The year 2024 was one of surprises, and its dramatic conclusion, the capitulation of the Syrian Arab Republic, is only but a singular example of this trend. The country’s collapse marked the end of 61 years of Ba’ath Party rule and an astonishing 53 years of the Assad dynasty. Yet, for all the predictable challenges this momentous downfall would bring, many in the Washington D.C. establishment widely celebrated the event. In their minds, this was just another dictator overthrown by “the people.” While Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez al-Assad are certainly worthy of contempt, the beltway elite seem to have fallen into a familiar rut, one which has plagued American foreign policy for the entirety of the 21st century. While the same policymakers who orchestrated the disastrous U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya are popping champagne bottles at the sight of this latest example of Western-backed regime change, they willfully ignore the important lessons those conflicts should have taught them.
The overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 under the guise of his Iraqi regime possessing Weapons of Mass Destruction and allegedly having ties to Al-Qaeda led to a horrific sectarian conflict and was instrumental to the rise of ISIS. In comparable fashion, Mummar Gaddafi was overthrown for human rights violations by a NATO coalition which took advantage of an already destabilizing civil war in 2011. As with Iraq, Libya ended up in a similarly terrible situation after Western intervention. Iraq and Libya should have been enough proof of what happens when the United States and others design their foreign policies around the idea that spreading democracy will in and of itself make the world a safer place.
But unsurprisingly to those who have been taking notes from the failures of the past, Syria’s new regime is beginning to feel like deja-vu. News outlets like the BBC and Reuters started reporting on March 7 about mass killings and persecution of Alawites, Christians, Druze, and Kurds. The perpetrator, of course, being the new regime in Damascus. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 1,225 civilians have been killed since the 6th of March. More liberal estimates report significantly higher figures.
None of this should come as a shock, given the primary group in control of Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is a Sunni Islamist offshoot of Al-Qaeda. The other benefactor of Syria’s collapse, the Syrian National Army, is effectively an auxiliary for the Turkish occupation forces located in the north of the country. In addition to mass killings, these rebels have clashed with U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces located in the north-east. For all of the establishment’s talk of NATO’s value as a stabilizing force, the irony is doubled by the fact that U.S. and Turkish proxies are fighting each other.
Similarly ironic is the establishment’s contempt for people like Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard, who have been effectively vindicated by these developments. As Gabbard put it during her confirmation hearing: “I have no love for Assad or Gaddafi or any dictator. I just hate al-Qaeda. I hate that we have leaders who cozy up to Islamist extremists, minimizing them to so-called rebels. Syria is now controlled by an Al-Qaeda offshoot, HTS, led by an Islamist Jihadist who danced in the streets on 9/11, and who was responsible for the killing of many American service members.”Donald Trump himself raised concerns in the 2016 Republican Primary Debate regarding American support for Syrian rebels and its consequences. It is not unreasonable to hold, as these figures do, that the United States should realistically assess risk and acknowledge unintended consequences before making crucial foreign policy decisions. It is entirely legitimate to question, for example, whether we should support militant groups that hold the convictions of the 9/11 hijackers. We should also question the idea of fighting Iran, ISIS, Russia, and Syria at the same time. Yet the foreign policy establishment has relentlessly attacked those who do not fall in line, ignoring their duty to prioritize eradicating the groups which have most concretely harmed Americans. At the same time that the establishment prioritized regime change in Syria, ISIS has carried out numerous deadly terrorist attacks in America and against our European partners. As oppressive as regimes like those of Assad, Gaddafi, and Hussein were, they were certainly not the greatest threat to American servicemen in the Middle East, especially when these regimes were themselves trying to combat Islamic extremism.
The absolute disregard for the lessons learned in regime changes of the past, such as those done in response to Saddam Hussein and Mummar Gaddafi, represent the worst aspect of these interventions. Both resulted in civil war, the rise of jihadist organizations, continued Western involvement, and growing distrust and resentment of the United States among local populations. Did these countries become more democratic and stable as intended? Iraq is now a vassal of Iran and Libya has two governments competing for legitimacy. Also ignored are the significant human rights violations which have occurred as a direct result of these regime change efforts, such as Iraq’s lowering of the marriage age to 9 years old and rampant child slavery in Libya.
Many societies in situations such as these are diverse and hold beliefs which conflict with the confines of democracy. It was authoritarian despots who were able to keep societies as backwards as those in the Middle-East together. In countries akin to these, the two choices are almost always tyrannical anarchy or tyrannical dictatorship. This isn’t to say that those options are fair or even remotely desirable, but these are often the only realistic options in socially backwards and institutionally corrupt areas. In the context of the Middle-East, the United States is blatantly hypocritical with its condemnation of Syria when despotic countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia are considered our regional allies. This isn’t to say that these countries shouldn’t be our partners, but claiming the banner of liberalism and democracy as the motivation behind our foreign policy has led to blatantly obvious hypocrisy and the current instability in the region.
For all of our politicians’ engrossment with the interventions in the aforementioned countries, though, these conflicts have done little to enhance our security and have only caused the rise of new malignant actors. States like Iran, as well as non-state actors like ISIS and Shia militant groups, have been stimulated by hawkish foreign policy. It has put our American servicemen in the region at risk and increased the probability of violent terrorist attacks in the West. Additionally, the instability in the Middle-East has caused a refugee crisis in Europe, making these very terrorist attacks easier to carry out and putting burdens on the social welfare systems of Western countries. With all of these unforeseen consequences coming to fruition, it seems quite clear that the American people have been made less, not more, safe by the interventions of our government in these far-off regions of the world. But even further than that, the foreign peoples which these interventions were supposed to assist have not prospered either. Instead, the decapitation of leadership has allowed for the breakdown of the rule of law in already fragile societies and degraded their quality of life in regions where poverty and desperation were already prevalent.
In an inversion of the promises made by the architects of these interventions, the security of Americans and the wellbeing of people in the Middle-East have deteriorated, not improved. If we persist in our trust of the foreign policy establishment, one which has shown repeatedly their refusal to learn their lessons, and are thus destined to repeat their mistakes, it is inevitable that we will continue the cycle of chaos and destruction that has reigned for the last 20 years.
