The New York Times Opinion columnist Thomas Friedman and the Opinion editor Daniel Wakin discuss how and why the United States should use its influence in Syria following the ousting of its longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad.
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Daniel Wakin: Tom, I wanted to talk to you about the situation in Syria and what it means for the Middle East as a whole. It’s been almost two weeks since Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, was ousted.
After about 13 years of civil war, this has been, as you’ve written, a game changer for the Middle East.
So I thought we could take the opportunity to talk through the ramifications and how the Trump administration should respond. But first, I have a question. You’ve been covering and writing about the Middle East for a long time. For basically your entire career you’ve seen different versions of the Assad regime in Syria.
Did you ever think this day would come?
Thomas Friedman: I certainly couldn’t have predicted it, but I could have hoped for it.
You said this happened after 13 years of civil war in Syria, but actually, the more relevant date is that it happened after more than 50 years of Assad family rule in Syria, and that is to say, an iron-fisted tyrannical rule.
The elimination of that iron fist in Syria can go one of two ways. In the Middle East some countries implode when the iron fist is removed and some countries explode — that is all the different shards spread out in 360 degrees. And the reason the lifting of the iron fist from Syria is so important is Syria is a country that explodes. That is because it contains within its borders the sort of miniature Middle East of Sunni, Shiites, Kurds, Druze, Christians, even a few Jews in the past. And so in times of insecurity, those groups reach out for help and outside countries reach in to tilt Syria.
So if you think of Syria as the keystone of the whole Levant, the eastern Mediterranean, the keystone has both crumbled and it’s also exploding. How it is managed in the next few months, days and years will shape the next 50 years of the Middle East.
Wakin: When you say how it’s managed, who does the managing here?
Friedman: Well, if you know, would you call me? Because that’s the problem. The Syrian takeover was engineered by a rebel Islamist faction and we know very little about them.
They have roots tracing back to Al Qaeda. They have a track record of governing in northern Syria, though, in a very non-Al Qaeda-like way, in a much more pluralistic way. And now that basically the whole country has fallen into their lap, everyone’s waiting to see how they emerge.
I suspect how they emerge will be a merger between the Syrian society they’ve inherited and whatever ideology they come to this task with. That is all to be determined.
I am 51-49, slightly hopeful that that merger with Syrian society in its full richness, with this group wanting to succeed, will tilt the country in a positive direction.
Wakin: If it does go in a positive direction and Syria emerges as a free-market democracy, what implications does that have for countries in the region?
Friedman: It has enormous consequences. Let’s start first and foremost with Iraq. Iraq in the wake of the U.S. invasion has developed its own pluralistic democracy — it’s had six parliamentary elections — but it’s a deeply flawed and fragile democracy. The country is deeply penetrated by its neighbor, Iran. Its economy is dominated by Iran.
Any positive development in Syria would put pressure on Iraq to follow suit to some degree. And that would mean to begin to develop parties that are nonsectarian. So that could be the upside potential.
The downside is that instability in Syria, if Syria really unravels. There are some 40,000 ISIS prisoners being held in camps in eastern Syria by Kurds. They’re mostly actually women and children, but not all of them. I visited their camp about nine months ago with the U.S. CENTCOM commander. Oh my God, that would spread instability all across the region. These are people that are held in these detention camps in eastern Syria because their own home governments don’t want them back.
Wakin: Let’s pivot to the United States. The U.S. played a major role in nation building and dictator removing in Iraq. Clearly Syria and Iraq are very different, but are there lessons to be learned from what the U.S. did in Iraq regarding Syria? And more generally, what should the United States’ role be in Syria?
Friedman: Well, that’s a very good question, very relevant to today. We at The Times had an article about former Syrian Army soldiers in President Assad’s army being asked to turn in their weapons and register with the government with the promise that if they have not been involved in any kind of atrocities, they will be allowed to go free.
This is very important because the single stupidest thing the Bush administration did in Iraq was after toppling Saddam, basically de-Ba’ath-ifying the country and the army and basically telling anyone who was a soldier, a schoolteacher, member of the Ba’ath Party, to go home. And of course that triggered the insurgency because they went home and said, “Oh, you talking to me? Well, I’m just going to take my gun and go home and the first chance I get, I’m going to turn that gun back on you.”
And so there clearly has been some learning going on in Syria to try to avoid that scenario.
