The Flirt: Syria's Bashar el Assad

Yo-Yo President: Syria's Bashar el Assad. (Salah Malkawi/ Getty Images)

When Henry Kissinger was asked about Hafez el-Assad, the dictator who ruled Syria from 1971 to 2000, Kissinger, who had a soft place in his heart for dictators, described him as "a man of extraordinary brilliance and a good sense of humor, he was also ruthless and passionately nationalistic." Someone posing as Kissinger on Twitter has recently been zinging Bashar el Assad, who succeeded his father in 2000, pretty well: "Assad can't lift emergency law because those protesting for its removal are causing an emergency." And: "Syria's Assad names Lee Harvey Oswald chief conspirator behind regime protests." And: "I see that Bashar al-Assad has inherited his late father's people management skills. I know Hafez would be proud of his boy today."

Journalists love to call tyrants "an enigma." It's a euphemism that suggests the journalists are either clueless or not permitted in print, under the constraints of objectivity, to call repressive tyrants by name, and describe their fumblings accurately as such. Bashar el Assad has been in power since 2000, succeeding his father, who'd been in power almost 30 years by the time he died that year. Like his father, Bashar el Assad is as illegitimate a ruler as they come: unelected, and in power only because he uses his police state's machinery, and its bullets when necessary, without reserve. He calls it "stability" (in a recent Wall Street Journal interview) that reflects well on Syria, in the midst of other countries' revolutions. The stability didn't last very long. Within weeks protesters were taking to Syria's streets. And Bashar was mowing them down or arresting them.

He's not an enigma. He is a flirt: he talks reform, then steps back. He talks negotiations with Israel, then steps back. He talks liberalization of the economy, then steps back. He is an autocratic commoner: doing whatever he can to stay in power while pretending to have a grander strategy, which, so far as Syria is concerned, amonts to little more than keeping its opponents off balance by playing the Iran-Hamas-Hezbollah axis to its advantage.

Here's a fresh new profile of Bashar el Assad.

See Also:

• Preemption Jitters: Syria Talks Reforms
• Syria, the Golan, and Peace with Israel
• The Dud Behind Syria's Alleged Back-Channel Negotiations With Washington