{"id":20410,"date":"2012-07-23T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2012-07-23T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=20410"},"modified":"2013-05-30T13:20:49","modified_gmt":"2013-05-30T12:20:49","slug":"quiet-planning-for-post-assad-syria-has-roots-in-2008-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/07\/quiet-planning-for-post-assad-syria-has-roots-in-2008-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Quiet Planning For Post-Assad Syria Has Roots in 2008 Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest exclusive by Foreign Policy\u2019s Josh Rogin<\/a> is entitled \u201cInside the quiet effort to plan for a post-Assad Syria.\u201d Two days ago, the reliable conduit<\/a> for all the latest \u201cdemocracy promotion<\/a>\u201d news blogged on The Cable:<\/p>\n

For the last six months, 40 senior representatives of various Syrian opposition groups have been meeting quietly in Germany under the tutelage of the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) to plan for how to set up a post-Assad Syrian government.<\/p>\n

The project, which has not directly involved U.S. government officials but was partially funded by the State Department, is gaining increased relevance this month as the violence in Syria spirals out of control and hopes for a peaceful transition of power fade away. The leader of the project, USIP\u2019s Steven Heydemann, an academic expert on Syria, has briefed administration officials on the plan, as well as foreign officials, including on the sidelines of the Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul last month.<\/p>\n

The project is called \u201cThe day after: Supporting a democratic transition in Syria.\u201d Heydemann spoke about the project in depth for the first time in an interview with The Cable. He described USIP\u2019s efforts as \u201cworking in a support role with a large group of opposition groups to define a transition process for a post-Assad Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n

Explaining the lack of direct government involvement, the USIP project leader<\/a> \u2014 whose efforts to undermine Arab authoritarianism<\/a> date at least from his previous employment at the pro-Israel<\/a> Saban Center for Middle East Policy \u2014 told Rogin:<\/p>\n

The absence of Obama administration officials at these meetings, even as observers, was deliberate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a situation where too visible a U.S. role would have been deeply counterproductive. It would have given the Assad regime and elements of the opposition an excuse to delegitimize the process,\u201d Heydemann said.<\/p>\n

The calculated decision to obscure Washington\u2019s involvement in the regime change project is interesting in light of a report of a conference held at Stanford University\u2019s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) in May 2008. Entitled \u201cReorganizing U.S. Government Democracy Promotion Efforts,\u201d the report<\/a> (.pdf) states:<\/p>\n

The more democracy promotion is tied to the U.S. government, the more we are tying our own hands. We now have many U.S. government entities handling NGOs and it is increasingly becoming a more state centered democracy promotion scheme. It is important to create distance between U.S. foreign policy and democratic transitions in foreign countries because it does not look right to have the U.S. government telling civil society groups in foreign countries to rebel against or question their own governments.<\/strong> (emphasis added)<\/p>\n

Among the 31 \u201cleading scholars and policymakers\u201d brought together \u201cto consider what could be done to improve the United States government\u2019s efforts to promote democracy abroad\u201d (i.e., thinking up better ways to get foreigners to rebel against their governments), Heydemann\u2019s USIP was represented by J. Alexander Thier.<\/p>\n

Those who believe that Tel Aviv would be adverse to Washington\u2019s democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East might be surprised to learn that those with a passionate attachment to the self-defined Jewish state were very well represented at the CDDRL conference, including, most notably, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman<\/a>, who formerly worked in the \u201cresearch department<\/a>\u201d of the Anti-Defamation League; National Democratic Institute for International Affairs President Ken Wollack<\/a>, who from 1973 to 1980 served as legislative director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); and J. Scott Carpenter<\/a>, a fellow at the AIPAC-created Washington Institute for Near East Policy and director of its Project Fikra<\/a>, which describes itself as an \u201conline community that aims to generate ideas to support Arab democrats in their struggle with authoritarians and extremists.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, despite the substantial presence of Israel partisans in such revolutionary circles, Tel Aviv has been far more successful than Washington in creating distance between itself and its destabilization agenda<\/a> (.pdf) for the region, obscured as it is behind the fa\u00e7ade of American democracy promotion.<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

Maidhc \u00d3 Cathail has written extensively<\/a> on Israel\u2019s key role in U.S. democracy promotion. <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 thepassionateattachment.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last six months, 40 senior representatives of various Syrian opposition groups have been meeting quietly in Germany under the tutelage of the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) to plan for how to set up a post-Assad Syrian government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa","category-syria-in-context"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}