Wakin: What lessons do you think the United States should have learned from Iraq and apply to Syria?
Friedman: Well, Syria is so different from Iraq. Iraq, we did top down. We are the ones who pulled down Saddam’s statue in Baghdad. In Syria, it happened just the opposite. It happened bottom up. So they own it and that’s a very good thing, that’s a very important thing.
Secretary of State Blinken has been out there trying to nudge these insurgents in the right direction. I think that’s very important.
But I think the Trump administration should roll up its sleeves and if Marco Rubio becomes secretary of state, get on a plane and get out there and use as much American influence as possible to tilt this Syrian government in the right direction. Nothing could be more important.
When you think of the money we spent in Iraq — and the number starts with a “t” as in trillion — and the fact that this happened in Syria basically for free, and that if we tilted it in the right direction, it can have enormous regional implications — positive ones, the ones I hope for from Iraq. There’s an enormous stake here.
One has to hope that Trump will get over his isolationist instincts and take seriously the fact that for a relatively low price in both time and money, we could have a very big positive outcome if this is done right. And by the way, if we don’t do this, then Turkey will, Israel will, Russia will, according to their interests.
I think this is going to be an early test for the administration whether it’ll apply the JD Vance approach to Ukraine, “I don’t care what happens in Ukraine,” to Syria. Or whether it’ll take a much more conventional U.S. diplomatic approach of, “Let’s visit the Middle East before it visits us.”
Wakin: Can you elaborate a bit on what exactly the consequences would be if the U.S. ducks responsibility for Syria?
Friedman: If the U.S. removed its troops we have in eastern Syria — they’re put there to prevent ISIS from returning — and just walked away, you’ll have a free-for-all. It’ll be Turkey versus Kurds. It’ll be Syrians versus Syrians. Israel will move in. It’ll be a complete vacuum.
The most immediate impact will be on the European Union because you’ll get a huge outflow of refugees. And you’ll have a failed state right in the heart of the Middle East. That will be an immediate threat to Jordan, which is a vital U.S. ally. And if Jordan in any way collapses, then you have no buffer between Israel and Iraq, and you’re off to a Middle East that will very quickly, like a wildfire, be engulfed in instability.
Wakin: I take it you think the stakes are quite high.
Friedman: I think the stakes are quite high, and I think that the effort, relatively speaking, compared to Iraq, is relatively low.
But again, I don’t know how much Marco Rubio has thought about this, how much he knows — I don’t know. Trump has also appointed some Middle East envoys — the father of his son-in-law. What any of these people know about the Middle East, I have no idea.
I don’t see a Henry Kissinger among them, but maybe I’ll be surprised.
Wakin: You’ve written that the big challenge facing Donald Trump as president will be weak states, not strong states. Can you briefly elaborate on that, what you mean by that?
Friedman: If you think of the U.N. in 1945, right after it was founded, had lots of little countries, countries that in the past were governed by empires.
It was a good time then to be a weak little state. You had two superpowers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., throwing money at you, wheat, rebuilding your armies, educating your kids. Climate change was moderate. Populations were low. No one had a cellphone. And China was not in the World Trade Organization so everyone could be in the low-wage industries business.
All that flips in the early 21st century because now no super power wants to touch you if you’re a little country, especially a failing one, because all they win is a bill in their view. Climate change is hammering these countries. Populations have exploded. Everyone has a cellphone. And China’s in the World Trade Organization so nobody can be in the low-wage textile business, metaphorically speaking. As a result, a lot of these weak little states are just fracturing.
It starts with internal migration, often driven by climate events and deforestation. That leads to external migration, leads to state failure and state collapse. And the Middle East is home to many of them: Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon.
And so all of these are states that exist on the map, but they are basically hemorrhaging inside, and in this day and age, these countries are, I like to say, too late for imperalism. And I’m not advocating imperialism. I simply mean that no other outside power is going to come and take them over and organize their affairs. And they failed at self-government. We’ve never been here before.
So we have a problem that we don’t know how to deal with — the problem of managing weakness. Our secretary of state traditionally knew how to manage strength: the strength of the Soviet Union, and the strength of China, and the strength of America. But managing weakness, oh my goodness, that is hell on wheels.
Wakin: Thank you so much, Tom, it’s been great talking to you.
Friedman: You too, Dan, anytime.
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