In defense of sanctions against the Syrian regime

In our Middle East, the foam of attacks on international sanctions imposed by the West on some countries in the region is rising, and the idea that sanctions are the root of calamities in the region and that they are only part of colonial dictation policies is being promoted.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and China's accession to the WTO, the system of globalization sponsored and practically managed by the United States expanded. China has taken advantage of this to make its great civilizational leap.

The United States views sanctions as merely declaring that it no longer wants this or that disobedient state to be part of its international system that protects and manages it. Thus, sanctions are not an alternative to war, but rather become economic tools aimed at modifying the behavior of states. At worst, if this or that country wants to leave the global system, it's okay to try to create its own economic system as North Korea has done or is doing. Russia Now.

While sanctions in the Middle East are talked about as if they were the ugliest and most egregious evils, the most heinous crimes are amazingly overlooked and not discussed, nor addressed, of course. From Hama, to Tal al-Zaatar, to H Lebja, to the crimes of the Janjaweed, the crimes of terrorism, Aleppo, the wars of genocide, and... They are not being addressed and analyzed as the main cause of the region's devastation, but are treated as normal, and  the failure of authoritarian regimes is also a nature.

From failure to failure, there is no autumn to plant and no spring to bloom, but our country is rolling further and further into tyranny, chaos and the collapse of states.

In the face of this intense contempt to see the facts, grievances are referred and failures are referred to "imperialism, colonialism and Zionism", especially Western economic sanctions.

But I argue that as long as human interests conflict, they will continue to struggle as they build. Although I sympathize with the dreams of those who envision a world without conflict, we may admit that a dream is misguided unless accompanied by conditions and a plan to achieve it.

Neither aid nor sanctions are a benign tool, but tools in international conflict. But it is an alternative tool of war. As such, it bears many characteristics of war, but it is reduced to the degree of violence to become a tool of adaptation that merges soft power with economic power.

The fundamental goal of sanctions against authoritarian regimes is not necessarily to achieve a zero-sum victory against an adversary,  but rather to narrow their capabilities, tame their behavior, and sometimes create a negotiating incentive through which poor civilians can reap some benefits. Because it is not a zero-sum solution, it is by definition more merciful, more humane andmore useful than war in its various forms.

Being a Syrian and from Aleppo, I would have preferred Russia to impose sanctions on Syria a thousand times heavier than those imposed by the United States on the regime of Bashar al-Assad, rather than dropping its barrel bombs and "precision" missiles that have killed hundreds of schoolchildren and patients in hospitals. If those bombs are ultra-accurate, as the Russians boast, then these are crimes described,   If not, it is an indiscriminate killing of civilians. The same is true for Lebanon – and for Hezbollah, Iran and so on.

But let's put aside the humanitarian aspect as the moral basis that justifies sanctions, and let's talk about the usefulness of sanctions from the political economy of the conflict and from a strategic point of view. At the latest analysis, sanctions  are tools with long-term effect. Perhaps even better! Its strategic and fundamental objective is to dismantle the political and economic alliance on which the power of authoritarian regimes is based.

To the extent that sanctions are qualitative and precise, they further limit the maneuver and persistence of the regime's rampant economic networks. Rather, the sanctions aim to push economic forces that are not involved in the regime's crimes, and  objectively surrounding it, to  abandon their participation in financing it, and seek to distance themselves from it.

No political system can survive merely by repression, and it must have an economic-social base with which to ally itself. Sanctions contribute to the dismantling of this alliance and narrow the regime's economic base. We have plenty of examples of that. Without sanctions, the Soviet Union would have lasted many decades, gradually decaying and rotting like a sick man waiting for his neighbors to inherit him,  until he was scattered or invaded by a superpower. Sanctions thus carry a latent dual character. It is slower than war and less heinous and horrible, but in the end it is muchfaster than letting things disintegrate according to natural evolution.

Sanctions, for example, accelerated the end of the Cold War through a masterful fusion of American  soft power and sanctions on the Soviet economic system, collapsing quietly and surprisingly stunning. Despite all the sacrifices that the Russian people have paid because of this collapse, there is no doubt that the price of the defeat of the Soviet Union would have been immeasurably greater, whether it had been defeated in a war or the state had been left to collapse and disintegrate.

Even for a country like Syria, U.S. sanctions on the Soviet Union in the seventies and eighties   greatly limited the Soviet Union's influence and ability to advance its international agenda. After returning from Moscow on a lengthy negotiating mission to increase economic support for the Chernenko-era Assad regime, Syrian negotiators concluded that the Soviet Union could no longer offer any serious path of development, and that it should turn once and for all to Europe and later to the United States and discuss the peace process. This applies to  On the options  of Iraq, Burma, North Korea, etc.

Yes, we can say with confidence that sanctions work with the same effect in the Syrian experience. It effectively limits the entrenchment and spread of the corrupt Syrian mafia, locally and regionally. Rather, the sanctions have weakened the Syrian regime and its social contract with the business community in Damascus, Aleppo , and Homs on a large scale.

