U.S. Intervention in Syria: Covert Quest for Financial Hegemony

For the past thirty years, the Democratic Peace Theory (DPT) has been acclaimed as ‘empirical law’ in international relations studies (Levy, 1989). While scholars and intellectuals continue to promote the infallible, neo-Kantian correlation of democracy and peace, they ignore the implications of politicians putting the idea to use. Since the 1990s, DPT has been used to justify foreign “interventions” that have proven time and time again that democracy does not in fact precede peace. Each time the U.S has taken military or covert action to “promote democracy”, in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, it has failed. The latest target in a succession of democratic-peace-driven regime change policies, is Syria. The ongoing Syrian Civil War is much more than an intrastate conflict between two parties, as the name might suggest. Contrary to the established narrative propagated by mainstream media, the Syrian conflict has been a U.S. intervention since long before ‘Day 1’. It is a complex, interstate proxy war involving Qatar, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Russia, and it’s now in its seventh year. Using a systems theory of analysis, I examine the interests and strategies of involved actors, and test what I believe to be a logical explanation for the cause of this ongoing war. My position is aligned with the realist assumption of rationality, as defined by John Mearsheimer in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics:

“The fifth assumption is that great powers are rational actors. They are aware of their external environment and they think strategically about how to survive in it. In particular, they consider that preferences of other states and how their own behavior is likely to affect the behavior of those others states, and how the behavior of those other states is likely to affect their own strategy for survival. Moreover, states pay attention to the long term as well as the immediate consequences of their actions” (Mearsheimer, 2001, p. 31).

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My conclusion after studying this war, is that the United States deep involvement and strategy in Syria is best explained as rational and self-interested, given the position they have placed themselves in as a global financial hegemon. Further, I argue that Syria serves as an example of how post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy strategy has drifted from the defensive position of maintaining a hegemonic status quo to that of offensive and revisionist.

On June 12, 2012, fifteen months after insurgents carried out an orchestrated attack on the Syrian government, U.N. official Herve Ladsous told reporters that the country was in a state of civil war. He went on to explain, “Clearly what is happening is that the government of Syria lost some large chunks of territory in several cities to the opposition and wants to retake control of these areas (Charbonneau, 2012).” Since the war started, it has become quite clear that the “opposition” was supported and funded by rival nation states, thus making it a proxy war. From Russia and Syria’s perspective, U.S. special forces soldiers on the ground make it much more (RT, 2018). The United States has a long history of clandestine interventions in Syria leading up to this war. Washington’s effort to carry out regime in the country dates back 70 years. In 1949, the CIA engineered a right-wing military coup against Syria’s democratically elected president, Shukri-al-Kuwaiti, who blocked advancement of a lucrative US-Saudi oil pipeline to Europe (Little, 2004). In 1956, CIA and MI6 attempted an “anti-communist” coup, code-named Operation Straggle (Little, 2004). In 1957, a CIA coup plot named Operation Wappen was discovered and stopped (Little, 2004). De-classified intelligence documents from 1983 reveal that President Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez Assad’s resistance to the U.S./Israeli agenda to weaken both the Iraqis and the Iranians and extend hegemony over the region, was becoming problematic. The report reads:

“Diplomatic initiatives to date have had little effect on Assad who has so far correctly calculated the play of forces in the area and concluded that they are only weakly arrayed against him. If the U.S. is to rein in Syria’s spoiling role, it can only do so through exertion of real muscle which will pose a vital threat to Assad’s position and power” (Fuller, 1983).

It goes on to state: “The U.S. should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey”(Fuller, 1983:1). Thirty-five years later, establishment think tanks were still discussing how to overthrow Assad. A proposal written by the Brookings Institution in 2012, describes an nearly identical multi-front strategy (Byman, 2012) that has today come to fruition.

