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Getting Serious in Syria

(American Interest) Michael S. Doran and Salman Shaikh - By mid-July, at least 1,400 people had been killed in Syria and more than 10,000 were missing. These numbers are bound to grow. Though still in power, Bashar al-Assad had proven incapable of vanquishing the protestors - not, evidently, because he has been less ruthless than his father, but because Syrian society itself has changed. His regime is now locked into a grindingly slow process of irreversible decline. To minimize human suffering and ensure the speediest rise of a new order hospitable to the U.S., Washington must first jettison the completely unsupportable pretense of a regime-led transition toward democratic reform. This policy only encourages Assad to think that he can ride out the protests. Instead, the U.S. should be working assiduously to convince Assad to go, and to go soon. Michael S. Doran is senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution. Salman Shaikh is director of the Brookings Doha Center.
2011-08-01 00:00:00
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