The sanctions have significantly narrowed the social foundation of the authoritarian regime to a minimum, even within its own society. Indeed, even the closest oligarchs to the regime are now fleeing the country, leaving the regime increasingly weak and revealing its networks of shadow and black economies.

Indeed, the impact of sanctions is particularly evident in Lebanon and Jordan. The sanctions have undermined the foundation of a corrupt economy that has been entrenched over the decades between the Lebanese political strata and the Syrian regime. Lebanon is going through one of its most difficult political and economic moments, but the reality of the matter is that the corrupt economy run by the Syrian regime in cooperation with Hezbollah has been slowly disintegrating and rolling under the weight of the flight of productive and service forces.

Had it not   been for the sanctions, the cancer of the corrupt  state would have been perpetuated  for decades, and Hezbollah would have continued to eat up the body of the state, society and economy.  Rather, the sanctions opened the door for the Lebanese homeland to start a definite divorce between the Lebanese national state, the Lebanese economy and Lebanese society on the one hand, and between the mafia of the Syrian regime and Hezbollah.

In contrast, international organizations estimate that at least 40% of the humanitarian aid that arrives in Syria from these organizations is looted directly by regime "charities," security services, and warlords.

Moreover, research, including ours, shows that corruption and a patronage state economy are the main factors in the current collapse. With Russian support, the regime deliberately destroyed,  without any justification, large industrial  cities surrounding Damascus, Homs, and the major industrial suburb around Aleppo in Sheikh Najjar. Thus, the current devastation of the economy is not due to sanctions, which have no impact on the overall economic situation.

Sanctions on the Syrian regime are already targeting corrupt individuals and institutions related to the military effort. No matter how much various parties try to help the Syrian regime under the pretext of preventing economic collapse and improving people's living conditions, all this remains in vain.

It is a pierced jar from which money escapes from countless holes, from which the Syrian citizen reaches only a little and after he offers more submission and enslavement to the war machine and its princes in the regime, Russia and Iran.

The model of an outlaw state has spread unprecedentedly, transforming the Syrian economy from a state  economy to that of warlords and plunderers. The central state's capacity to control and command at the administrative level is collapsing in favor of warlord provinces and corruption. The current Syrian state is not only becoming a failed state, but a collapsed state by all standards. This is not because of sanctions, but because of the model and nature of the regime.

The absence of a minimum level of legitimacy and the rule of law forces even the most loyal corrupt businessmen to flee the country. Those who continue to stay at home seek to invest in short-term,  fast, safe, and highly profitable deals.

Thanks to this we find the widening disintegration of the country's economic unity. According to our studies, the diameter of the Economic Department of Production and Distribution does not exceed 70 kilometers at  the local level, which means that the Syrian economy has returned almost to what it was after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, if not worse. This fact becomes particularly evident because of the increasing dropout of young and middle skills, but also from the less educated segments.

On the other hand, the local economy of the peripheral areas is shifting towards merging with the nearest active neighboring economy. In doing so, he escapes sanctions. As a result, parts of Syria have been transformed into de facto annexes with their Turkish, Lebanese, Jordanian, and Iraqi neighborhoods.

Syrians built their country after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire without much outside help. However, none of the established traditional businessmen and industrialists from Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and elsewhere  will return to the country under the authoritarian plunder of the regime's mafia.  In Turkey, especially in Diyarbakir and Gaziantep alone, there are approximately  600 influential and active Syrian businessmen and merchants, whoare reluctant to return without a minimum level of personal and economic security.   

While the regime lives on the corpse of society, it does not work to provide any stability or civil peace that would allow a way out of the civil war. In doing so, he deepens the hole in which he sinks. The truth of the matter is that the Syrian crisis and civil war may last a decade or more, but lifting sanctions on the regime will only prolong grievances and perpetuate the disintegration.

It would not be in the interest of the entire international community or peace in the region to close the Syrian wound with its pus. While the essence of the Arab Spring is the collapse of the model of rentier patronage state capitalism, the failure of the Arab Spring and the ongoing development failure across the region is rapidly setting  the stage for the fermentation  of a new wave of the Arab Spring.

On the other hand, there is the illusion that the money of some Arab countries may be a rescue for the situation in Syria. But  the truth of the matter is that in the current context of the country and with the control of militias, especially Iranian ones, over economic facilities, any investments will achieve nothing more than some luxury and pomp projects that will only exacerbate the social gap. These investments cannot alleviate the suffering of the poor, who account for eighty percent of the country's population, according to the United Nations.

While every tool in the conflict has collateral costs, sanctions are undoubtedly more merciful and targeted than Russian missiles and barrels. While Bashar al-Assad's regime officially joins the international oligarchy, it may enjoy sanctions as it follows from them, until God decrees something that has been effective.