Permanent War as the Architecture of the Middle East
Syria did not collapse in a week. It collapsed under nearly thirty years of strategic pressure, thirteen years of war, and a long sequence of sanctions, infiltrations, covert operations, bombings, economic attrition, and diplomatic isolation. The gravest mistake would be to read the Syrian collapse as the simple epilogue of an internal crisis or as the sole consequence of Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarianism. The far more troubling truth is that Damascus had long been a target within a broader project: the systematic dismantling of any regional order hostile to Israeli strategic superiority.
The destruction of Syria was not an accident of history, but the product of an Israeli-American campaign launched well before 2011 and then accelerated through the typical instruments of contemporary warfare: covert operations, irregular militias, instrumentalized jihadism, economic sanctions, control of energy resources, and selective bombardment. In this framework, Syria was not merely a victim. It became a laboratory.
From the Netanyahu Project to Proxy War
The political starting point lies in 1996, with Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power in Israel and the formulation of the so-called “Clean Break” strategy, developed by American and Israeli neoconservative circles. The core of this doctrine was simple: reject the principle of “land for peace,” consolidate Israeli control over the occupied territories, and overthrow or neutralize neighboring governments hostile to Israel. Within this framework, Syria was a natural target, since it constituted the territorial bridge between Iran, Lebanon, and the anti-Israeli resistance.
The logic was, and has remained, the same: not merely to strike armed movements, but to destroy the states that support them or guarantee them strategic depth. Netanyahu stated this openly as early as the 1990s: international terrorism does not exist without the support of sovereign states, therefore that support must be eliminated. Translated into geopolitical language, this meant pushing the United States to wage wars that Israel considered necessary for its own security.
Syria as a Strategic Objective
The elimination of Syria was essential because Damascus represented a fundamental node in the regional axis hostile to Israel. Striking Assad meant breaking the continuity between Tehran and Hezbollah, weakening Iranian projection into the Levant, reducing Russia’s room for maneuver in the eastern Mediterranean, and opening a breach in the entire geopolitical structure built over the years by the anti-Israeli resistance.
This is why, when the Syrian crisis opened in 2011, the United States did not merely observe events. It entered the game with a precise objective: to turn the uprising into a strategic lever for regime change. Barack Obama secretly tasked the CIA with supporting the overthrow of the Syrian government through Operation Timber Sycamore. At that moment, the conflict definitively ceased to be merely Syrian and became an international proxy war.
Timber Sycamore and the Use of Jihadism
Operation Timber Sycamore is one of the most revealing episodes in the entire affair. It was a covert program worth roughly one billion dollars, based on the financing, training, and arming of anti-Assad groups, with the support of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, as well as the involvement of Western intelligence services. What makes the matter even more serious is the nature of many of the forces employed: radical Islamist groups, extremist formations, and jihadist militias used as tactical instruments against Damascus.
Here the tragic paradox of American policy in the Middle East becomes clear: in seeking to overthrow governments deemed hostile, Washington repeatedly armed and supported forces that later turned war zones into uncontrollable spaces. This happened in Afghanistan and reappeared in Syria. The weapons supply line from post-Gaddafi Libya to Syrian fighters, described notably by Seymour Hersh, clearly shows that destabilization was not a collateral effect, but an operational method.
From a Functioning Syria to a Devastated Syria
Pre-war Syria was neither a political paradise nor a democratic state, but it was a functioning middle-income country, with economic growth, solid foreign exchange reserves, and contained public debt. The International Monetary Fund itself still acknowledged in 2009 Syria’s sound macroeconomic performance and the reform efforts undertaken.
From 2011 onward, all of this was swept away. Syria plunged into destruction: hundreds of thousands of dead, millions of refugees, devastated cities, annihilated infrastructure, a collapsed productive system, and mass impoverishment. To this must be added Western sanctions, American control over Syrian oil fields, the burden of foreign occupations, and the gradual erosion of the regime’s ability to maintain even a minimum degree of territorial cohesion.
Economic attrition became an integral part of the war. The aim was not merely to overthrow a state militarily, but to hollow it out financially, energetically, and socially. This is the contemporary form of total war: it is not enough to strike the army, one must prevent the country from breathing.
Israel, Hezbollah, and the Final Blow
The speed of Syria’s final collapse cannot be understood without examining two immediate factors: on the one hand, Russia’s concentration on the Ukrainian front, which reduced Moscow’s ability to protect Damascus; on the other, Israeli strikes against Hezbollah, which represented the main external military bulwark supporting the Syrian government.
Once that pillar was weakened, Syria was left exposed. And it is significant that, in the two days following the fall of the government, Israel reportedly carried out around 480 strikes on Syrian territory, destroying, among other things, the naval fleet in Latakia. This is not the behavior of a state seeking to stabilize its neighbor. It is the behavior of a power determined to ensure that this neighbor never again becomes an autonomous strategic actor.
At the same time, Netanyahu revived his expansionist agenda, claiming control over the demilitarized buffer zone on the Golan Heights and declaring that this territory would remain part of Israel forever. This language belongs not to diplomacy, but to a policy of permanent annexation.
The Seven Wars and the Coherence of the Design
The reference to General Wesley Clark’s well-known account is not anecdotal, but illuminating. After September 11, he was reportedly told at the Pentagon that the United States would attack seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. The timetable lengthened, the methods changed, but the overall coherence remains striking.
The United States did in fact lead or support wars, invasions, bombings, or destabilization operations against almost all of these countries. The only unfinished front remains Iran, which for decades has represented the final objective of Israeli strategy. In this sequence, Syria is not a deviation. It is a stage.
The Military, Geopolitical, and Geoeconomic Reading
From a military standpoint, the Syrian case confirms that proxy war is initially advantageous for the power promoting it, but devastating for the theater that endures it. It costs less for the external power, but produces strategic anarchy, uncontrollable militias, sectarian radicalization, and the dissolution of the state.
From a geopolitical perspective, the destruction of Syria removed a pivot of the Levantine system, strengthened Israel’s operational latitude, forced Iran to defend increasingly fragile positions, and opened a new space of competition among regional and global powers. The outcome was not stability, but an even more fragmented Middle East.
From a geoeconomic perspective, the lesson is equally clear: sanctions, control of resources, destruction of infrastructure, and dependence on aid have become instruments of domination. A destroyed country ceases to be an autonomous economic actor and becomes a terrain for exploitation, interdiction, selective reconstruction, and indirect occupation.
The Desert Called Peace
To create a desert and call it peace. It is an ancient phrase, but it describes contemporary Syria perfectly. Behind the rhetoric of counterterrorism and stabilization, what unfolded was a policy of systematic state demolition. And when a state is demolished in the Middle East, the result is almost never a functioning democracy. It is a political, military, and economic desert.
Syria thus becomes the symbol of a broader truth: the wars designed to reshape the Middle East did not produce order, but ruins; they did not strengthen security, but expanded chaos; they did not reduce extremism, but often fed it.
And this is perhaps the harshest conclusion of all. The peace invoked by the victors is not peace. It is simply the name given to destruction when one wants to make it appear respectable.
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