Politics

On 17 July 2007, Bashar al-Asad was inaugurated for a second seven-year term as president of Syria. His first term could hardly have been more challenging. Assad’s rise to power came at a time when Syria faced a crossroads; more-over, what would not have been predicted in 2000 is the way he was soon demonized in various Western circles for his Arab nationalist opposition to Israel and the invasion of Iraq. Still, if his record is still a matter of controversy in political circles, broadly similar conclusions are reached by four major recent scholarly works on his presidency: David Lesch, The New Lion of Damascus, Yale University Press 2005; Flynt Leverett, Inheriting Syria: Bashar’s Trial by Fire, Brookings Institute, 2005; Eyal Zisser, Commanding Syria: Bashar al-Asad and the First Years in Power, I.B. Taurus, 2006; and Volker Perthes, Syria under Bashar al-Asad: Modernization and the Limits of Change, London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, Adelphi Papers, 2004. They agree that the new president began with good intentions, came up against recalcitrant realities, grew in the job, and de-spite extraordinarily unfavorable external conditions, on the whole sustained his reformist project. Those who feared in 2000 that he was not suited to the job appear to have been proved wrong.

“In 1982, Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since. In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?” This question that aired during the CNN/YouTube U.S. Democratic presidential debate in July 2007 generated what became the most talked-about and analyzed responses of the night from Democratic front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.