WI: Obama enforces his 'red line', actually topples Assad in 2013

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
10 years ago as of this writing, then-President Barack Obama issued his 'red line' threat - that is, if Bashir al-Assad (then fighting the early stages of the Syrian Civil War) used chemical or biological weapons against his enemies, he would provoke an American military response. A year later, the Ghouta sarin attack happened, but despite a lot of initial bluster and posturing, Obama ultimately did not deliver on the threatened military response due to a lack of support from Britain & France (key partners for the earlier intervention in Libya), Republican opposition in the House and opposition from the American public itself - even three-quarters of American soldiers didn't want to launch so much as airstrikes at Assad at the time. Russia directly intervened on Assad's side two years later and as of today, Assad remains in control of a majority of Syria's territory.

However. What if Obama, then-British Prime Minister David Cameron and then-French President Francois Hollande had resolved to push ahead with a violent intervention against Assad, not dissimilar to how they (well, substitute Sarkozy for Hollande there) had helped overthrow Libya's Muammar Gaddafi two years earlier - that is, rather than invading with ground troops, making NATO into the Syrian rebels' air force? Well of course we'd miss out on the Assad memes of the past decade. But more seriously, the Syrian opposition does not appear capable of providing sufficiently strong leadership to reunite the country & hold it together: multiple political fronts founded by anti-Assad exiles abroad have consistently failed to come together or gain any meaningful control over the actual rebel forces on the ground. Said rebels on the ground, the Free Syrian Army, was less of a cohesive faction and more a fractious coalition of Syrian Arab Army defectors and local militias who were increasingly being compromised by hardline Islamists, such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra (AKA, literally Al-Qaeda), although to my understanding it wasn't until about 2015 that the Islamists started to completely cannibalize the less extreme outfits. The infamous ISIS is also beginning to emerge around Raqqa, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has begun to make proclamations as of April 2013 (though he hasn't declared himself Caliph yet).

So, where do we go from here? Is Syria doomed to become another anarchic hellhole with open-air slave markets and perpetual civil war between warlords, as has happened to Libya, or do any of the less extreme factions have a shot at beating the long odds and leaving Syria in a better state than it was in 2011? Might ISIS actually manage to storm into Damascus in this timeline, even if they don't hold it in perpetuity? Will the West, having already seen Libya implode after they toppled Gaddafi, decide to stick around this time? What will Russia, Turkey, Israel and Iran do? How is Assad falling going to affect the migrant surges into Europe, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel's interests in & around the Golan Heights? There are many worms ready to jump out of this particular can, once it's opened...
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
10 years ago as of this writing, then-President Barack Obama issued his 'red line' threat - that is, if Bashir al-Assad (then fighting the early stages of the Syrian Civil War) used chemical or biological weapons against his enemies, he would provoke an American military response. A year later, the Ghouta sarin attack happened, but despite a lot of initial bluster and posturing, Obama ultimately did not deliver on the threatened military response due to a lack of support from Britain & France (key partners for the earlier intervention in Libya), Republican opposition in the House and opposition from the American public itself - even three-quarters of American soldiers didn't want to launch so much as airstrikes at Assad at the time. Russia directly intervened on Assad's side two years later and as of today, Assad remains in control of a majority of Syria's territory.

However. What if Obama, then-British Prime Minister David Cameron and then-French President Francois Hollande had resolved to push ahead with a violent intervention against Assad, not dissimilar to how they (well, substitute Sarkozy for Hollande there) had helped overthrow Libya's Muammar Gaddafi two years earlier - that is, rather than invading with ground troops, making NATO into the Syrian rebels' air force? Well of course we'd miss out on the Assad memes of the past decade. But more seriously, the Syrian opposition does not appear capable of providing sufficiently strong leadership to reunite the country & hold it together: multiple political fronts founded by anti-Assad exiles abroad have consistently failed to come together or gain any meaningful control over the actual rebel forces on the ground. Said rebels on the ground, the Free Syrian Army, was less of a cohesive faction and more a fractious coalition of Syrian Arab Army defectors and local militias who were increasingly being compromised by hardline Islamists, such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra (AKA, literally Al-Qaeda), although to my understanding it wasn't until about 2015 that the Islamists started to completely cannibalize the less extreme outfits. The infamous ISIS is also beginning to emerge around Raqqa, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has begun to make proclamations as of April 2013 (though he hasn't declared himself Caliph yet).

