Monday, December 9, 2024

Part I

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The Assad Regime Has Fallen: Syria’s Former Dictator Takes Asylum in Russia – Who, What, Will Take Over Power in Syria? Will It Be Worse Than Assad’s Rule? A ‘Catastrophic Success?’

The Scripture speaks of the rising and falling of nations. History records the rising and following of empires. Sometimes it is just a tin pot dictator who falls, and that turns out to be very important as well. Over the weekend, that dictator who fell was Bashar al-Assad, who was the totalitarian leader, the repressive leader of the nation of Syria, until all of a sudden he wasn’t. And there are some huge worldview implications here for us to see. For one thing, we are talking about a far larger context, and there are some fascinating questions just related to all of this. One of the questions that comes to mind is, okay, so what’s the difference between Syria and Assyria? Those of you who are familiar with ancient history and with the Bible understand that Assyria shows up, Syria shows up. Okay, so what’s the difference? Well, they are at opposite ends of the so-called Fertile Crescent.

And so you look there at the Middle East and what you see is that on the eastern end that Fertile Crescent would be Ashur and Assyria. On the more Western end you would have Syria. But they are still related in ways that many people frankly would not recognize. For one thing, they’re both related to the Akkadian peoples mentioned in the Old Testament. But the ancient Assyrian Empire, it is matched by ancient Syria, but in ancient Syria, it is more about ancient cities. In particular, Aleppo and Damascus. Historians record that they are two of the oldest continuously inhabited city sites on all of planet earth. So if you’re looking for an ancient city, just go to Aleppo or go to Damascus. By the way, Damascus is the capital of Syria. Aleppo is the largest, most populated city there in Syria. And of course, Damascus comes to mind because of the New Testament, because it was Saul of Tarsus on his way to persecute believers in Damascus who had that visitation from the Lord Jesus Christ, and was transformed such that he was no longer Saul but Paul. All that on his way to Damascus.

But it’s also important to recognize that for much of recent history, and by that I mean the last several centuries, if you’re talking about this part of the world, you’re just talking about the Ottoman Empire. That Islamic Empire that radiated out of the Ottoman capital, which is Istanbul. There what was formerly Constantinople, which was formerly the capital of the Byzantine Roman Empire, that is to say the Roman Empire in the East. And so in the rising and falling of empires, you had the city of Constantinople that became the city of Istanbul. The Ottoman Empire radiated throughout the entire Mediterranean region and controlled most of what we call the Near East and also North Africa. And of course, at one time the Ottoman Empire went all the way westward into Spain. And so you’re looking at the fact that, but for a couple of very important battles, two of the most important of them being Vienna and Budapest, if those battles have not been won by the Christian defenders of those European nations than much of Europe, if not all of Europe may have become part of the Ottoman Islamic Empire. But that didn’t happen.

And the Ottoman Empire ruled throughout most of the Middle East. It would’ve included all of this area until all of a sudden it didn’t. And that came shortly after the end of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire having sided with Germany. Well, then that didn’t turn out so well. The Ottoman Empire’s fragility became very evident, and it eventually just dissipated. By about 1922, the Ottoman Empire was no more. So what then happened to all of those lands? Well, for one thing, they were divided among the victorious empires. And in particular, they were at least in mandate territories, mostly separated between the British and the French. And so it was the French who were in charge of what became Lebanon and also Syria. But that was not long to last. And the most important thing to recognize is that in about 1963, a revolution of the Ba’athist Party came to rule there in Syria. And eventually that led to what was a major coup under the leadership of an Air Force officer named Hafez al-Assad. He established what was the Assad totalitarian reign, the Assad regime, which lasted until yesterday. 

History sometimes unfolds right before our eyes. So with the Ottoman Empire basically just decaying and then dissolving, and then the French influence giving way to local influence, and the Ba’athist party gaining power, and then a coup that brought the Assad dynasty into a powerful shape as a regime. What kind of regime was it? Well, for one thing, the Assads themselves were not representative of the majority of the Muslims there in Syria, about 74% are Sunni Muslims. That’s the majority Muslims, much like what you would find for instance in Saudi Arabia. And the Assads were instead members of the Alawites sect, that represented only about 13% of the population. 10%, by the way, the population in Syria historically has been identified as Christian. But you’re looking at the Alawites that nonetheless gained ascendancy. And they’re a strange sect by the way. They are Islamic, but they also believe in such things as reincarnation. Their doctrines are largely secretive.

