For eight years, the Syrian civil war appeared over. Turkish-backed rebel fighters held their lines, but Bashar Assad’s regime controlled most major cities. Though Syria might not have been united under a single government, Assad’s adversaries considered the war over.
Many in Congress considered Assad anathema, but even his Arab adversaries had begun to consider rapprochement. On May 19, 2023, Assad traveled to Saudi Arabia to attend the Arab League summit, the first time he had received an invitation since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011. A year later, he attended again, traveling to Bahrain.
Frankly, Arab leaders were not the only ones to extend a tentative olive branch to the chemical weapons-using, mass-murdering, terrorist-sponsoring, Western-educated eye doctor.
Democrats and Republicans alike criticized Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the director of national intelligence, for her geopolitical views, including her statement that Assad “is not the enemy of the United States” and her 2017 trip to Damascus just weeks before Assad’s Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. In recent months, Arab diplomats said President Joe Biden or national security adviser Jake Sullivan, acting on his behalf, quietly dispatched National Security Council aide Brett McGurk to Oman to negotiate U.S.-Syria rapprochement with Assad’s representatives.
While Assad remained a pariah rhetorically, the personnel most likely to staff a Kamala Harris administration likely would have pursued a slow policy of reintegration.
The Turkish-backed Syrian opposition may now be as odious and murderous as Assad, but its sweep through northwest Syria, reversing six years of war in just 48 hours, should illustrate a lesson to those who seek diplomacy with rogues, not only in Syria but elsewhere.
Fifteen years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chided critics of her outreach to the Taliban. “You don’t make peace with your friends,” she said. “You have to be willing to engage with your enemies.” What she and aides such as Sullivan and McGurk fail to understand, though, is that compromise with enemies is always less preferable than an enemy’s collapse. Sometimes, the compromise and incentives inherent in diplomacy infuse legitimacy into an adversary whose internal weakness, corruption, and rot could otherwise bring it to the brink of collapse.
Rapprochement with Assad might make sense if he were to rule Syria for another 25 years — it does not if he has only 2.5 months left. The same is true with Iran. The Islamic republic is a zombie regime that no longer enjoys legitimacy among its civilians. Before Biden or Trump administration officials reach out to Tehran, they might ask whether Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, like Assad, sits atop a solid foundation or rests upon termite-ridden wood rot.
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To be fair, the problem is not partisan, nor did it start with Clinton. As a National Security Council aide under President George H.W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice was instrumental in his “Chicken Kiev” speech in which the president visited Ukraine to urge it remain in the Soviet Union to preserve the agreements he had earlier negotiated with Moscow.
Cheerleading from some quarters aside, the Turkish-backed rebels may never reach Damascus. After all, their ideological compatriots in the Islamic State fell short of Baghdad a decade ago just weeks after the caliphate’s momentum seemed unstoppable. Nevertheless, rapprochement is not always desirable, especially with regimes that sponsor terrorism and kill their own people. Sometimes, a pariah deserves to be a pariah, and the best diplomacy is no diplomacy.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.