Impact of Death on U.S. Policy Is Seen as Minimal

For six U.S. presidents, from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, Hafez Assad posed a perplexing foreign policy challenge as the man standing in the way of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreement. Sometimes, Assad came tantalizingly close to making a deal--but he always pulled back.

William B. Quandt, a University of Virginia professor and former Middle East expert for the National Security Council, said Saturday that word of the Syrian leader’s death must have caused Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to think that “maybe they should have moved on Israel-Syria peace a little earlier than they did.”

“They got so close that it is too bad it didn’t get done while the man who could legitimize it was in power,” Quandt said.

Still, Assad’s death should not have much impact on U.S. foreign policy despite the attention that U.S. officials paid to him over the years, said Richard Haass, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Although Assad commanded the attention of U.S. leaders for more than a quarter of a century, the focus of U.S.-Syria relations has been limited to the impact of Syrian policies and actions on the Arab-Israeli peace process.

“It is an extremely narrow bilateral relationship,” Haass said.

Among the challenges now facing U.S. policymakers will be determining how Assad’s successor differs in style and substance from the longtime strongman. Assad was a meticulous negotiator who insisted on dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” and then often refusing to complete the deal even after most of his demands were satisfied. U.S. officials viewed him as a wily diplomat and a ruthless politician but one who kept his word when he made a deal.

“The U.S. could count on his commitment,” said Shibley Telhami, a scholar who holds the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland. “By and large, he’s been kind of predictable. Now there are lots of uncertainties.”

Assad’s successor, probably his son Bashar, may prove to be easier to deal with in the long run, but it seems unlikely that he will resume the peace process any time soon. Many Middle East experts expect a power struggle in Damascus that will distract Syria from foreign policy concerns for months--at least well into the next U.S. administration.

Phebe Marr, a former senior fellow at the National Defense University, said Assad’s death is “going to slow the Syrian peace track.”

She added, “That’s fairly clear. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. This pushes people back to concentrate on the Palestinian track. That’s important, and it’s not bad.”

A protracted stalemate on the so-called Syrian track clearly adds pressure on the Clinton administration to make visible progress when senior Israeli and Palestinian negotiators begin a new round of talks in Washington on Tuesday.

A senior State Department official said those talks may be postponed by several days because of Assad’s funeral, which is scheduled for Tuesday, but the meeting is not in jeopardy. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will represent the U.S. at the funeral.

“We’ve been emphasizing the Palestinian track for a while now because it seemed to be going somewhere,” the official said. “There have been some problems, but there’s really been remarkable progress in the last two months.”