Inheriting Syria: Bashar's Trial By Fire [ハードカバー]

I will give this book five stars because it is perhaps the only book available in English that offers this kind of information on Syria, even though such information is widely available in Arabic texts. Leveret t provides a highly accurate description of the power circle in Syria despite the few minor mistakes.
The author then cites a number of Bashar's statements and encounters to support the book's main point: that Bashar Assad has genuine intentions for change and positive overture toward the United States except that the US is not currently willing to reciprocate this kind of behavior.
Leverett then examines the possibilities facing America when dealing with rogue states like Syria. According to Leverett, there are four options: sanctions, military campaigns or alternatively, Leverett suggests that the United States employs what he terms as "conditional engagement."
The author dismisses sanctions saying that they proved to be inadequate if applied unilaterally without Europe's involvement. He argues that military campaigns exposed America's limited human and financial resources as the United States maintains considerable missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and other regions of the world.
Therefore, Leverett suggests that the US start building trust with Syria and provide Bashar and his young team leverage over the old guard in his presumed bid to change and modernize Syria. American-Syrian trust building can start from the successful exchange of intelligence information on Al-Qaeda and be expanded to include exchange of other favors. According to Leverett, these incentives would be the carrots as opposed to the many sticks with which America will threaten Syria in case the latter fails to comply.
Consequently, and over the medium and long terms, such a policy will benefit both nations even though the author does not suggest that it will lead to the democratization of Syria. He stated, however, that trying to unseat Bashar would only bring instability and Muslim fundamentalists to power and that Bashar remains America's best bid in Syria.
The hypothesis of the book is interesting, even though it has nothing new to it. This kind of containment-of-dictators policy has dominated America's foreign policy prior to 9/11 and has not proven any particular success. Furthermore, a main prophecy in the book failed the test of time since according to Leverett, a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon would lead to a Lebanese civil war. By the time this review was written, Syrian troops had been outside of Lebanon for over a month and nothing like civil strife yet appears to be coming in the Lebanese horizons.
As for Israel, Leverett makes it known that Bashar's attitude to the US is independent of the procession of any Syrian-Israeli peace. Leverett quoted Bashar as saying that he was ready to "bracket" the peace process for the time being while he improves Damascus's bilateral relations with Washington. This can only be a proof that Arab dictators like Bashar are never as genuinely concerned about re-gaining any disputed land inasmuch as they are interested in keeping the Arab-Israeli conflict going so that they can use it as a pretext to justify their leadership and divert their people's hate against foreign enemies and away from their tyranny and corruption.

This book promises much, particularly in dealinhg with this little-known(in the U.S., at least), but ultimately very important lynchpin in the Middle East. There is interesting material on the Assad family as well as the Syrian political environment and dynamic, BUT too many of the annotated sources are highly questionable, e.g., Leverett quotes frquently from publications by the washington Center on Near East Policy, aan American Likudnik organization closely tied to AIPAC, the principal Israeli lobby ijn this country. Additionally, he quotes from Daniel Pipes, the highly controversial creator of the McCarthyite CAMPUS WATCH, to 'monitor and censure' College Professors not teaching Middle Eastern Affairs from an Israeli-centric view. Pipes, widely regarded as an Arabophobe and Islamophobe throughout academic circles, is a highly biased source. Although this book is valuable since there are so few others on the subject available in English, it should be used and studied with great caution. Too bad, an excellent opportunity by the author has been missed.

In the absence of clear independent historian scholar studies of that part of the world, this book present limited view of the political culture in Syria, It has clear illustration of the events occured during the elder Assad, and his son Bashar, tinted with the CIA view, what is missing is the view of the intellectual opposition of these events in Syria and surrounding arbic countries. While most of the facts detailed in the book are well detailed but the interpertation of such events was clearly clouded with the western view of the dynamics of the middle east and without any critical evalution what the beheviors of Israeli occupation had influanced such dynamics.

Overall, I found the book a great trial to understand the comlexity of Syria political arena. And I would like to see the response of the intellectual scholar supporting or oppsing such ineheritence.