How damaged is Assad?
Friday, November 4, 2005 at 1:12PM
Thomas P.M. Barnett

"In the Fief of the Assads, Friends Melt Away: The crisis over the Hariri assassination could undermine the ruling circle," by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 2 November 2005, p. A4.

I really believed that Bashar Assad was trying to pull a Gorby by working political reform slowly from within, while continuing to use Lebanon as an economic connectivity lifeline to the global economy (it wasn't about political domination there, but economic parasitism).

Has time now run out? Assad was slowly moving his generation into positions of power, but the Old Guard, I believe, has done him in, and perhaps he was stupid enough to go along with it.


Either way, we're talking a deathwatch now on this regime. We may end up going into Syria defensively instead of offensively.


No kidding.

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