this in terms of their military presence in Syria, are beginning to change their tone, suggests that they do not wish to be isolated in the aftermath of an Assad defeat.
But clearly too, all the powers, including the larger Middle Eastern states, perceive the importance of establishing a strategic presence in this area as the Syrian imbroglio appears to be coming to a conclusion. President Obama, as he did on the Libyan issue, is probably not averse to seeing other countries in the Middle Eastern arena and in Europe taking the lead at this point. His widely-praised speech in Cairo in 2009, recognized early the possibility of political change in countries located in an area where Islamism is once again on the march – now known as the Arab Spring – this time through the support of critical countries like Iran, and now a Muslimist-ruled Egypt.
The President, however, appears to have adopted as a strategic principle, that it is no longer the role of the United States to maintain a singular diplomatic dominance in the area, and that other beneficiaries of Middle Eastern oil should be complementary participants in the diplomacy of facilitating whatever political transitions are to take place in the area. This strategy was clearly visible in the US’s decision-making during the uprising against Gaddafi, and it instructive that Obama deliberately sought the intermediation of a domestically preoccupied President Morsi of Egypt in dealing with the recent Israeli-Hamas confrontation in Gaza.
From that perspective, the Syrian conflict is seen as an episode in a continuing reorganization of Arab regimes (and including the North African states) inspired by the Muslimist-Salafist popular uprising, with the outcome of that conflict having implications for the pressures being placed on other Arab regimes, in particular the monarchies. There is obviously a perception that the religious element in the political uprisings is not something that the US can easily influence or control. They are well aware of the interest in, and influence of, Iran whose earlier revolution had an influence in countries like Syria and Iraq and therefore on the wider Muslim dominated arena.
In this situation, the Western powers and Russia have for some time been preoccupied with developments in Iran, the United States being well aware that whether or not it has claimed victory in Iraq, for example, these countries are highly susceptible to the influence of Shiite Islam. This accounts for what appears to be a strong anxiety on the part of countries like Britain and France, as leading members of the EU, to exert a certain presence in the Syrian conflict, as they did in Libya, in order to be in a significant position to influence events in the post-civil war period, and to limit the influence of Shiite Islamism whether it emanates from Iran or elsewhere. But to the Russians this must seem like a tall order.
It is not unlikely, that as the conflict in Syria comes to a head, Britain and France will seek to force a decision for identifiable European material assistance to the rebel forces of the Syrian National Council, whose cohesiveness, they insist, must be strengthened as the price of further European support.
President Obama’s present stance appears to be to adopt a more wait-and-see attitude, and to let the Europeans move to the forefront. Yet he will know that the stakes are high in terms of perceptions of the United States taking a front or back seat as the conflict deepens. He must be aware there will certainly be domestic pressures on him to take a more frontal position by those who believe that while Syria’s situation must be critically managed, it is Iran that must be held at bay, and not allowed to have an influential role in post-Assad Syria.
