Next stop: Never

Syria

It was in mid-1957 when President Dwight Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles started to become concerned about the fate of Syria. "There is evidence in Syria of the development of a dangerous and classic pattern," Dulles wrote. Soviet aid was rolling in, and Washington became nervous about what would follow: "The country will fall under the control of international Communism and become a Soviet satellite."

A lot has changed since those days. The Assad family came to power in Syria, the Soviet Union no longer exists, and the domino-effect theory is no longer valid. But some striking similarities still pertain: Syria is a weak player in a tough neighborhood, making itself visible by aligning itself with troubling trends. Now the Iranians are helping them, they are destabilizing Lebanon and Iraq (and not Jordan, as was frequently the case in the past), and it is Islamist terrorism and not Communism that makes the United States worried and angry. The headache is similar, as is the failure to find the right remedy.

This is how my Slate piece about Syria opens. Read it in full here. What I argue there is that in the last couple of years, Syria has been the country that will be dealt with "right after" we deal with the bigger problems: Right after U.S. troops entered Baghdad in 2003, Time magazine reported, "A group of the President's top foreign-policy advisers ... gathered in the White House to discuss the road ahead. Only half the meeting was devoted to developments in Iraq. The rest of the session was spent debating how to tackle a fresh target: Syria." In the July 2003 London Review of Books, Charles Glass asked, "Is Syria Next?"- a headline so tired it shouldn't even be sold in a secondhand bookstore. But there it was, popping up again in 2004, when Timothy Garton Ash asks "Next Stop Syria?" in Britain's Guardian."

And I conclude: "If Assad keeps moving along his tightrope, he might prove that the next station is the one that never comes."

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