So, where do we go from here? Is Syria doomed to become another anarchic hellhole with open-air slave markets and perpetual civil war between warlords, as has happened to Libya, or do any of the less extreme factions have a shot at beating the long odds and leaving Syria in a better state than it was in 2011? Might ISIS actually manage to storm into Damascus in this timeline, even if they don't hold it in perpetuity? Will the West, having already seen Libya implode after they toppled Gaddafi, decide to stick around this time? What will Russia, Turkey, Israel and Iran do? How is Assad falling going to affect the migrant surges into Europe, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel's interests in & around the Golan Heights? There are many worms ready to jump out of this particular can, once it's opened...

Bashar al-Assad, not Bashir al-Assad.

Expect a much larger Syrian migrant crisis in this TL, for one. And Yes, I actually could see Damascus falling to ISIS in this TL. The Syrian Alawites could be reduced to a narrow coastal strip on the Mediterranean, which Russia could help them keep thanks to its Tartus naval base. Unless of course the West's bombardment of Syria will be so thorough that the Assad regime will lose even this coastal strip.

I really don't see the West permanently sticking around in Syria since the political will for this simply wasn't there. An even bigger hellhole in Syria would very likely give Donald Trump and other right-wing nationalists even more political ammo to use in 2016 and beyond, though. I also wonder if Israel might occupy a zone in Syria near the Golan Heights in order to protect itself from ISIS. But ultimately what could happen in this TL would be Iraqi Shi'a militias expanding the war against ISIS into Syria once they are done kicking ISIS out of Iraq. If the Assad regime still survives on the coast, then it could be handed over control of Syria afterwards. But if that's going to be too controversial, then a less politically toxic candidate, possibly still among the Alawites, might be found for this role, with the Assads being pushed to go into exile in Russia or wherever.
 

raharris1973

Well-known member
perpetual civil war between warlords, as has happened to Libya
This is fairly common knowledge

with open-air slave markets ....and perpetual civil war between warlords, as has happened to Libya

this is *not* fairly common knowledge. It's been more associated with ISIS in SYRAQ than Libyan factional fighting, despite ISIS affiliates being known to operate some in Libya too.
 

raharris1973

Well-known member
Bashar al-Assad, not Bashir al-Assad.

Expect a much larger Syrian migrant crisis in this TL, for one. And Yes, I actually could see Damascus falling to ISIS in this TL. The Syrian Alawites could be reduced to a narrow coastal strip on the Mediterranean, which Russia could help them keep thanks to its Tartus naval base. Unless of course the West's bombardment of Syria will be so thorough that the Assad regime will lose even this coastal strip.

I really don't see the West permanently sticking around in Syria since the political will for this simply wasn't there. An even bigger hellhole in Syria would very likely give Donald Trump and other right-wing nationalists even more political ammo to use in 2016 and beyond, though. I also wonder if Israel might occupy a zone in Syria near the Golan Heights in order to protect itself from ISIS. But ultimately what could happen in this TL would be Iraqi Shi'a militias expanding the war against ISIS into Syria once they are done kicking ISIS out of Iraq. If the Assad regime still survives on the coast, then it could be handed over control of Syria afterwards. But if that's going to be too controversial, then a less politically toxic candidate, possibly still among the Alawites, might be found for this role, with the Assads being pushed to go into exile in Russia or wherever.

So the realistic alternatives are: 1) the Assad family, an Iran & Hizballah allied state, 2) a Sunni state, likely to be ISIS or AQ controlled, or 3) An Iraqi/Lebanese/Syrian Shia militia controlled state - Thus an Iran and Hizballah proxy state

There's no option here for a Turkish backed Erdogan-ist Sunni Islamist state?

