Introduction

From: Washington's Long War on Syria

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From 1963 onward, Syrian governments in which Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party members Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar played principal roles, were committed to the Arab nationalist values of freedom from foreign domination and Arab socialism. Syria’s secular Arab nationalist governments forged alliances with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which, likewise, rejected integration into the U.S.-superintended global economic order, and valued economic and political independence. They also established alliances with the Soviet Union (leading hardliners in Washington to label Hafez al-Assad an Arab communist) and, after the USSR’s dissolution, with Russia. Both countries were considered by U.S. strategists to be “peer competitors” of the United States, and the Assads’ alliance with them only added to the enmity Washington felt for the Arab nationalist leaders. The values which the Assad-led Syrian governments embraced were inimical to the U.S. foreign policy goal of creating highly favorable business climates for U.S. corporations, bankers and investors around the world. In place of pandering to Wall Street, Syria’s Arab nationalists sought to free Syria— and as an ultimate goal, the entire Arab world—from the political and economic agendas of foreign powers.

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