It is difficult to assess the importance of the 20-year friendship treaty the Soviet Union and Syria have just concluded. The Kremlin is known to have been interested in such a treaty as part of its drive to acquire influence in West Asia. But the context has greatly changed with President Sadat’s deal with Israel under U.S. auspices, Iraq’s movement away from the Soviet Union and towards the West and Saudi Arabia, developments in Iran in the past two years, and finally the Iraq-Iran war. Indeed, it cannot be taken for granted that Moscow has pressed the treaty on Damascus. It could well be that President Assad has insisted on it, leaving the Kremlin little choice but to accede to his wishes. But this assumption also raises questions. President Assad and his regime have been under pressure on various counts. Israel has become even more intransigent since its deal with President Sadat. Syria’s relations with Iraq have greatly deteriorated since Mr. Saddam Hussein moved into the office of president. Above all, the fanatical Muslim Brotherhood has been waging a terror campaign against the predominantly Alawite regime and the Alawite community. But the treaty cannot possibly help reduce the pressure on the Syrian government on any one of these counts. It could give the regime a greater sense of security if Syria was facing a direct external threat. On the face of it, it is not facing such a threat. While Israel’s interests are best served by ignoring it, Iraq too preoccupied with Iran to bother about it.
A sentence in President Brezhnev’s speech at a dinner in honour of President Assad in the Kremlin can perhaps be stretched to suggest that the treaty is a snub to Iraq. He has said that while the Soviet Union is not going to intervene in the Iraq-Iran war “it will give strong rebuffs to attempts by imperialists to reestablish their domination over Iran.” But no one can possibly believe that if at the end of the present war Iraq turns to the Soviet Union for replenishing its arsenal, the Kremlin will turn it down. Regardless of the outcome of the war, Iraq is too important a country by virtue of its enormous oil reserve and its location in the Gulf to be ignored or slighted by any country. Syria cannot possibly compete with it for Soviet attention. The treaty, it has also been said, will lead to realignment of political forces in West Asia. This is a cliche, a substitute for hard analysis. A kind at realignment can already be said to have begun with the so-called merger move between Libya and Syria. But who can predict that it will last? And who can spell out its implications for the region? The West Asian scene is fluid. It does not admit of long-term arrangements and loyalties. And the chances are that it will stay that way.