Seems like there's no option here for the Israelis or Americans to like.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
So the realistic alternatives are: 1) the Assad family, an Iran & Hizballah allied state, 2) a Sunni state, likely to be ISIS or AQ controlled, or 3) An Iraqi/Lebanese/Syrian Shia militia controlled state - Thus an Iran and Hizballah proxy state

There's no option here for a Turkish backed Erdogan-ist Sunni Islamist state?

Seems like there's no option here for the Israelis or Americans to like.

It depends on just how involved Turkey wants to be here. Maybe if Turkey wants to clean up the mess in Syria after the West fucks up Syria and is actually willing to commit huge amounts of its own (Turkish) resources into this task, then Turkey might be able to install its own man in charge of Syria. But it would require a huge commitment on Turkey's part, most likely. Though if Syrians get a taste of several years of ISIS/AQ rule, then Turkish puppet rule might sound like a welcome alternative. Similar to how the Vietnamese built themselves some goodwill in Cambodia as a result of them overthrowing the Khmer Rouge, even though the Vietnamese were Cambodians' traditional enemies.

By the way, in regards to option #3, you might still get a Shi'a/Alawite dictator in Syria, but possibly someone other than Assad since the general feeling might be that Assad seriously fucked up in allowing the situation in Syria to deteriorate that much in the first place.

Also, it might be prudent to think of the Assad regime this way: Let's imagine that out of all of the states in the Southern US after Reconstruction, there would have been a single US state that would have remained black-ruled and thus avoided Jim Crow. Let's also say that this US state would have been full of brutality, human rights abuses, et cetera (with the federal US government turning a blind eye to this) but that the residents of this state, especially blacks and progressive whites, would have feared that if this brutal Reconstruction government of this state would have been overthrown, then its Jim Crow replacement will be even worse, especially for them. That's sort of the role that Assad has in Syria, to my knowledge. Alawites, Christians, Druze, and moderate Sunnis might not particularly like him, but there is a serious fear that whomever or whatever replaces him might be worse than he himself is. The situation was the opposite with Iraq due to the fact that Saddam was likely more brutal and also due to the fact that Shi'as don't have quite as severe of a radicalism problem as Sunnis have, on average.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
BTW, this is why exactly Syria is so crucial to Iran: Specifically, because it allows Iran to have a land bridge to the Mediterranean, where its Hezbollah proxy is located in southern Lebanon:

Screen-Shot-2021-11-07-at-11.37.26-PM-1.png


Libya had nowhere near as much value for Iran, or for Russia for that matter. It has a lot of oil, but oil isn't exactly in short supply.
 

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
Bashar al-Assad, not Bashir al-Assad.

Expect a much larger Syrian migrant crisis in this TL, for one. And Yes, I actually could see Damascus falling to ISIS in this TL. The Syrian Alawites could be reduced to a narrow coastal strip on the Mediterranean, which Russia could help them keep thanks to its Tartus naval base. Unless of course the West's bombardment of Syria will be so thorough that the Assad regime will lose even this coastal strip.

