"Bashar Assad's moment of truth has come"

"... any change in the power structure or policies in Damascus will reverberate around the region like the silver ball in a pinball machine.

President Bashar Assad’s speech on Wednesday blaming the recent demonstrations in Syria on foreign conspiratorial hands surprised most observers who expected him to announce changes on the road to “reform.” His defiant tone, in fact, was perfectly in keeping with his own track record of presenting Syria as the guardian of Arab dignity, sovereignty and rights, which he has configured in a package of policies and rhetoric under the rubric of “resistance.”

Assad did the same thing six years ago when Syria was pressured by a U.S.-led coalition in the wake of the war on Iraq. In a speech at Damascus University then he defiantly rejected the calls for Syria to change its policies internally and vis-à-vis Lebanon, Hezbollah, Iraq and Iran, and presented Syria as the steadfast anchor of the Arab-Iranian resistance front in the face of Arab, Israeli and Western plots.

He is continuing this strategy today, when the pressures on him are emanating more from discontent inside Syria than from outside. However, Assad’s accusation that all the troubles inside the country are the result of a foreign plot are unconvincing. That’s not because foreigners have not plotted against Syria in the past, for they have; but because there is something increasingly less credible with every new Arab government that explains domestic demands for more democracy, freedom and non-corrupt governance as the sinister work of foreign plotters....

Syria, in other words, is not immune from the domestic discontent that has triggered serious populist revolts in half a dozen other Arab countries. Bashar Assad and his officials who have spoken on the issue have more or less acknowledged the reality of the grievances... As citizen activism and pressure for change increase, the state will have to devise a more credible and productive response than the one it is now offering, which perpetuates its legacy of strong and centralized state control that many of its own citizens are challenging.

Many Syrians demonstrating in support of Assad these days suggest that he has assets that he can deploy in his stated desire to implement reforms, but at his own pace, not at the behest of foreign conspirators or local demonstrators. Syria also has the support of many Arab and foreign governments that do not want to risk the enormous consequences of seeing Syria possibly subjected to the same turmoil that has hit a few other Arab countries in recent months.

The contours of both state control and citizen agitation in Syria are clearer now. The stakes of deep change in Syria are higher than anywhere else in the region, except perhaps in the oil-producing Gulf. Syria’s current response is probably not a realistic long-term strategy, because it will lead to massive police action and repression... Assad has to act more decisively and realistically in forging a middle ground between those drastic options. However, he has yet to indicate what that might be. His best option is to initiate deep reforms similar to Mikhail Gorbachev’s top-down revolution in the Soviet Union, and ride that wave towards a better future for Syria and the entire region. The longer he waits, the more will the foreign conspirators and domestic discontented increase and become more ferocious."