Epstein Secrets

autocrats foster instability and economic stagnation—=ot stability—in the Middle East. =/p> Syria: 2013 will be viewed as the yea= that President Bashar al-Assad turned the tide in the war in Syria. As Adam Entous and =iobhan Gorman detailed in a Wall Street Journal story this week, "all-in" military support

ria. As Adam Entous and =iobhan Gorman detailed in a Wall Street Journal story this week, "all-in" military support from Iran and Hezbollah allowed Assad to retake crucial territory. The Obama administration, however, blinked. Obama had vowed to punish Assad for any chemical weapons attacks. Yet the p

President Obama could have done more to restrai= leaders in Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Syria from going to extremes. But, ultimately, argues Muasher, this is the Arabs' fight for their polit=cal future. If 500,000 American troops in Iraq, and $1 trillion, could not impl=nt lasting pluralism in th

US continues to struggle with the decision whether to provide military support to the moderate faction of the Syrian rebels fighting to topple the Assad regime, the Saudis suggest that they see Syria as a defining moment — an opportunity to stop what they see as Iranian "meddling" in the region by r

ionist, presenting themselves as the holders of absolute truth and of the solution to all society's problems." But the Arab public "is not stupid," Muasher added. "While we will continue to see exclusionist discourses in much of the Arab world for the foreseeable future, results will end up trumping id

sher is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, where he oversees the Endowment's research in Washington and Beirut on the Middle East. Muasher served as foreign minister (2002-2004) and deputy prime minister (2004-2005) of Jordan, and his career has spanned the areas of diplomacy, developmen

oratory, you couldn't have done much better. Syria presents a profoundly different situation. U.S. policy has always been driven by the hope that the Assads would change and the fear of what might replace them if they fell. Three additional realities ensured a U.S. response quite different from the one fo

ng different. There simply is no reform option, and there never was. Genuine reform means dislodging the bricks holding up Assad- Makhlouf authority. Bashar Assad's open-ended presidency, the crony capitalism practiced by his cousin and other members of Syria's elite, the abuse practiced by the all-powerful secur