I really don't see the West permanently sticking around in Syria since the political will for this simply wasn't there. An even bigger hellhole in Syria would very likely give Donald Trump and other right-wing nationalists even more political ammo to use in 2016 and beyond, though. I also wonder if Israel might occupy a zone in Syria near the Golan Heights in order to protect itself from ISIS. But ultimately what could happen in this TL would be Iraqi Shi'a militias expanding the war against ISIS into Syria once they are done kicking ISIS out of Iraq. If the Assad regime still survives on the coast, then it could be handed over control of Syria afterwards. But if that's going to be too controversial, then a less politically toxic candidate, possibly still among the Alawites, might be found for this role, with the Assads being pushed to go into exile in Russia or wherever.
With no strong leaders around (presumably Assad getting the Gaddafi treatment means he gets the full deal, ie. including dying at rebel hands somewhere) and ISIS very possibly seizing Damascus outright, I would expect that Syria being de facto partitioned for the foreseeable future is the likeliest outcome here, rather than it continuing to exist as an even mostly unified entity in any meaningful fashion whether by way of any domestic factions overcoming the others or because of external intervention. My guess is something like the following...
  • The Kurdish 'libertarian socialist' experiment in the northeast, much like OTL but without even the pretense of being an autonomous region rather than a fully independent (non-)state. Probably a lightning rod for Turkish intervention, and a big favorite of the Western far left.
  • ISIS dominating the east of the country from Raqqa and Damascus. RIP anyone here who aspires to anything more than a seventh-century lifestyle, because if ISIS doesn't destroy it, foreign bombers probably will.
  • A rival Islamic state in the northwest, operated out of Aleppo and probably led either by Jabhat al-Nusra (AQ) or another Salafist group like Ahrar al-Sham which, while carrying less international opprobrium, is unlikely to be meaningfully different from Literally Al-Qaeda in any way when it comes to its social policies. A less probable but at least marginally better-case scenario is this state instead being dominated by Turkish and Qatari-backed, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated factions like Faylaq al-Sham.
  • A Western-recognized 'Syrian Republic' in the south based in Dara'a, where the first uprising against Assad happened and the most 'moderate' FSA elements (such as the Southern Front) held sway for most of the war. The civilian leadership is likely just a veneer for a fractious coalition of less hardline militias on the ground, or perhaps a military dictatorship headed by the likes of Salim Idris - either way, they'd be kept afloat by Jordan, the US, the Saudis and possibly Israel. Would expect these guys to also hold Eastern Ghouta against ISIS in Damascus via an alliance with the dominant militias there, Jaysh al-Islam and Faylaq al-Rahman, and possibly also the northwestern Syrian fringe where they'd be aligned with Western-backed outfits such as Harakat Hazzm or Division 30 unless Turkey is fully backing the Aleppo government.
  • As you say, an Alawite rump state in Latakia, kept afloat by the Russians from nearby Tartous, seems quite probable as well. If not led by Assad himself (whether because he's dead or just disgraced) then maybe by one of his family members or generals (or both, like his brother Maher).
With ISIS being in a stronger position, I'd expect the war in Iraq to take even longer and drain more of the Iraqis' resources & manpower. They may not be strong enough to counter-invade Syria immediately (at least with any chance of success) and if they not only do so eventually, but succeed in doing a serious number on ISIS, the other factions will also be much better-positioned to take advantage of an ISIS collapse. For example I'd expect the Dara'a-FSA to steal a march on Damascus as the 'Caliphate' burns down, and if they're already the internationally recognized government of Syria by then, it'll probably be much harder for the Iraqi militias to both justify attacking them and doing so without inviting a response from their Western backers (ya know, like Trump vaporizing Qasim Soleimani).

Would agree that the ripple effect outside of Syria would include a much worse migrant crisis, which I'd imagine could stress European politics to a breaking point and force the ascendancy of right-wing populist movements a couple years early. Might be Trump will have people whose politics are more familiar to his own to work with in Europe by the time 2017 rolls around ITL, on top of populist successes like Brexit happening earlier. Losing Assad's Syria may also incentivize Putin to go harder in Ukraine or other former Soviet countries to compensate for this second major loss of influence abroad in a row, just after Libya.
This is fairly common knowledge



