The Bush administration’s relationship with Syria deteriorated during the next few years. Syria had been an ally of Iran, a sponsor of terrorist organizations and a collector of WMD. This original list of U.S. grievances was significantly lengthened by two other issues: Syria’s important aid to the Sunni insurrection in Iraq and its efforts to stifle Lebanese independence and democracy, cherished by President Bush himself. Since the Bush administration decided not to engage Syria on one hand and not to attack it on the other, its policy of punishing and isolating Syria has remained largely ineffective.

When Ehud Olmert, Sharon’s successor, began to talk about resuming negotiations with Syria, he was told by the Bush administration that this was not a good idea. Recently, talk of such resumption has been given more play. Oddly it was prompted by Washington’s decision to expose details of Israel’s destruction on September 7, 2007 of a nuclear reactor being built in northern Syria by North Korea. At the time, both the United and Israel chose to play down this major event. In the past few weeks a confluence of Congressional and intra-administration pressures led to a decision to reveal the details of the Israeli raid. The anticipated revelations and the expectation of Syrian embarrassment reinforced Olmert’s tendency to explore through Turkey the prospect of renewing the negotiations. Olmert has his own domestic political reasons for flaunting this prospect, but he now had the added reason of seeking to minimize Syria’s embarrassment so as not to push its president, Bashar al-Asad, towards another irresponsible adventure.

This turn of events gave rise to the current debate about the pros and cons of such a deal and of a putative U.S.-Syrian rapprochement. To my mind the debate is irrelevant because the prospects of such a deal or deals are quite dim. The Bush administration is focused on the Palestinian track and is hostile to Syria. It is difficult to see how the U.S. and Syrian positions on Lebanon could be reconciled or how Syria’s disengagement from Iran could seriously be discussed in the coming months. The issue will be relevant, if at all, for the next U.S. administration in the late winter of 2009.

Itamar Rabinovich was Israel’s chief negotiator with Syria. He is visiting professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

The problem would seem to be not only Syria’s behavior, but the very nature of the regime, especially that of the Asad dynasty. It is useful to consider Syria as another Cuba or North Korea, with which it bears many similarities. All three countries are ruled by dictatorial family dynasties cloaked in anti-Western ideologies that legitimate them and ensure their survival. For this reason, Bashar Asad is unlikely to be “bought” by the West.

It would be a mistake to compare Bashar even to Anwar Sadat. Unlike Sadat, Bashar sends out feelers to United State and Israel, not as part of an effort to bring about a fundamental change in his country’s domestic situation, but in order to preserve things just as they are. It is more apt to compare him to Gamal Abdel Nasser, who in the 1950s sought to maneuver between the two big blocs, until Washington finally pushed him into the arms of the Soviet Union.

What Bashar is proposing to the United States is an honorable capitulation: that it depart from Iraq, abandon Lebanon, pressure Israel to return the entire Golan Heights, and acquiesce in Syria’s continued membership in the region’s Iran-centered “axis of evil” (with no more than a vague Syrian hint of a possible future withdrawal from that axis). In return for all this, Syria offers to restore the arms-length relationship it had with the United States in the 1990s. Washington tolerated that sort of Syrian maneuvering in the days of George Bush senior and Bill Clinton, but it became altogether unacceptable to the present Bush administration after 9/11.

Syria is paying a price for Bashar’s defiance of the United States and his alignment with Iran and North Korea. Syria remains weak and backward, and its economic situation is getting worse. The country is depleted of its oil reserves and impacted negatively by the global economic downturn. But domestically, on the Syrian street, Bashar’s policies appear to enjoy wide popularity. America’s sinking into the Iraqi morass and Israel’s failure to subdue Hezbollah in the Lebanese war weakened Syria’s two main rivals and strengthened Bashar, who suddenly looked like a winning gambler. In a troubled region, Syria gives the impression of a model of political stability. Its social and economic problems are not yet acute, and there is no real domestic threat to the regime’s stability.

So the question of what to do about Syria remains unresolved. There is very little Washington can do to compel a change in Syrian behavior if it is not interested in another Iraq-type adventure (i.e., regime change by means of military occupation), or not ready to use real force against Syria—for instance, by imposing a blockade on export of Syrian oil. Absent such measures, U.S. policy consists of ineffective rhetoric and insignificant economic sanctions.

In that light, perhaps those who call upon the United States to change its policy have a point. If Washington isn’t prepared to beat Damascus, its only other option, aside from the status quo, is to think about joining it. A properly conceived Syrian-Israeli peace process could serve Israeli and U.S. interests. A different Syria also could play a stabilizing role in Lebanon. If Syria somehow ended up aligned with the pax Americana, it could work keep Hezbollah from assuming power there (which might otherwise happen in 15-20 years).

But a Syrian-American dialogue should be realistic. It cannot be based on the illusion that Syria might become another Egypt, or even another Libya. At best, it might be another North Korea—a country with which the United States could reach limited understandings after long and exacting negotiations, crafted carefully and realistically.

Eyal Zisser is director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Of course, Syria sees things quite differently. They know very well that they’re isolated; and they know very well that they’re losing their cards. That’s precisely why they will not do what Jon suggests, and surrender their remaining cards just so they can be viewed as less of a trouble-maker in Washington. The Syrians are well-versed in the ways of power, as Jon correctly points out. They do respond to sticks. And while he asserts that the effectiveness of U.S. sticks is diminishing, at this stage the sticks are not only American; they are also Arab, European, and international, through myriad United Nations resolutions on Lebanon.

