One less kleptocracy: Dekleptocracy Report #32, 18 December 2024
THE DEKLEPTOCRACY REPORT
December 18, 2024
BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT
Welcome to our 32nd newsletter! The sudden fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria on December 8 was a blow to Russia and its global mafia of kleptocracies. It’s also an opportunity for the US to aid the Syrian people and score a geopolitical victory in the process, but only if we’re bold enough to act. Syria also bears potential lessons for the use of sanctions in other conflicts in an age of strategic competition — and warnings about the costs of corruption for America itself.
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SYRIA: ONE LESS KLEPTOCRACY
The end for the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was as sudden as it was decisive. On November 27, Syrian rebels affiliated with the Hayat Tahrir Sham (HTS) militant group launched an assault on the northern city of Aleppo. By December 8, the rebels were in the capital of Damascus and al-Assad had fled to Moscow. After five decades of rule, the al-Assad regime was gone, and after nearly 14 years of civil war, the Syrian Revolution – long written off as a failure by most observers – had succeeded. Syrians now face an uncertain future with a mix of hope, anxiety, and elation at al-Assad’s fall. For the US and its European allies, the situation presents an opportunity to play a constructive role in the Middle East, and to exploit a historic defeat for Russia and its “Axis of Authoritarianism”. The Syrian case study also presents lessons for the fight against kleptocracy at home and abroad.
Russia’s geopolitical goals have long helped fuel the conflict in Syria. Its focus on Syria, including its direct military intervention in the war from 2015, its disinformation campaigns against Syrian opposition groups, and its efforts to spread pro-regime narratives amongst the western fringe (including, worryingly, our next Director of National Intelligence) has been second only to its focus on Ukraine. While Russia inherited the Soviet Union’s Cold War alliance with Syria, modern Russian foreign policy revolves around maintaining a de facto protection racket for Vladimir Putin’s personal network of kleptocratic clients, including the al-Assads, who ran Syria as a family business for decades. They built up extraordinary wealth via systematic theft: in 2022, the State Department estimated the family’s net worth at USD$1-2 billion (in a country where the average public sector employee’s monthly salary was around $23). Unsurprisingly, the demand for an end to corruption was one of the chief rallying cries of the protestors that initiated the Syrian Revolution in 2011 (and for the Arab Spring more broadly).
Footage of Syrians touring al-Assad’s opulent palaces in the wake of his flight echo the aftermath of ex-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s escape to Russia in 2014, and it’s probably no accident that Putin’s direct intervention in Syria in 2015, when the regime’s survival was at its most precarious, came close on the heels of Yanukovych’s fall the year before. Protecting the rule of his clients – the Yanukovychs, al-Assads, Lukashenkos, and Medvedchuks of the world – is at the heart of Putin’s foreign policy. The fall of a client kleptocracy is a massive blow to Putin’s reputation for strength abroad. More importantly it also signals weakness to Russian elites, which could be potentially lethal, as when the Prigozhin revolt briefly threatened the regime in 2023. With al-Assad joining Yanukovych and Medvedchuk in Moscow, Putin’s geopolitical losses are on full display. The US and its allies have an opportunity to weaken him further by working with the new Syrian government to expel the Russians from Hmeimim airbase and Tartus, while also freezing out Iran, which has become one of Russia’s critical allies – and potentially gaining a new regional ally. To do this, the US will need to act quickly and boldly, setting out a new policy in Syria that prioritizes reconstruction.
A golden window
Conflict resolution, human security, stabilization, governance, recovery and reconstruction, refugee return, and eventually democratic transition, justice, and development should be the stated, chief strategic priorities of US policy in Syria. The objective should be to establish the US as the principal partner of the Syrian people in the country’s next phase. Doing so requires the US to insert itself as the go-to mediator of internal conflicts and international interests, excluding rivals like Russia, Iran, and China, checking spoilers like Israel, and preventing further military action. Most challenging will be the unavoidable task of dealing with Turkey while halting its aggression against US-backed factions in the northeast. The US must also address security issues (such as ongoing Islamic State presence and the captagon trade) and, most of all, take the lead on reconstruction by deploying a combination of robust diplomatic presence on the ground and an overwhelming surge of aid. Such a bold policy also entails a comfort with risk.