this is *not* fairly common knowledge. It's been more associated with ISIS in SYRAQ than Libyan factional fighting, despite ISIS affiliates being known to operate some in Libya too.
It's been public knowledge that Libya's plagued by the slave trade (with videos to confirm the existence of the slave markets) since at least 2017.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
With no strong leaders around (presumably Assad getting the Gaddafi treatment means he gets the full deal, ie. including dying at rebel hands somewhere) and ISIS very possibly seizing Damascus outright, I would expect that Syria being de facto partitioned for the foreseeable future is the likeliest outcome here, rather than it continuing to exist as an even mostly unified entity in any meaningful fashion whether by way of any domestic factions overcoming the others or because of external intervention. My guess is something like the following...
  • The Kurdish 'libertarian socialist' experiment in the northeast, much like OTL but without even the pretense of being an autonomous region rather than a fully independent (non-)state. Probably a lightning rod for Turkish intervention, and a big favorite of the Western far left.
  • ISIS dominating the east of the country from Raqqa and Damascus. RIP anyone here who aspires to anything more than a seventh-century lifestyle, because if ISIS doesn't destroy it, foreign bombers probably will.
  • A rival Islamic state in the northwest, operated out of Aleppo and probably led either by Jabhat al-Nusra (AQ) or another Salafist group like Ahrar al-Sham which, while carrying less international opprobrium, is unlikely to be meaningfully different from Literally Al-Qaeda in any way when it comes to its social policies. A less probable but at least marginally better-case scenario is this state instead being dominated by Turkish and Qatari-backed, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated factions like Faylaq al-Sham.
  • A Western-recognized 'Syrian Republic' in the south based in Dara'a, where the first uprising against Assad happened and the most 'moderate' FSA elements (such as the Southern Front) held sway for most of the war. The civilian leadership is likely just a veneer for a fractious coalition of less hardline militias on the ground, or perhaps a military dictatorship headed by the likes of Salim Idris - either way, they'd be kept afloat by Jordan, the US, the Saudis and possibly Israel. Would expect these guys to also hold Eastern Ghouta against ISIS in Damascus via an alliance with the dominant militias there, Jaysh al-Islam and Faylaq al-Rahman, and possibly also the northwestern Syrian fringe where they'd be aligned with Western-backed outfits such as Harakat Hazzm or Division 30 unless Turkey is fully backing the Aleppo government.
  • As you say, an Alawite rump state in Latakia, kept afloat by the Russians from nearby Tartous, seems quite probable as well. If not led by Assad himself (whether because he's dead or just disgraced) then maybe by one of his family members or generals (or both, like his brother Maher).
With ISIS being in a stronger position, I'd expect the war in Iraq to take even longer and drain more of the Iraqis' resources & manpower. They may not be strong enough to counter-invade Syria immediately (at least with any chance of success) and if they not only do so eventually, but succeed in doing a serious number on ISIS, the other factions will also be much better-positioned to take advantage of an ISIS collapse. For example I'd expect the Dara'a-FSA to steal a march on Damascus as the 'Caliphate' burns down, and if they're already the internationally recognized government of Syria by then, it'll probably be much harder for the Iraqi militias to both justify attacking them and doing so without inviting a response from their Western backers (ya know, like Trump vaporizing Qasim Soleimani).

Would agree that the ripple effect outside of Syria would include a much worse migrant crisis, which I'd imagine could stress European politics to a breaking point and force the ascendancy of right-wing populist movements a couple years early. Might be Trump will have people whose politics are more familiar to his own to work with in Europe by the time 2017 rolls around ITL, on top of populist successes like Brexit happening earlier. Losing Assad's Syria may also incentivize Putin to go harder in Ukraine or other former Soviet countries to compensate for this second major loss of influence abroad in a row, just after Libya.

It's been public knowledge that Libya's plagued by the slave trade (with videos to confirm the existence of the slave markets) since at least 2017.

FWIW, I suspect that it's entirely possible that a rump ISIS state could survive in Syria for a long time even if ISIS is expelled from Iraq. I don't know if any of the Syrian factions would actually be able to remove the ISIS presence in Syria without significant foreign, especially but not only Western, help, after all.

I don't know if an earlier Russian invasion of Ukraine is actually plausible since Putin was apparently hoping for the Minsk Accords to work until 2020-2021.

I also don't know if Assad will get the Gaddafi treatment since he could flee to the Syrian coastline or, alternatively, go into exile somewhere like Russia if his cause is doomed. I don't know if Gaddafi actually had that option.
 

TheRomanSlayer

Unipolarity is for Subhuman Trogdolytes
There might be a different kind of leader who may end up being a Russian puppet completely: Suheil al-Hassan, who favored closer Syrian relations with Russia.
 

lordhen

Well-known member
10 years ago as of this writing, then-President Barack Obama issued his 'red line' threat - that is, if Bashir al-Assad (then fighting the early stages of the Syrian Civil War) used chemical or biological weapons against his enemies, he would provoke an American military response. A year later, the Ghouta sarin attack happened, but despite a lot of initial bluster and posturing, Obama ultimately did not deliver on the threatened military response due to a lack of support from Britain & France (key partners for the earlier intervention in Libya), Republican opposition in the House and opposition from the American public itself - even three-quarters of American soldiers didn't want to launch so much as airstrikes at Assad at the time. Russia directly intervened on Assad's side two years later and as of today, Assad remains in control of a majority of Syria's territory.

