Many differences over the interpretation of the recent U.S.-Russian agreement have surfaced, and over whether it was a defeat or a victory for the Syrian regime. But there are two main points that serious observers and pundits are in agreement about, almost without exception: First of all, that Russian diplomacy has accomplished a feat that it has not been able to achieve since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet this achievement, despite its magnitude, remains limited and conditional upon Russia's cooperation with Western powers in the Security Council. That is to say, that Russian power is what American power allows it to be, in return for the former's adherence to the norms that the second sets out. The second point of agreement is that Israel has secured a net gain by removing what the Syrian regime called (without ever recognizing its existence) a strategic counterpart to Israel's nuclear power. The signs for this transformation appeared immediately after, with John Kerry visiting Tel Aviv, and exchanging loud laughs with Benjamin Netanyahu. Regardless of whether the Syrian chemical weapons were a strategic counterpart for Israel's nuclear weapons or not, the fact remains that the Syrian regime, according to its own claims, has sacrificed this counterpart that supposedly created some kind of balance with the Jewish state. To be sure, the survival of the regime seems to be above all other goals. Recognizing this simple fact can only mean that the Syrian regime has lost the ability to exercise its ‘resistance' role, which has been measured through its position in the balance with Israel. In other words, the U.S.-Russian agreement has culminated with invaliding all the ideological and value-based claims and pretenses of the Syrian regime. One-party rule, if we assume that to be a value, has turned a long time ago into rule by the security services that have had the upper hand. Meanwhile, the slogan of ‘unity, freedom, and socialism,' for decades now, has only encouraged pleas to stop the joking. Thus, Bashar al-Assad rules today without the Baath, without unity, freedom, and socialism, and without a struggle against Israel or the ability to build a ‘strategic balance' with it. This is reminiscent, on a bigger scale of course, of Hezbollah's weapons under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which practically ended the conflict with Israel through south Lebanon. It remains of all this, and pursuant to the narrative of the Syrian regime, and not our deference to it at all, that Bashar and the group surrounding him want to rule the Syrians in the manner they are currently ruling them, and only for the sake of ruling them. In light of this fact, the ideological-geopolitical view that reduces the conflict with the West to certain interests, led by oil, becomes less credible. Indeed, it was claimed many times that it was oil that led the Americans and the West to Iraq and Libya. But this dismal analysis has missed the fact that both Saddam and Gaddafi were fully prepared to surrender the oil in their countries to Western interests in return for remaining in power. It therefore does not make sense to analyze what is going on without paying attention to tyranny and clinging to power for their own sake, and not to attain any alleged ideological goal. This disease often finds support among the communities rallying around the tyrant, in which case sociology would be much more useful than ideology and geo-politics to understand what is going on. Regarding the allegations of victory, it is sufficient to recall that the current Syrian regime is an heir to another regime that once claimed it won in the June war of 1967, just because the ‘progressive' regime had not fallen!
