An interview with Syria expert Jennifer Cafarella on why Bashar al-Assad's regime collapsed so suddenly and what happens next.

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** Syria’s Upheaval Explained
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An interview with Syria expert Jennifer Cafarella on why Bashar al-Assad's regime collapsed so suddenly and what happens next.

December 12, 2024
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Over the weekend, Syrian opposition groups took over Damascus and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, a sudden and embarrassing end to his family’s half-century dictatorship.

The 13-year old Syrian Civil War, which had ground to a stalemate in recent years, united the authoritarian governments of Iran and Russia in support of Assad, but also involved an intricate web of other players, including Kurds, Sunni Arab rebel groups, international jihadist movements, Turkey, and the United States.

To make sense of the abrupt end to this complex war and where Syria heads next, RDI spoke with Jennifer Cafarella ([link removed]) , the director of strategic initiatives at the Institute for the Study of War, a noted expert on the conflict in Syria.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity and concision.

Christopher Schaefer: The big question that everyone is asking is why the Syrian army collapsed right now. How did this happen so quickly?

Jennifer Cafarella: The rapid collapse of the Assad regime is a product of a perfect confluence of factors. Factor one is the inherent rot and fragility of the regime itself, which neither the Russians nor the Iranians solved after deploying to Syria last decade. Russia and Iran kept Assad in power by…
Read the full interview here ([link removed])


** The Bottom Line
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** 1. Securing Ukrainian skies ([link removed])
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Just two days ago, four people were killed and 20 more injured by a Russian missile strike in the Ukrainian city Zaporizhzhia. Putin is trying out new, more lethal ballistic missiles, continuing attacks that—according to President Zelensky—are entirely preventable. While visiting Kyiv in May 2023, RDI CEO Uriel Epshtein experienced ([link removed]) how bad Russia’s attacks could get and how effective American defense systems are at stopping them. “The Kremlin launched six hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, nine Kalibr cruise missiles, three Iskander ballistic missiles, and several Iranian-made Shahed attack drones. Moscow was pursuing a terror campaign against Kyiv with some of its most formidable weapons, but it came to remarkably little effect,” Epshtein noted, citing the American Patriot missile system.


** 2. Make Putin pay already ([link removed])
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The cost of arming Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion is a constant political football. An easy solution is still sitting there, staring us in the face—one that wouldn’t cost Americans anything. Over a year ago, RDI commissioned a report outlining the legal, practical, and moral case ([link removed]) for the transfer of Russian frozen assets to Ukraine. This week, Greg Wilson took up the banner of this common sense idea, writing ([link removed]) in a letter to the editor in The Washington Post, “If President Joe Biden does not seize all Russian sovereign assets in the United States to aid Ukraine at no cost to U.S. taxpayers, then President-elect Donald Trump should. This will be a litmus test for him: He either protects American taxpayers by using Russian assets first, or he shrinks from his peace-through-strength posture and fails to make Vladimir Putin pay for his illegal
aggression against a peaceful neighbor.”


** 3. The geopolitics of short attention spans ([link removed])
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The advent of social media has made it incredibly difficult to focus on anything, really. This feature of modern life can be harnessed by repressive regimes, argues Sam Kahn in Persuasion, noting all the major news stories that slip under our radar: “That’s China with its economic imperialism in Africa. That’s Russia testing out the capabilities of the Wagner Group in the Sahel—exactly where they think the West is least likely to notice.” He continues, “That’s Saudi Arabia’s long-standing war in Yemen. That’s Putin slotting his wars into the calendar wherever he thinks they will do the least public-relations damage.” Does the fate of the democratic world depend on strengthening our attention spans?


** 4. Iran's Axis of Resistance is losing its wheels ([link removed])
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For years, Iran has made a name for itself through its ability to project power across the Middle East via its axis of proxies. But it has been a tough year for Iran and its so-called “Axis of Resistance.” The current reality is that Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been severely diminished by Israel and the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has essentially cut off Iran’s ability to project influence into the Levant. And with a number of Iran’s axis members weakened, the remaining ones are vulnerable. Protests within Iran against the regime are also impacting Tehran's ability to respond to its international problems. Iran is far from seeing the collapse of its regime, but right now, the momentum is against the mullahs.


** 5. Can we fix what everyone agrees is broken? ([link removed])
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Our election system suffers from lack of competition, gerrymandering, and poor representation. To address those problems, the system needs reform. Easier said than done. A recent article from The xxxxxx articulates the problem of electoral reform quite well: “we’re a democracy badly in need of reform, and at some level most people agree about that. But at the same time we’re pretty unhappy about the options for reform that happen to be on the table.” The authors offer a path forward, recommending that the US adopt a system of “open list proportional representation” used by other democracies around the world to elect their national legislatures ([link removed]) .

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Lessons From South Korea’s Six-Hour Dictatorship

Public servants can prevent authoritarian drift, but only if they get out of bed for their democracy.

By Christopher Schaefer — December 4, 2024
Read here ([link removed])



** WATCH: 7 Dinner Guests Debate Immigration, Free Speech & War
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What if we actually can productively discuss politics at the table?

At RDI, we’re taking that question head on with a new video series, appropriately titled: Politics at the Table.

In our first video, we invite viewers to dinner with ordinary Americans to tackle a wide range of topics, from immigration and the border to freedom of speech and the war in Gaza.

The easy stuff.
Watch what happens ([link removed])

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