However. What if Obama, then-British Prime Minister David Cameron and then-French President Francois Hollande had resolved to push ahead with a violent intervention against Assad, not dissimilar to how they (well, substitute Sarkozy for Hollande there) had helped overthrow Libya's Muammar Gaddafi two years earlier - that is, rather than invading with ground troops, making NATO into the Syrian rebels' air force? Well of course we'd miss out on the Assad memes of the past decade. But more seriously, the Syrian opposition does not appear capable of providing sufficiently strong leadership to reunite the country & hold it together: multiple political fronts founded by anti-Assad exiles abroad have consistently failed to come together or gain any meaningful control over the actual rebel forces on the ground. Said rebels on the ground, the Free Syrian Army, was less of a cohesive faction and more a fractious coalition of Syrian Arab Army defectors and local militias who were increasingly being compromised by hardline Islamists, such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra (AKA, literally Al-Qaeda), although to my understanding it wasn't until about 2015 that the Islamists started to completely cannibalize the less extreme outfits. The infamous ISIS is also beginning to emerge around Raqqa, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has begun to make proclamations as of April 2013 (though he hasn't declared himself Caliph yet).

So, where do we go from here? Is Syria doomed to become another anarchic hellhole with open-air slave markets and perpetual civil war between warlords, as has happened to Libya, or do any of the less extreme factions have a shot at beating the long odds and leaving Syria in a better state than it was in 2011? Might ISIS actually manage to storm into Damascus in this timeline, even if they don't hold it in perpetuity? Will the West, having already seen Libya implode after they toppled Gaddafi, decide to stick around this time? What will Russia, Turkey, Israel and Iran do? How is Assad falling going to affect the migrant surges into Europe, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel's interests in & around the Golan Heights? There are many worms ready to jump out of this particular can, once it's opened...
As long as the Russians are in Syria, Assad will remain in power, ore as long as Russia wants him to remain in power.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
As long as the Russians are in Syria, Assad will remain in power, ore as long as Russia wants him to remain in power.

Russia simply needs a reliable man in Syria; it doesn't necessarily have to be Assad if he'll ever end up showing that he's no longer useful. Though sponsoring coups has sort of gone out of style in recent decades. Still, Russia attempted something like this in Montenegro several years ago, IIRC.
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
It's basically all down to what would the West do *after* overthrowing Assad. Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, all are very demonstrative of what can happen, because this question is usually given little thought, and practically no realistic thought.
The most optimistic option would be a pro-western strongman who keeps the dirty work under wraps enough for western politicians to not rebuke him on account of bad optics, or better yet, multiple of them, splitting the country into several more ethno-religiously homogeneous ones, lowering the need for dirty work to keep the place united and functional.
But that would probably require more planning and political groundwork than the people making the decision would be willing to provide.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
It's basically all down to what would the West do *after* overthrowing Assad. Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, all are very demonstrative of what can happen, because this question is usually given little thought, and practically no realistic thought.
The most optimistic option would be a pro-western strongman who keeps the dirty work under wraps enough for western politicians to not rebuke him on account of bad optics, or better yet, multiple of them, splitting the country into several more ethno-religiously homogeneous ones, lowering the need for dirty work to keep the place united and functional.
But that would probably require more planning and political groundwork than the people making the decision would be willing to provide.

FWIW, France actually did split Syria (which then included Lebanon) into several separate units back when it controlled it in the interwar era:

French_Mandate_for_Syria_and_the_Lebanon_map_en.png
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
Israel already has plenty of work ahead of keeping the Palestine under control, occupying part of Syria is to much for the country, a reason why the left South Lebanon in 2000.

Makes sense.

BTW, if Turkey ever decides to get involved in Syria in this TL, who is likely to be its desired puppet ruler of Syria?
 

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