The common factor behind the current escalation is the same one that existed in 1949 — oil and gas. In 2009, Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500km pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey (Carlisle, 2009). The proposed pipeline would have given Sunni Arabs in the Persian Gulf decisive domination of world natural gas markets and strengthened America’s closest gulf ally, Qatar. It would also have given Qatar a direct link to European energy markets which would have significantly cut in on Russia’s economic and political power. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, nearly 60% of Russia’s crude oil exports and more than 75% of Russia’s natural gas exports go to European countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (US Energy, 2017). In addition, the Saudis would have also benefited from the pipeline as it would have given the Sunnis a foothold in Shia dominated Syria, thus regional power over their principal geopolitical rival, Iran. All these plans came to a halt when Assad rejected an agreement allowing the Qatar-Turkey pipeline to run through Syria, in order to protect the interests of their Russian ally (Ahmed, 2013). Consequently, the U.S. immediately stepped up its regime change campaign, funneling millions of dollars to opposition groups (WikiLeaks, 2009). In 2011, with Russian approval, Assad further enraged America’s gas-supplying Sunni allies by instead agreeing to a $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline that would make Iran the principal supplier to Europe and strengthen Shiite power in the region (Hafidh & Faucon, 2011). More importantly, the Iranian exports would not be exchanged in U.S. dollars. Iran went off the petrodollar in 2008, Syria in 2006. Other countries who have met their demise after making this decision are Iraq, who dropped the dollar for the Euro in 2001 and Libya, when Muammar Gaddafi called on Arab and African nations to use his newly implemented gold-backed currency, the Libyan Dinar (WikiLeaks, 2011).

What followed was a series of events that sparked the Syrian Civil War. On March 15, 2011, Mainstream media began to report massive, violent uprisings described as a ‘populist revolution demanding the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.’ This claim is repudiated by consistent testimony from Syrians, as well as open-source Western documents alleging that the violence that took place in Dara’a was led by U.S.-backed insurgents and foreign militants who were armed, trained and funded by U.S. and NATO proxies for the purpose of destabilizing Syria through sectarianism (Taliano, 2017). On October 4, 2011, Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have condemned Syria’s actions against opposition attacks and considered action to be taken against them (Charbonneau, 2011). In response, the so-called “Friends of Syria Coalition” was created. The group, led by the U.S. France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Britain, formally demanded the removal of Assad. The U.S. also began to ‘officially’ drop weapons to anti-government groups and created a $100 million fund to place Syria’s “rebels” on their payroll (Davison, 2015).

The war in Syria has many factions and many issues that could be identified as probable causes. From a systemic perspective, however, this war is fundamentally concerned with the distribution and redistribution of power. For offensive realists, it is the anarchical nature of the system that forces great powers to compete against each other to preserve their sovereignty. In contrast to defensive realists, the struggle for power is not motivated by balance-of-power logic, but by the belief that the aggressive pursuit of hegemony is necessary for survival in a self-help world. Mearsheimer defines a hegemon (Mearsheimer, 2001: 40) as “a state that is so powerful that it dominates all the other states in the system. No other state has the military wherewithal to put up a serious fight against it”. The hegemon is essentially the only great power in the system, thus implying that the establishment of global hegemony is the final objective. While this may be a state’s desired aspiration, Mearsheimer argues that achieving this objective is virtually impossible (Mearsheimer, 2001: 41). Thus, the concept of a system can be applied more narrowly and used to describe a region such as the Western Hemisphere, the Middle East, and Europe (Mearsheimer, 2001: 40). Ideally, the best position for a great power is to be the only regional hegemon in the world. For now, the United States holds that title by dominating the Western Hemisphere.

The sources and measure of a state’s power are often points of contention in theories of conflict. Mearsheimer explains that there are two kinds of power: latent and military (Mearsheimer, 2001: 55). Latent power refers to the “socio-economic ingredients” (Mearsheimer, 2001: 55) that translate into wealth that goes into building military power. He argues that the wealth of a state can be measured in different ways, and chooses gross national product (GNP) as an indicator(Mearsheimer, 2001:62). Mearsheimer doesn’t expand on the concept of wealth, which I believe deserves further attention. The debt to GDP ratio of the United States and the state of the petrodollar fiat currency are presumably important factors to consider when examining conflicts in the Middle East. What I expect to see when applying the offensive neo-realist theory to Syria, is evidence that as the primary actor, the United States’ strategy is motivated by a threat to its survival. There should also be evidence of other great powers looking to obtain regional hegemony. What is not expected, is evidence that supports the liberal theory that the cause of the Syrian war is representative of societal preferences or identities, or that democracies seek interdependence among states over domination. I also don’t expect to find evidence that the democratic peace theory or the responsibility to protect doctrine are anything more than propaganda used to gain public support for military intervention.

