What Is U.S. Policy Toward Syria?

(Washington, D.C.): In recent weeks,
the Syrian dictatorship of Hafez Assad
has signaled its abiding malevolence in a
number of ways. These include:

• by conducting offensively
  oriented and provocative special
  forces maneuvers near the Golan
  Heights;
• by Syria’s alleged
  complicity in the deadly bombing
  of the U.S. barracks in Saudi
  Arabia last fall;
• by hosting a conference
  of Arab nations in Damascus
  for the purpose of denouncing the
  Israeli government of Benjamin
  Netanyahu and garnering pan-Arab
  support for the position that a
  complete Israeli withdrawal from
  the Heights is a legitimate
  precondition to renewed
  Syrian-Israeli negotiations; href=”97-T2.html#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾
  and
• by blaming Israel for
  terrorist bombings that
  have occurred lately in
  Syrian-occupied Lebanon and in
  Syria, itself.

In addition, Assad continues
to engage in activities inimical to U.S.
interests in the Middle East and beyond.
Notable among these are: the safe haven
and support he provides virtually every
major terrorist organization in the
world; Syrian narco-trafficking through
Lebanon; Damascus’ collaboration with
Teheran in large-scale counterfeiting of
U.S. currency; and Syria’s involvement
with Iran and other rogue nations to
facilitate the proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction and missile systems
capable of delivering them over
ever-longer ranges.

Despite such behavior, the first
Clinton Administration made improving
relations with Syria a cornerstone of its
Middle East policy. The odiousness, not
to say absurdity, of such a policy
prompted Speaker of the House Newt
Gingrich last September to observe before
a Center for Security Policy audience:

“For this Administration to
have had the Secretary of State
visit, I believe it was 27 times,
the city of Damascus, to have tea
with the dictator, to raise him
to the level of being the equal
of the United States, is the
worst possible foreign policy. We
should be doing the opposite. We
should be saying to Assad: ‘Prove
you are worthy of treating with
the greatest democracy on the
planet by expelling the
terrorists from Lebanon, and when
you have proven you are worthy of
being part of the civilized
world, give us a call.'” href=”97-T2.html#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

Just What Has The Administration
Promised Assad?

On New
Year’s Day, the Associated Press reported
that the Syrian Vice President Abdul
Halim Khaddam told the Beirut-based,
pro-Syrian paper As-Safir that: “The
United States has provided written
commitments to us secure an Israeli
withdrawal [from the Golan Heights] to
the June 4, 1967 lines. We will not
accept any negotiations below this
limit.” Although an
anonymous State Department official
responded by minimizing the U.S. role and
declaring that the terms of any agreement
will have to be decided by the two
parties, this demurral strains credulity.

In fact, the first Clinton
Administration acknowledged that it had
pledged to provide U.S. peacekeeping
forces to monitor the Golan Heights
following an Israeli withdrawal. And,
since the previous Israeli government had
expressed its willingness in principle to
give up the Golan, it is entirely
plausible that the United States would
feel free to promise to produce such a
result.

As with the recent decision to pledge
millions of U.S. tax-dollars to aid in
the rebuilding of Syrian-occupied Lebanon
— aid that will, in all likelihood,
accrue to the benefit of the occupiers —
there is little reason to believe
that serious deliberation has been given
to the long-term implications of these
American commitments.
Specifically, who can say what these and
other U.S. efforts to appease the Syrian
dictator will mean: for the security of
the United States’ most important
regional ally, Israel; for the liberation
of the Lebanese people, a long-standing
American goal; and for the well-being of
this country’s servicemen and women whose
lives may be put in jeopardy in carrying
out a Golan deployment?

The Bottom Line

Such deliberation can no longer be
postponed. The second Clinton
Administration national security team
must reexamine the wisdom of continuing
down its predecessor’s Syrian track.
This may be made more difficult — but no
less necessary — by the recently
announced decision that one of the
architects of that policy, Special Middle
East envoy Dennis Ross, will be staying
on. The 105th Congress must
likewise engage in rigorous hearings and
debate over the prudence of continuing to
ignore Syrian malevolence, let alone of
rewarding it with prestige-enhancing
official visits and taxpayer funds.

Toward this end, the Center for
Security Policy commends to the attention
of policy-makers two relevant analyses.
The first was produced by a blue-ribbon
team of distinguished former U.S.
officials, including five retired
four-star flag officers, entitled U.S.
Forces on the Golan Heights: an
Assessment of Benefits and Costs. href=”97-T2.html#N_3_”>⁽³⁾
The second was a study authored by Dr.
Irving Moskowitz, a respected authority
on Middle East affairs, and introduced by
Sen. Alfonse D’Amato that is entitled Should
America Guarantee Israel’s Safety. href=”97-T2.html#N_4_”>⁽⁴⁾
No one who reads these materials can feel
sanguine about the commitments made or
implied by the first Clinton
Administration to Syria. And everyone who
reads them will appreciate the importance
of reconsidering and reorienting U.S.
policy toward that dangerous nation as an
early order of business in 1997.

– 30 –

1. Another
signatory to the Damascus declaration was
Egypt — a nation that receives over $2
billion in U.S. aid each year but has
demonstrated an increasing penchant for
undermining American interests in the
Middle East. For example, the Egyptian
government has denounced important
Israeli-Turkish efforts to build a
defense relationship, a relationship that
is becoming all the more vital as
Turkey’s military endeavors to keep its
nation in the Western camp. Cairo has
also disseminated virulent anti-Israel
propaganda through its state-controlled
press and other organs. It is encouraging
an end to the U.S.-led embargo of Iraq.
And it has been singularly unhelpful
regarding American non-proliferation
initiatives.

2. For a href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-P_88at2″>full
transcript of Speaker Gingrich’s
remarks, contact the Center or see
www.security-policy.org.

3. For more
information on this study — which was
authored by (listed with positions
formerly held; the military officers are
all now retired) Gen. John Foss,
Commanding General, U.S. Army Training
and Doctrine Command; Gen. AL Gray,
Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps; Lt.Gen.
John Pustay (USAF, Ret.), Assistant to
the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen.
Bernard Schriever, Commander, U.S. Air
Force Systems Command; Adm. Carl Trost,
Chief of Naval Operations; Adm. Elmo
Zumwalt, Chief of Naval Operations;
Douglas J. Feith, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense and Middle East
Specialist, National Security Council;
Frank Gaffney, Jr., Acting Assistant
Secretary of Defense (International
Security Policy); Richard Perle,
Assistant Secretary of Defense
(International Security Policy); Eugene
Rostow, Director of the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency and Under Secretary of
State (Political Affairs); and Henry S.
Rowen, Assistant Secretary of Defense
(International Security Affairs) and
Chairman of the National Intelligence
Council, Central Intelligence — see Center’s
Blue-Ribbon Study Warns Against Use of
U.S. Forces on the Golan Heights
(No. 94-P
105, 24 October 1994).

4. Published by
Americans For a Safe Israel, 1993.