But are U.S. sticks really diminishing? I’m not so sure. I don’t believe, for example, that Bashar Asad would have so vocally supported a peace deal with Israel had he not been seeking to use negotiations toward that end as a way of gaining entry back into Washington, for the reasons Peter Rodman outlines. Asad’s statements are causing useful anxiety among Syria’s Middle Eastern allies—whether Iran or Hezbollah—who wonder whether they can really trust Damascus, particularly after the killing of Imad Mughniyeh. Is it not in U.S. interests to create tension in that relationship, and to do so by forcing Syria to make the mistakes?

I also find that Peter put his finger on a fundamentally new reality, very different than what we’ve seen in the past: Syria’s isolation within the Arab world, particularly its very poor relations with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The intensity of that hostility has to be understood outside the context of traditional Middle Eastern politics. The reason the Saudis and Egyptians are so worried about Syria is that Syria is perceived as an Iranian wedge in the Levant. The reason both are so adamantly opposed to Syria in Lebanon is that they feel that a Syrian return there would pose an existential threat to them by extending Iranian influence from Tehran to the Mediterranean. It would also enhance the power, and more broadly the appeal of the revolutionary “model,” of Iran’s militant Islamist allies, serving as an example to their domestic Islamist opposition movements.

Is it really in the U.S. interest to engage Syria in this context, when its major Arab allies are in the midst of a conflict with Iran they view as vital? In fact, I’m not at all convinced that asking Arab states to change Syrian behavior through “more robust interactions and investments in the country” would work. The Arabs have repeatedly tried to change Syrian behavior through more congenial means, most prominently at the Arab League summit in Riyadh last year. The Syrians have ignored this. Why? Because they know the price for their return to the Arab fold would be to give up on a return to Lebanon. They’re not about to do that, because only such a return, one that is total, with soldiers, would give Syria the regional relevance it lost in 2005, when it was forced out of Lebanon.

It would also allow Syria, from Beirut, to undermine the Hariri tribunal, which threatens the future of the Syrian regime and which will probably begin operating next year. In this, Syria has the full support of Hezbollah, which realizes that without a Syrian comeback, the party will continue to face a majority in Lebanon that wants the party to disarm. I find it revealing that Jon failed to mention Lebanon once in his post. That’s because advocates of engaging Syria realize that the only way you can bring about an advantageous dialogue with Damascus is to give it something worthwhile. That something can only be Lebanon, the minimal price Syria would demand to offer positive concessions in return.

More broadly, the Syrians also happen to feel that their alliance with Iran allows them to persist in that objective, while also ignoring the entreaties of their Arab brethren. Syria sees Iran as the regional superpower of the future, an impression Asad has little reason to discard when the debate in the United States so foolishly ignores the regional implications of a substantial American drawdown in Iraq. Asad may be right, but his attitude is not the basis on which an enduring U.S.-Syrian relationship can be built.

We are in a regional struggle for power, and Syria happens to stand at its nexus point. It is a weak link that some persist in wanting to strengthen by advocating U.S. engagement of it. But what are the conditions of such engagement? If it is that Syria must surrender Lebanon, Hamas, and Hezbollah to find its salvation in a better relationship with the United States, then be assured that Asad won’t accept such a patently bad deal. He prefers to take his chances with a fight, with Iran on his side. If there are those in the United States willing to give up on Lebanon’s independence, however, and by extension allow Syria to further bolster Hezbollah, then fine. But I again fail to see how that would be in the long-term U.S. interest.

Michael Young is a member of MESH.

But if we put aside the question of healing the rift in U.S.-Syrian relations and just think about how best to manage an often antagonistic regime, it seems to me that our policy of growing isolation over decades isn’t serving our interests. There is increasingly little we can do to harm Syrian interests (I still love the irony that under the Syria Accountability Act we barred Syrian Arab Airlines from flying to the United States, when I am fairly sure they don’t even own an aircraft that could make such a journey). Even more practically, we (and the Syrians) have systematically winnowed down the constituencies in both countries that would support better ties, lowering the costs to either side of escalating tensions.

There is no question that the Syrian government responds to sticks. We saw that in the way they caved on Abdullah Ocalan, their lack of response to the Israeli airstrike in September, and so on. But consistently applying the stick to Syria as we have done has made them somewhat numb, and that makes whatever sticks we pick up less and less effective.

To my mind, our policy needs to have two components. The first is to persuade the Syrians that the utility of their spoiler role is diminishing. In meetings with Syrian officials at the highest levels last July, I put forward the point that people have forgotten that Syria has any ability to help solve problems, so consistent has their troublemaking been. Americans should push this point time after time, and challenge the Syrians to be constructive.

The second is to press Arab allies in the cause of changing Syrian behavior, taking advantage of their much more robust interactions and investments in the country. Coordinating our activities with them has a huge multiplier effect; carrying them out alone, it seems to me, means our effect is marginal at best. None of this is to suggest that our problems with Syria will go away, or that the regime can be “flipped.” I don’t believe there is much evidence that it can be. But are we better able to manage things from a position of having more interactions or less? I think the indicators are pretty clearly in favor of the former.

Jon Alterman is a member of MESH.