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Syria NATIONAL SECURITY DOCTRINE AND CONCERNS
Under Assad, Syria has sought to be a leading Arab and
regional power, capable of controlling or influencing Lebanon,
Jordan, and the Palestinians. Syria seeks to participate in every
issue in the region and to further policies that substantiate its
claim to an effective regional role. In pursuing these
objectives, Syria is striving for regional hegemony--a goal that
ultimately is likely to be beyond Syria's capabilities and
resources. In fact, according to various analysts, Syria's
pursuit of this goal will undermine its precarious stability.
Syria also has striven to lead the Arab resistance to Israel
and to oppose, both militarily and politically, the path leading
to diplomatic recognition of Israel's legitimacy, to which Egypt
agreed through the Camp David Accords
(see Foreign Policy
, ch.
4). In pursuit of its goals, the Syrian regime formulated the
doctrine of "strategic parity" with Israel, which involved
upgrading the country's military capability and materiel to give
it an edge in a future confrontation.
Regionally, Syria was intent on achieving a number of
military and political objectives. These included the reconquest
of the Golan Heights (in early 1987 it had deployed a force of
about six divisions in the Damascus-Golan Heights region), and
opposition to the establishment of an Israeli-dominated "security
zone" (manned largely by the Christian forces of the pro-Israel
South Lebanon Army) in southern Lebanon. Syria also sought to
control Lebanese affairs and to restrict the presence of the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) military forces in
Lebanon, without formally annexing territory or having to
maintain a large military presence there.
As part of its national security doctrine, Syria has sought
to expand ts relationship with the Soviet Union, as embodied in
the 1980 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. Specifically,
Syria endeavored to formalize the relationship with a "strategic
cooperation" agreement comparable to the treaty between the
United States and Israel.
Syria also employed terrorism in pursuit of its security
objectives. In the mid-1980s, Syria was accused--primarily by the
United States and the United Kingdom--of playing an active role
in international terrorist activities through sponsorship of
Palestinian, Lebanese, and other Arab terrorist groups.
Furthermore, Syria had been directly implicated in a series of
terrorist attacks on American, West European, Israeli, Jewish,
Palestinian, Jordanian, and Turkish targets outside the Middle
East.
Data as of April 1987
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