Syria, Assad and Inevitability
It may be too soon to accurately forecast the changes that lay ahead for Syria, but I think it is safe to conclude that Assad retain his current position much longer.
Assad, official ruler of Syria since 2000 held power under the auspices of an “emergency decree” instituted by his father, Hafez Al-Assad, in 1971. In a grave irony, Assad Jr. only terminated the 40-year “decree” in 2011 as his country began to sink into what we are witnessing now.
Assad is desperate and trying to put the genie of an openly resistant population back “into the bottle.”
The only problem is he can’t. The genie is out and will stay out for good now.
We know that Assad’s regime is absolutely brutal and willing to murder anyone participating in the unrest. The country itself is crippled by sanctions, the population suffers from access to basic goods and services and has no friends left in the world save Russia whom are now holding the Syrian regime at arm’s length with the Russian Foreign Minister recently admitting that “We have gone as far as we can” with Syria.
Seeing reports of battles on the outskirts of Damascus do not bode well for Assad and his ilk.
There are three scenarios that could play out:
- Assad and his security forces reach for the bazooka option. This means, in effect, a massive escalation in violence, killing and death from what we have already witnessed. Assad wages a scorched earth campaign to stamp out the resistance. This is essentially what Gaddafi was set to implement in Benghazi had NATO not intervened. A bloodbath.
- A rapid decline in internal support for Assad as some in his inner circle see the light of day and realize Assad is over. Assad is either forced from power and flees to Russia or Iran or will be killed.
- A third way is a prolonged civil war that results in a power sharing agreement between the two sides. Assad largely retains power during this interim period while his allies consolidate whatever loyalty to the regime remains through intimidation and special treatment. Think Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
Door # 2 is the most likely to open. Assad is in a very weak and tenuous position that will only become more fragile as support for Assad within his own army declines.
Beyond the immediate suffering being felt y the Syrian people, the other big loser here is Iran. They are losing a proxy through which they exert massive influence in Lebanon via Hezbollah.
Whatever or whomever takes the place of Assad in when this is over remains to be seen, but the ultimate winner will be the people of Syria. They will have been empowered to take charge of their own destinies through action and sacrifice.
Sunday Evening links
What’s the most difficult CEO skill? Managing Your Own Psychology (Ben Horowitz @ Andreessen Horowitz)
Should Everyone Be Required to Have Health Insurance? (WSJ)
What Happened to Kodak’s Moment? (TechCrunch)
7 Smart Ways to Come Up With More Smart Ideas at Work (Business Insider)
How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work (NYT)
Booming Mongolia: Mine, all Mine (Economist)
Anonymous Tricks Bystanders into Attacking U.S. Department of Justice (Wired)
Why the Clean Tech Boom Went Bust (Wired)
How Automakers Accelerated out of The Great Depression (Boston Consulting Group)
Staring Into the Abyss (John Mauldin)
Kyle Bass at AmeriCatalyst 2011, check it out
Check out Marc Andreessen’s blog
Hit it up at @PMARCA
These guys have backed some interesting firms, take a look at their portfolio companies.
This is what Mitt Romney will be hit with in the next few days…
Saturday Evening Links
Unemployment Scars Likely to Last for Years (WSJ)
Glaciers shrinking on Mt. Adams; studies show half gone since 1904 (OregonLive)
Chrome powers ahead (Asia Times)
Disney Marketer’s Downfall (NYT)
China Update Part 1 (David Kotok @ Cumberland Advisors)
Sayonara to all that (Schumpeter @ The Economist)
Energy Efficiency: Cheapest Power Around, But Getting More Expensive (GreentechMedia)
Wilbur Ross, the Bank Eater (Bloomberg Businessweek)
WSJ Special Report (Europe at the Brink)
The VC Bubble Pops (Forbes)
Inside North Korea
I’m watching the National Geographic documentary Inside North Korea, produced by journalists Lara Ling and Euna Lee. They were both later detained and held in North Korea as prisoners until former President Clinton negotiated their release during a meeting with Kim Jong Il.
The most striking thing about the film is fottage of everyday North Koreans stating that Kim Jong Il is unquestionably the greatest leader the worked has ever seen. Any suggestions that the journalists made insinuating that he may not be a perfect man are met with extreme discomfort and disbelief.
Is their distress true belief or is it a charade carried on out of fear? I can help but think how much human potential and capacity for progress is being lost there.
US Debt Accumulation by President
via Barry Ritholz:
Here is a quick look at total debt as accumulated by each US President.
Its kinda funny — how come so few people (especially those on the right) were all that upset about the massive surge in debt under Bush? Is it that they only recently kinda figured out the significance of debt — or are they are merely hypocrites when it comes to this sort of thing?
Whatever your political or economic views are, it is not up to me to tell you what to believe. However, you need to be intellectually consistent and not merely grab whatever ideological bullet point that suits your purposes at the moment. If you do so, you best be prepared to be charged with being intellectually dishonest, and to be categorized as called a political hack. Or worse.
When Romney wins in 2012, I expect most of the deficit hysteria to disappear.
This chart below is for the Austerians of today:
Interview with Kyle Bass
Kyle Bass is awesome. He is the lead in character in Michael Lewis’s most recent book Boomerang. Lewis describes how he came to fully understand the scope of the global debt crisis during a visit with Bass in Texas.
Bass is razor sharp and you should watch this video in its entirety.
Thoughts on U.S. Special Forces forces in Northern Uganda
Learning that President Obama has authorized 100 Special Operations soldiers into Uganda to supervise the very necessary round up and termination/imprisonment of the murderous Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army inserted a sense of righteousness into U.S. foreign policy towards Africa that is very encouraging.
Congress passed The Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act in May 2010 and was signed into law by President Obama shortly thereafter. The deployment of U.S. soldiers to the region in order to bring Kony to justice is a concrete action that will hopefully produce a permanent change in a region that has been on the receiving end of the most horrifying crimes against humanity in recent history. I understand the temptation to argue that inserting troops into an area as unstable as the Eastern Congo/Northern Uganda could lead to an unpredictable entanglement. However, staying focused on the goal at hand and immediately withdrawing after Kony is gone justifies seeing this through.
When I lived in Rwanda in 2005 I travelled overland from Rwanda’s capital city Kigali to Kampala, Uganda’s capital city. Even then, I recall hearing about Joseph Kony and what a madman he was. Back then it was hard to me fathom the suffering he was responsible for in such a beautiful setting.
Northern Uganda is a gorgeous place. It has views that will take your breath away, leaving you speechless and transfixed by the scenes unfolding in front of you. I remember riding on the bus from Kigali and Kampala and being absolutely hypnotized by the vivid green hills that stretched into forever, all bathed in a warm yellow sun. As we passed into Uganda, we would pass tea farms alongside the road with women hunched over, some of them with babies affixed to their backs, working away in the fields. In retrospect it is hard to reconcile that so much abduction, enslavement, rape and murder was taking place only a short distance from where I was.
