“Al-Assad” and the strategic splitter

Written by Nasser Kandil,

According to his allies and lovers the image of the Syrian President Bashar Al Assad is characterized with courageous positions in steadfastness, stability, and confrontation, while according to his enemies this image is demonized with cruelty to the extent of criminality. An image of pure patriotism, bright Arabism, and civil secularism, versus subordination to Russia or Iran and the sectarian Shiite. But in both cases the image of the strategic thinker who deserves reflection by the enemy and the friend is absent. The lover is reassured when he is aware of this strategic depth in formulating the course of fateful war in the region and the world, while the enemy may reconsider and think rationally when sees the matters differently and maybe he succeeds in avoiding losing bets and wrong calculations.

Before the war on Syria and the West spring in the Arab countries the President Al-Assad read the situation of the strategic vacancy resulted from the crises of the American role and presence in the region, seeing that there is a major shift in the equations of the geopolitics and its sciences, the regional territories  are no longer determined by the ground borders  such as  mountains and deserts, ,therefore, the fall of the concept of the Middle East which was dealt as a regional area that has specifications and criteria. The President Al-Assad presented an alternative to the concept of the new regions “the water boundaries; seas and the huge waterways” a regional territory that replaces the concept of the Middle East, it is the area of the Five Seas; the Caspian Sea, Black Sea, the Gulf, the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, where Russia, Iran, Turkey, the Euro-Mediterranean countries become partners in one geographical region that has same dangers and converging interests. He calls for a regional cooperation system among its major forces to keep security and economic cooperation.

Practically the Americans ignored this concept and insisted on the traditional old concept. Europe and Russia are superpowers that are concerned with the old region which means the Middle East and partners with the difference of power and size. The war on Syria occurred and said at least respectively throughout the five years that America will remain “outside this region” and now it withdraws its fleets. Europe is an organic part of this region no matter how it tries to come along with America, since its concerns start demographically and end security and economically, now in the issue of the Iranian nuclear file it finds itself obliged to be different for these considerations which it had denied and neglected. While no matter how Turkey behaves arrogantly it will not be able to continue on the line drawn by Washington which is not concerned in the region where Turkey is in its center and has high untied interests with its entities at their forefront the perseverance of the unity of the entities, now it discovers after dangerous gambling and adventures that it has to reconsider more. Russia which is dealt as an external force that comes to a foreign territory discovers the entanglement of interests and fears, America which feels of Russia’s superiority discovers that this superiority is governed geographically. Where the Americans do not dare to continue to intervene   the Russians dare. The origin of the issue was and still the strategic idea called the Five Seas Region.

In previous times and within the context of his dealing with the idea of the war on Syria and his warning the West from the exaggeration in tampering, the President Al-Assad quoted the equation of the location of Syria on a seismic splitter. It is a strategic text in the science of geopolitics; it sees that there are entities in the geography of a world that have a role due to their historical composition, the nature of their geographical location, and the sensitivity of their political positioning in alliances and fronts. Syria is an example of such entities. The matter is not related only to their closeness and their interlacement with the countries of new territory (the five seas) rather to their privacies. Every change that occurs on them will reflect respectively on the neighboring countries without the ability to expect these changes, thus there will be what can be called as the curse of Syria, so in order to avoid it, there must not be tampering in its future and balances, therefore it is a structural deterrent protective component that is as important as the sources of its strength.

Today the President Al-Assad revives the memory of the West and Europe in particular with the concept of “the seismic splitter”. The division of Syria due to tampering with the composition of sects and races means the division of Turkey, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia and maybe farer, the Balkan states which are already divided will divide more from the gate of the Ukrainian splitter and the united entities in the Eastern Europe will collapse and will affect the Western ones from the gate of the German and Scandinavian splitter. Moreover, tampering with security and stability will force a big population segment to immigrate and to depart to Europe and will become a source of a crisis that it is difficult to be absorbed and contained, as the tampering with geography and finding it easy to position  in it under different titles. Now the Turkish positioning is magnifying the Kurdish problem, so it becomes a burden on Turkey that is bigger than the revues of its presence there, as the occupation entity which is fearful from the presence of the resistance forces which got rooted as a result of its tampering with the Syrian geography, and its theories about the security belt as a source of more protection, and as the tampering in investing on terrorism under the illusion of restricting its harms on Syria and exhausting it till it subdues. But Syria did not subdue and the terrorism became a burden on the West that is more dangerous than being in Syria.

The two equations “the Five Seas and the seismic splitter” form theoretical equations in politics and strategy. The West will not be able to deal with Syria and its President without understanding them. As the theory of the strategic balance with the occupation entity which set by the late President Hafez Al-Assad and was the base of the relationship with Iran and his adoption of the option of the resistance and its support.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,