The devil you know.

• Author: Kaplan, Robert D.
• Position: Essay

A principal tenet of realism is that disorder is worse than injustice, since injustice merely means the world is imperfect, whereas disorder can mean there is no justice for anyone. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has tested this thesis to an unbearable extent. The degree of injustice he has perpetrated can be equated with crimes against humanity. Hundreds of thousands have been killed in a half-decade-old civil war, both ignited and perpetuated by Assad's regime--not to mention the millions of refugees and regional chaos his rule has spawned in the Middle East and Europe. But an excruciating fact confronts us: it does not necessarily follow that his departure would improve the situation, at least at this juncture. Syria, to put it mildly, is in great disorder. Assad's abdication could both deepen and broaden that disorder, if it has any effect at all.

Don't ever assume that things cannot get worse. Assad remains a secular ruler from a minority group, whose forces and allied criminal bands still control more of the Syrian heartland than any other warlord. These are not altogether negative attributes, given Syria's level of anarchy and the plethora of Islamic extremist outfits operating in that environment. His departure, rather than leading directly or indirectly to peace, would more likely raise the stakes for those already vying for supremacy. Rebels would not surrender their guns at the sight of his removal--they would have even more cause to keep fighting for each patch of ground. Damascus, in such a circumstance, could quickly descend into another version of the humanitarian hell that is Aleppo, as various rebel groups battle over the frightful carcass of what was once Syria. Fanciful descriptions of Assad ceding command, even as the Alawite power structure survives to provide transitional stability, entirely miss the point: The Alawite state itself may be synonymous with the very person of Assad, who assumed power in 2000 precisely because it was only he who could unite the various factions of the regime built by his father, Hafez al-Assad. Quite possibly, Bashar al-Assad is the state, or what's left: of it. In any case, an outside power demonstrably acting to dislodge him would have to assume moral and political responsibility for the consequences, which might include a variety of dire outcomes: some ethnic cleansing of the Alawites; the slaughter of more Christians; and the eventual establishment of a Sunni jihadist regime in Damascus more hostile than Assad to Israel and Jordan, both U.S. allies.

The fact that Russia and Iran are acting, in effect, to prevent such a cascade of events is ironic, but hardly unprecedented. It is an irony that the Israelis can appreciate: The disengagement accords Henry Kissinger negotiated between Israel and the elder Assad regime in the mid-1970s constituted, for all practical purposes, a peace treaty that lasted for over thirty-five years until the present civil war. Who says the Israelis have not found the Assads useful? They may still do.

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Moreover, the notion that there is a beneficent negotiated settlement lurking somewhere on the horizon that will lead Assad into exile completely misunderstands the nature of his dictatorship. Assad is complicit in the killing of hundreds of thousands in order to stay in power--not to give it up! He can't give up. He is trapped. There are likely layers of people around him whose own lives are dependent on him staying in power. Dictators fall when, usually through illness or age, they lose the all-consuming will to...