But in any event, the Assads were really known for their religious views. What they were known for is their absolute commitment to party power and to the control of the entire population of Syria and mischief throughout the entire region, as you had an alliance made between Syria, most importantly in the beginning with the Assad regime and the USSR, the Soviet Union. And that is because, as I say, the Assad regime was not so much known for its commitment to Islam. It was known for its commitment to Marxist revolution and in particular to a form of socialism. And so as you think about, for example, Israel’s wars, and you think about the photographs, you have seen. You see the jet fighters flown by the Syrian Air Force against the Israelis. They’re MiGs. They are Soviet-era Soviet aircraft. You had the fact that the Soviet Union was looking for an outpost in the Middle East, and they looked at Hafez al-Assad. He looked like just their kind of guy for just their kind of regime in order to fulfill just their kind of puppet purpose there in the Middle East.

But the Assad regime didn’t stay in power simply by its alliance with the Soviet Union. It also made alliances with others, most importantly Iran after the Iranian revolution. And that became very handy when, of course, the Soviet Union itself broke up in the late ’80s and the early 1990s. But don’t worry, Syria found a dear friend in a newly resurgent Russia after the Soviet Union, and of course they had the ties to Iran and they also had the ties to the Iranian-backed group known as Hezbollah operating against Israel in Lebanon. Now just count the math of what’s going on. Just in recent months, Israel has largely decimated Hezbollah. And they did so by targeted assassination, targeted bombings against the leadership of Hezbollah, which was a Shi’ite sect. That is to say not Sunni, it was Shi’ite. It was very close to Iran. But here’s the issue. Iran has been involved in all kinds of military action, including against Israel, and then Israel led a counterattack. Iran’s in no position economically or militarily to have tried to salvage the Assad regime there in Syria.

But it’s also true that Syria’s Russian patron had no spare troops to go and help the Assad regime now headed by Bashar Assad, that is the son of Hafez Assad. And so what you had was a near total collapse of that dictatorial regime, and it appeared almost to fall over as if blown like a feather in the wind. There was an insurgency, and it began just days ago in this concentrated sense, although there has been a larger civil war ongoing in Syria since about 2013 to 2015. And in that you’ll recall that the repression and the horrors inflicted on its own people by the Assad regime, included the use of poison gas killing as many as 1800 Syrian citizens. This is a horrifyingly evil regime. A great summary of this was provided by the Los Angeles Times Nabih Bulos, a foreign correspondent. In just one paragraph he says this, “Assad remained in power thanks to Russia, Iran, and the Iran backed Lebanese military group, Hezbollah. Allies that dispatched fighters and arms to bolster the Syrian president’s flagging troops. By 2019, his survival was seen as a fait accompli, but he presided over a fractured, hollowed out state with no less than three rival administrations competing against him. One in the northwest under Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Turkish controlled canton near the border with Turkey in the north. And a US backed rump state controlled by the Kurdish militia known as the Syrian Democratic forces.” 

In other words, he was surrounded by his enemies and his enemies were now inside Syria. And even as he had controlled Syria by a repressive regime backed up by his military, his military as was so often the case throughout history, simply crumbled in the face of this overwhelming opposition. When they decided whose skin to save, they decided to save their own skin. Big surprise there. I also loved a statement that was published by the BBC, that’s a British Broadcasting Corporation saying that just a matter of a short time ago, the reporter had been assured by sources there in Syria that Russia was behind Syria, “for the long haul.” Well, of course, the irony in that is whatever the long haul meant, it evidently didn’t mean beyond yesterday. 

Okay, in terms of power politics. What does this mean? It means a huge embarrassment to Russia, a huge setback for Iran, a huge injury furthermore to the kind of aims of a group like Hezbollah. Which is now going to be without Syria as its protector, maybe. That leads to the huge question. What if what comes in Syria isn’t better than the Assad regime that was just toppled. What if instead what comes to pass is worse? Okay, just in worldview terms that raises some fascinating questions. When you have no order, when you have disorder, is the order that is brought out of disorder better or worse? Well, in general terms, order is preferable to disorder. Order is actually necessary for civilization, but that order might be brought by an evil source rather than a good source. And here’s a fascinating worldview concept. Over the course of the last, say, 10 to 15 years, Western authorities, that is the authorities, military state department authorities in the United States, also similar colleagues in Western Europe.

