Lawrence J. Haas
The stunning events in Syria, where one of history’s most brutal strongmen has just been forced to flee, remind us that even longstanding dictatorships can be hollow shells, with little to keep them intact when opposition mounts from within.
Thus, U.S. policymakers should prepare now for the real possibility that, across the Middle East and elsewhere, the angry populations of other authoritarian nations could find inspiration from the toppling of Bashar al-Assad and mount new challenges to the brutal regimes that terrorize them.
Otherwise, Washington could find itself in the same place it has been all too often in the past—ill-positioned to capitalize on the opportunities that such stirrings around the world offer U.S. interests.
“Prediction is very difficult,” Niels Bohr, the Nobel laureate in physics, once said, “especially if it’s about the future!” Nowhere is such a note of caution more appropriate than in the effort to foresee global change. What will prompt a popular uprising (or, as in Syria, enable a rebel force to free a suffering people)? Nobody knows.
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