The first steps are to immediately lift HTS’s terrorist designation and sanctions on Syria (while maintaining targeted sanctions for al-Assad and other top leaders of the ancien régime), which are the main barriers to unhindered aid. This is controversial, as HTS is a former al-Qaeda affiliate which remains a hardline Islamist organization with a record of heavy-handed rule in Idlib. However, the group has disavowed global Jihad, and it’s leader Ahmed al-Sharaa (better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani) is, by all indications, a self-interested pragmatist rather than an idealogue. While he is no doubt eager to maintain an influential role in governance of the Syria that is to come, the messaging and policy decisions coming from HTS leadership, such as appointing an interim prime minister for a limited term, seeking to continue operation of Syrian Government’s existing ministries, dissolving rebel factions, and amnesty for rank-and-file regime fighters, indicate an understanding of the power of performative restraint in hopes of obtaining international aid – and an understanding that HTS is not powerful enough to rule Syria on its own. This suggests a willingness to deal with international interlocutors. The US should keep its eyes and ears open, but also take full advantage of the present opportunity.
As the US has not meaningfully contributed to the anti-Assad opposition in the past decade, purchasing equity with the Syrian people will require a heavy dose of soft power in the form of a massive surge of aid. The race to deliver this aid at speed and scale will in large part determine outcomes at this stage, and the US needs to mobilize civilian resources supported by military logistical capabilities to get in pole position. As aid flows begin, the risk of corruption will be acute. The US and its allies will need to balance the need for oversight against the imperative of rapid reconstruction. While some diversion will be inevitable, the main objective should be to ensure this remains a bug rather than a feature of the system.
Lessons learned
Of course, it’s hard to be optimistic that the US will actually act decisively to take advantage of this opportunity under this administration or the next. Risk aversion and an overly securitized approach has defined US policy in Syria since the Obama administration, leading to our marginalization in the conflict. However, the dramatic events of recent weeks have created a rare opportunity to change the narrative and score a rare strategic victory against Russia’s kleptocratic axis and an even rarer opportunity to be white hats in the Middle East. It is also a chance to underscore the brittleness of these kleptocracies. HTS bided its time, built both civilian and military capacity and struck when the timing was right. In the event of a ceasefire in Ukraine, this could be a model of sorts for Kyiv as it plots over the longer term to recover territories currently under Russian occupation.
The end of the conflict should also teach practical and scholarly lessons about the effectiveness of sanctions, again applicable to the war in Ukraine and other global hotspots. A proper post mortem of Syrian sanctions policy will take more time and analysis, and the role of sanctions in exacerbating the human suffering caused by Syria’s economic collapse must be considered. Nonetheless, an initial conclusion is that the cumulative effect of international sanctions on Syria, combined with combat losses, weakened the regime’s ability to sustain its military, leaving it vulnerable to HTS’s final assault. Similarly, the extensive if flawed sanctions regime imposed on Russia helped to stretch its resources thin, leaving it unable to offer al-Assad anything more than a flight out.
Finally, Syria holds another lesson for the US. As concern grows about the concatenation of deals between American corporate power and the incoming administration, the prospect of a kleptocracy emerging in America, complete with tech “broligarchs”, judicial capture, and the growth of systemic corruption (which the Supreme Court has aided by repeatedly narrowing the very definition of the term), is becoming very real. This could, in turn, invite corrupt influence from foreign kleptocracies – Russia chief among them. The Syrian Revolution, like the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, was largely a response to corruption and impunity. If America reaches the point where corruption isn’t a far off problem in Washington but an everyday obstacle and tax on daily life, the country’s already-frayed social cohesion may reach a breaking point. Syria’s history over the past five decades is not a remote tragedy but a warning to any modern state of the costs of debasing the rule of law and turning politics into a show for a tiny and entitled elite.
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