They were quite concerned that what could happen in Syria was what they described as a potential catastrophic success. Now that’s huge. Those are two words that don’t naturally go together, catastrophe and success. What would a catastrophic success be? It would be a success as in toppling the Assad regime that turns out not to be a prelude to democratic self-government freedom and liberty, but instead a prelude to something even worse. So what could be worse? Well, let’s just look at the group that just claimed ascendancy in Syria, the leader of the largest group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is a man by the name of Abu Mohammed al-Julani. And he has formerly been for one thing, wanted as a suspected terrorist by the United States government. He has been for over a decade in jail, in American custody for terrorist activities. He has been identified with the Islamic State and with Al-Qaeda at least in years past. And even though he claims that he has put all of that behind him, he is likely right now a good candidate for the one who will sit in the driver’s seat in shaping the future direction for Syria.

Now, does that encourage you or discourage you? Is that success or is it, as was warned, a catastrophic success? We simply don’t know yet. And that just reminds us of the limitations of any great power when it comes to exercising will all over the globe. There are things, for instance, the United States can do. There are things we can’t do. There were things Russia could do, that at some point it simply couldn’t do any longer. There were things that Iran was doing and aimed to do even more, but it couldn’t do those things once the Assad regime became a net negative. But what’s going to happen in the future? We don’t know. And here’s whereas Christians, we need to recognize there are brothers and sisters in Christ there in Syria, and their lives might very well be at stake. Some of them remember the repression that they experienced during many of the years under the Assad dynasty. In more recent years, there had been something of a greater freedom given to Christians. For one thing, he didn’t need any more enemies.

So as we’re thinking about Syria, I just want to underline the fact that when in the Scripture you see the rising and falling of nations, you see the rise and the fall of kings. You see in history very similar developments, but you don’t see them all that often. But we saw it yesterday in Syria, and we ought not to let that pass without our notice. It is a very big development. And even as many people in the world can’t figure out exactly how it relates to themselves, the reality is, we are a part of a world in which, yes, what happens in Syria is almost certainly not going to stay in Syria. And that’s a warning to us all.

Part II

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The French Government Falls: The Volatility of the Constitutional Republic in France Becomes Clear Yet Again

But okay, also looking at headlines in recent days, let’s not think so much about Syria right now. That’s an unfolding story. There’s another unfolding story, and I just want to tell you right up front, it is less catastrophic, but boy is the headline big, and that is the fall of the French government.

Over the course of the last several days, the headlines are not only about the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, but also about the fall of the government in France. That is the government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier. It fell just in the last days of last week when the government failed a vote of confidence. Now, is it the same story? It sounds like the same story. It’s the end of a government in Syria and the end of a government in France. But no, it’s not the same story. France is a constitutional republic, but as we’re going to see a rather volatile one. So what happened in France is merely a political development. It does not mean that the future of the nation is all the sudden drastically at stake. But you know, it sure sounds that way when you talk about the fall of a government. So what does it mean that the government in France has fallen? Is this a big deal or not? Well, it is a big deal, but it’s nowhere near the big deal as Syria.

But then again, when you talk about France, you’re talking about a nation much closer to us than Syria, in more ways than one. So we’re going to have fun thinking about this. When you talk about last week’s fall, the Barnier government in France. So France is going to have to constitute a new government. Does that mean that France doesn’t have a functioning government? No, it has a functioning government in most ways, thinking about essential services, thinking about the military. For that matter, you also have Emmanuel Macron, now in his second term as the president of France, and he continues to be the president of France. So it is not Emmanuel Macron whose government has fallen. Although it is because he’s the president, but even though the Prime Minister is out, the president stays. How’s that for complicated? 

But I said, this is going to be fun to think about. When you had the Barnier government fall just since, say, 1958. 1958. That’s a year older than I am. Okay, so we’re not talking about ancient history here. When you think about 1958, well, maybe it’s ancient history, but you know the sense of which I mean it. When you look at 1958, you all of a sudden understand that it’s a big deal that since 1958, so in the past 66 years, France has had 45 governments. Wow. Meanwhile, by the way, that looks like a rock of stability when compared to Italy. Italy’s democratic process has been so chaotic and fragile that since World War II, Italy has had no less than 66 governments, at least as counting as of this morning. So it’s really interesting when you think about the worldview implications of government. How governments are constituted. Why is France in this position? Well, it is because France was for so long a monarchy. And not just any kind of monarchy, it was a grandiose despotic monarchy. And of course, that continued until the French Revolution in the end of the 18th century, and certainly into the early 19th century. And so the overthrow of the French monarchy in the French Revolution, and it followed, of course, the American Revolution, but in worldview terms was in many ways its opposite.

