It would have been unthinkable, even a mere few months ago, that Syria’s civil war would suddenly reach a new stage. The rapid collapse of the Bashar al-Assad government is the beginning of a new stage in the country and a symbolic end of an ideology that played a pivotal role in the region. The end of Ba’athism, as a political thought, will expose new geopolitical risks and instability in the Middle East, for which the world must be ready.
The recent end of al-Assad’s rule is significant because it also marks the end of his party, the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, whose ideology shaped the politics of Arab nations for decades throughout modern history. Throughout its history, the goal of Ba’athism was uniting the Arab nations of the Middle East and North Africa into one anti-imperialist Arab state, and it became the driving motivation for many unification experiments between independent nations. In addition, alliances were formed to weaponize the trade of oil resources to challenge Western economies and their support for wars waged by Israel.
This symbolized the economic doctrine of centralization borrowed from other socialist regimes of the era but with a distinct rejection of class struggle in favor of a focus on ethnic unity.
For all of its positive and negative effects on politics, the roughly 80 years of Ba’athism in the region attempted to cultivate a doctrine of cultural unity across borders and divisions. Its fall may be a cause for celebration to many today, yet this is by no means a step toward a more peaceful Middle East.
The past two decades of Western involvement in Iraq and the new developments in Syria indicate that, in the absence of centralized state governments, new coalitions, either supported by the West or formed out of a motley of rebel factions, become incapable of restoring order. This unrest is particularly evident in Iraq and Syria, which has demonstrated numerous ethnic, tribal, religious and linguistic clashes over the past 25 years. The current situation in Syria is still risky enough for the interim government to collapse due to infighting and a new power vacuum to give birth to new terrorist groups similar to ISIS in the region.
Syria and Iraq, whose borders were on their own already arbitrarily drawn by colonial powers, collapsed into warring factions when the ideology that kept them united as nation-states became weakened through political decline. Without a social principle that seeks to bind the various peoples of the region together, the ethnic and religious minority groups that make up these factions are now less and less likely to reunite back into the original borders of these countries. In the case of Syria specifically, new reports indicate hostilities toward the Christian and Alawite religious minorities as well as the Kurdish.
The leadership of the current factions’ loose coalition, which defeated Assad, continues to make promises for national unity, but effective leadership is still absent, and a new humanitarian crisis born out of sectarian violence appears likely without a firm commitment to centralizing power.
The very concept of centralized nation-states with cohesive governments is becoming a thing of the past in this region, where a state of uncertainty makes territories ripe for strategic takeover and exploitation. Russia, Iran, Turkey and the United States are the four players whose actions will matter significantly in the coming years. The individual armed groups within every active civil war and frozen conflict today have allegiances toward and support from one of these powers. The growing instability in Syria — as a result of a lack of central government and unifying thought — provides a tenuous opportunity for Russia to maintain its naval presence in the Mediterranean, for Israel to advance into Syrian lands with U.S. support and for Turkey to consider cross-border operations into lands held by Kurdish militias.
Each of these actions is a strategic risk for competing powers to come into contact through new proxy wars, and it is, therefore, essential to restore centralized authority in the affected countries before further escalations occur.
The U.S. government continues to pay a price for the aftermath of both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its failure to establish order. But with the United States having interests in open access to the Eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, the foreign policy of the new administration must urgently prioritize establishing channels to mediate and control the process of statecraft. They must do so not independently but by coordinating with other local players, ideally under the supervision of an international body such as the United Nations. The risk of more violent terrorist attacks both in the region and around the world can quickly rise in the absence of unified national governments. The primary responsibility of the United States now is to play a humanitarian role and prevent the fragile conditions of Syria and Iraq from devolving into further anarchy through sectarian hostilities fueled by geopolitical powers. The social movement, Ba’athism, that once kept such countries united despite regional differences is dead and the process toward reuniting, rebuilding and restructuring them must require a sincere international effort that prioritizes humanitarian concerns.
Deniz Gulay is a sophomore double-majoring in history and Russian.
Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.