What Did We Miss in Syria?

The Downfall of Bashar al-Assad’s Regime

The downfall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria surprised even the opposition, led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, offering fertile ground for conspiracy theories. What roles did Israel, Turkey, Russia, and the US play in this sudden reversal? Did Russia abstain from intervening on Assad’s behalf simply because it cannot afford another military operation outside the Ukrainian theatre, or was there some behind-the-scenes deal?

The Secular Resistance to Assad

Did the US again fall into the trap of supporting Islamists against Russia, ignoring the lessons from its support of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s? What did Israel do? It is certainly benefitting from the diversion of the world’s attention from Gaza and the West Bank, and it is even seizing new territory in southern Syria for itself.

The Philosophy of Michel Foucault

Like most commentators, I simply don’t know the answers to these questions, which is why I prefer to focus on the bigger picture. A general feature of the story, like in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal and in Iran during the 1979 revolution, is that there was no big, decisive battle. The regime simply collapsed like a house of cards. Victory went to the side that was actually willing to fight and die for its cause.

The Conception of Truth

The fact that the regime was universally despised does not fully explain what happened. Why did the secular resistance to Assad disappear, leaving only Muslim fundamentalists to seize the day? One could apply the same question to Afghanistan. Why were thousands willing to risk their lives to catch a flight out of Kabul, but not to fight the Taliban?

The Philosophy of Georg Lukacs

A similar set of facts fascinated the philosopher Michel Foucault when he visited Iran (twice) in 1979. He was struck by what he saw as the revolutionaries’ indifference towards their own survival. Theirs was a “partisan and agonistic form of truth-telling,” Patrick Gamez explains. They sought a “transformation through struggle and ordeal, as opposed to the pacifying, neutralising, and normalising forms of modern Western power.

The Post-Political Disintegration of Society

As Foucault himself put it: “… if this subject who speaks of right (or rather, rights) is speaking the truth, that truth is no longer the universal truth of the philosopher. … It is interested in the totality only to the extent that it can see it in one-sided terms, distort it and see it from its own point of view. The truth is, in other words, a truth that can be deployed only from its combat position, from the perspective of the sought-for victory and ultimately, so to speak, of the survival of the speaking subject himself.”

The Return of the Political

Can this perspective be dismissed as evidence of a premodern “primitive” society that has not yet discovered modern individualism? To anyone minimally acquainted with Western Marxism, the answer is clear. As the Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukacs argued, Marxism is “universally true” precisely because it is “partial” to a particular subjective position.

The End of Secular Radical Politics

What Foucault was looking for in Iran – the agonistic (“war”) form of truth-telling – was there from the beginning in Marx, who saw that participating in the class struggle is not an obstacle to acquiring “objective” knowledge of history, but rather a precondition for doing so. The positivist conception of knowledge as an “objective” expression of reality – what Foucault characterised as “the pacifying, neutralising, and normalising forms of modern Western power” – is the ideology of the “end of ideology.”

Conclusion

The best explanation of why religion now seems to hold a monopoly on collective commitment and self-sacrifice comes from Boris Buden, who argues that religion as a political force reflects the post-political disintegration of society – the dissolution of traditional mechanisms that guaranteed stable communal links. Fundamentalist religion is not only political; it is politics itself. For its adherents, it is no longer just a social phenomenon, but the very texture of society.

FAQs

Q: What role did Israel, Turkey, Russia, and the US play in the downfall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria?
A: The exact roles of these countries are unclear, but it is likely that they all played some part in the regime’s collapse.

Q: Why did the secular resistance to Assad disappear, leaving only Muslim fundamentalists to seize the day?
A: The exact reasons for this are unclear, but it is likely that the secular resistance was unable to mount an effective challenge to the regime.

Q: What is the significance of Michel Foucault’s philosophy in understanding the Syrian conflict?
A: Foucault’s philosophy highlights the importance of understanding the role of power and truth in shaping our understanding of the world. His ideas about the “agonistic form of truth-telling” and the “partisan and agonistic form of truth-telling” can help us understand the ways in which different groups and individuals construct their own truths and narratives.

Q: What is the significance of Georg Lukacs’ philosophy in understanding the Syrian conflict?
A: Lukacs’ philosophy highlights the importance of understanding the role of class struggle and the dialectics of history in shaping our understanding of the world. His ideas about the “universally true” nature of Marxism can help us understand the ways in which different groups and individuals construct their own truths and narratives.

Q: What is the significance of Boris Buden’s philosophy in understanding the Syrian conflict?
A: Buden’s philosophy highlights the importance of understanding the role of religion as a political force in shaping our understanding of the world. His ideas about the “post-political disintegration of society” can help us understand the ways in which different groups and individuals construct their own truths and narratives.