More on that in just a moment. The French Revolution didn’t produce any political stability that was inherently one of its problems because of the radical vision of liberty that was behind it. And instead, order was brought not by a constitutional order, but rather by a new ruler. And of course, that was the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. And thus, it was only when you get to say, 1848, that’s a long time after 1804 in the fall of the first Republic that you have the second Republic in France put in place. It lasted all four years from 1848 to 1852, and then there wasn’t another Republic until 1870. By the way, it was another Bonaparte in the midst. That was Louis Bonaparte. That’s the interregnum between 1852 and 1870. 1870 until 1940 roughly, you had the third republic. That’s what fell to the Nazis. Then you had the Fourth Republic from 1946 to 1958 and it fell. And then the Fifth Republic was established in 1958.

And what made the Fifth Republic more stable than the ones before it, at least in theory, was that at the top of the French government was now an individual who’s basically an elected monarch, and that is the French president. In a way that is not true of the President of the United States, the French president really is more or less an elected monarch. He even lives in an official residence called a palace. And much as the American Constitutional Order, the Office of President was created around the person of George Washington. The presidency in the Fifth Republic of France was largely created around the French Hero of World War II, Charles de Gaulle. And it was Gaullism that was a big part of the idea behind the Fifth Republic. But again, the government of the Prime Minister, the most recent Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, fell last week. And thus, France is going to have to put together a new government. 

But in worldview terms, there are huge issues related to this. For one thing, the president in France appoints the Prime Minister who then has to organize a government. And the government was only organized in France because it could put together the two extremes, the far left and the far right, cutting out the middle. Because in France, what you see is an increasing divide and polarization, which is exactly what you see in many other nations, increasingly is what you see in the United States. Not to the same degree as what you see in France, but also in some other nations. The same patterns increasingly seen in France’s, very powerful neighbor, Germany. And if something in Europe is happening in Germany and in France, buckle your seatbelts because it is likely the same pattern that will show up across the Atlantic in the United States of America.

Part III

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The Delicate Nature of Government: The Future of the Social Order Can Change Drastically in Short Order

So as we’ve seen just in the last several days and the rising and falling of nations, when it comes to say, Syria and the rising and falling of empires, the rising and falling of, say, prime ministers, the government in Syria fell, and the former dictator is now officially a refugee with asylum status in Russia. He’s in Moscow, and in all likelihood, he will never set foot in Syria again. Because if he did, he would likely never leave Syria alive. 

Meanwhile, the government of the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, has fallen in France in virtually the same week. But he’s not going into exile. He’s just going into retirement, and as he is in his seventies, it’s a normal retirement at that. He gave it a shot in trying to put together a functioning government, but the extremes became too much, and it is now likely that it will be the energy on the right, on conservative side that just may have a shot at forming a government. How long that one lasts? Well, let’s just say in France, even more so in Italy, evidently the clock starts ticking the moment the government is established. All that, by the way, should underline the fact, at least for Christians in the United States, that the stability of our constitutional order is something we should not take for granted.

And even when we look at big political problems, let’s be thankful that we don’t go to bed tonight worried that the government of the United States might fall. Just a couple of quick worldview observations before we end. I said there’s a radical difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. The American Revolution produced order, a constitutional order eventually, in a very stable order of ordered liberty. But the French Revolution was far more radical. It was explicitly secular, indeed, anti-Christian, and it led to disorder, and of course it led to bloodshed as well. The great terror. In the United States, in the American Revolution there was no great terror. For that we should be incredibly thankful. The other observation is simply this. When you look at France, what you see in the fall of this Barnier government is the fall of an attempt to create something in the middle between two opposing political ideas.

And increasingly in our time, it appears that stability is not going to come by trying to split the difference between the left and the right, but by having a consensus one way or the other to move to the left or to the right, which by the way, in American politics is seldom an unchecked direction. But nonetheless, it really matters who shows up to vote, because in France, that means the winning side gets to form a government, the other side basically out of power. Increasingly in the United States, that pattern also pertains. And that means, for instance, that the incoming administration of Donald Trump and his second term with the Republican majorities, then as that majority is in the house, a bit more substantial in the Senate. The reality is that the incoming president-elect can count on only two years of this current Congress with this particular party structure, and thus he’s got to get an awful lot done in those two years because he doesn’t know what avenues will be foreclosed on him in years three and four.

In politics, as in everything else, you would better act while you can, because pretty soon it might be true that you can’t. But one final observation, I say just with deep gratitude. When you think of the American tradition, or for that matter, the English-speaking tradition of ordered liberty. Ordered liberty is a very different thing than what is found in most other civilizations and most other governmental structures, and that is incredibly apparent when you look around the world and in particular when you look at Syria. We need to make certain we observe what’s going on here, for one thing, in order to be even more grateful about the liberty and order that we experience here. And also to understand even as it is largely unprecedented, there is no guarantee that it’s permanent.