Testing the offensive realist theory as a plausible explanation of the Syrian war, begin with the following assumptions. 1) The United States is the primary actor and aggressor behind the Syrian Civil War. 2) The foundation and essential element of America’s latent power is the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency, as determined by the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. After the collapse of the Bretton Woods gold standard in the 70s, the world shifted to floating exchange rates, forcing the U.S. to find a way to convince foreigners to hold onto their growing surplus of fiat dollars. In 1974, a mutually beneficial deal was made with Saudi Arabia that standardized the sale of oil in dollars by OPEC, creating the petrodollar (Tun, 2015). This system keeps demand for the dollar artificially high, which has allowed the U.S. to print an unlimited amount of fiat currency to fund increased military spending and enjoy the largest trade deficit in the world (Amadeo, 2018). The brilliance of the petrodollar system is the symbiotic relationship of latent and military power, which mutually strengthen each other. The benefit has been global hegemony that has gone relatively unchallenged. The vulnerability is that maintaining the system requires control of oil-producing countries and ensured confidence in the dollar. Even a modest shift away from the dollar to the euro, for example, would be devastating (Norrlof, 2014). Foreign nations would flood the Federal Reserve with dollars as they exchanged it for euros. Devaluation would trigger hyperinflation, and interest rates would skyrocket as the Fed would be forced to reduce the money supply. The centrality and value of the dollar are paramount to the economic security of the US, which is why America has chosen to forcibly control or remove foreign regimes who threaten the status quo of the petrodollar (Syed, 2017).

One of the fundamental assumptions of realism is that survival is the core objective of the state. Ever since the U.S. entered into the “oil for dollars” agreement with Saudi Arabia, the petrodollar has been both the key to our survival and weapon of choice for keeping challengers down. The mastermind of the system, Henry Kissinger, is an extremely influential, self-avowed globalist and constructivist. His core vision of a New World Order and global governance on humanity requires those who reject the American principles of order, to be identified as a threat (Lynch, 2014). Adoption of the petrodollar system has constrained the United States into carrying out his vision, since 1973. Syria is a nation who has long refused to bend the knee to U.S. and Western hegemony. Their support for Hezbollah and alliance with Iran make up an axis of resistance that the West has long been trying to break (Wastnidge, 2017). Russia’s defense of Syria and now growing strategic coalition with Iran, strengthens Iran’s quest for regional hegemony. This has created not only an intolerable threat to Israel, but also to American hegemony. Getting control over Syria provides several opportunities for the US. Ousting Assad would not only ensure petrodollar dominance by getting the Qatari pipeline project to Europe online, but would be a significant economic blow to Russia, who is already weakened by sanctions imposed after the annexation of the Crimea (AFP, 2018). Furthermore, subjugating Syria is a crucial step to carrying out regime change strategy in Iran (Kredo, 2018).

Challenges to this theory of hegemonic power, claim that U.S. regime change strategy is necessary for spreading democracy in pursuit of liberal peace and a stable world order. This ambitious and unrealistic goal assumes democracy can be generated from an external source. There is little empirical support for this assertion, and the non-democratic outcomes of Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Iran, and many others prove otherwise. Sam Huntington’s argument that democratization must flow from internal forces in order for any semblance of real democracy to be retained over time, seems to hold true (Huntington, 1994). Another challenge to realist causal theory, claims that the U.S. had a responsibility to act on claims that Assad used chemical weapons on Syrian civilians. Obama attempted to use this argument to justify intervention, after he foolishly drew a ‘red line’ in 2012. However, two days before the planned strike, it was postponed by Congress and cancelled by military officials who claimed the Obama administration had deliberately manipulated the intelligence and ignored evidence that the Syrian government was not responsible for the attacks (Hersh, 2013). Despite further evidence that has since surfaced linking the U.S. backed al-Nusra Front to the deadly attacks on civilians (Hersh, 2014), the unsubstantiated indictment of Assad as an irrational murderer who gasses his own people, remains as a popular narrative to gain public support for intervention.

Assessment of the evidence as to the cause of the Syrian Civil War, logically only leads to one conclusion. The United States’ involvement and strategy in Syria best explained as rational and self-interested, given its position as a global financial hegemon. As the war progresses, there are an increasing number of parallels to previous regime-change campaigns carried out by the U.S. since 9/11. The same liberal justifications and arguments are being used to gain public support while the same underlying motivation controls an agenda that has not changed since the 70s. However, nations like China, Russia, and Iran have become wise to the game and started to chip away at the pillar of U.S. hegemony — the dollar. They are forming alliances and gaining support of countries who are looking to diversify their holdings and are setting up bilateral and multilateral trade deals in alternative currencies (Lan, 2016). As United States financial dominance comes under growing pressure and a new economic order emerges, we will likely see more conflicts like Syria. While the foreign policy elite can never openly admit it, the U.S. is left with no choice but to carry on an offensive, revisionist doctrine to maintain the unipolar order. The alternative could lead to a devastating economic collapse that would significantly alter our way of life. As the architect of our Achilles Heel once said (Kissinger, 1956): “While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.” — Henry A. Kissinger

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