Gani, Jasmine K.
(2011)
Understanding and explaining US-Syrian relations: conflict and cooperation, and the role of ideology.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
This thesis is a study of US-Syrian relations, and the legacy of mistrust between the two
states. While there has been a recent growth in the study of Syria’s domestic and regional
politics, its foreign policy in a global systemic context remains understudied within
mainstream International Relations (IR), Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), and even Middle
Eastern studies, despite Syria’s geo-political centrality in the region. The primary purpose
of the thesis is to analyse and understand the driving factors in US-Syrian relations, both the
continuities – distinctive in the context of the region’s dynamic political landscape – and the
rarer instances of discontinuity. By analysing the causes and constituents of US-Syrian
relations, the thesis will also challenge a purely realist and power-political explanation that
has dominated the discourse on Middle Eastern foreign policy; without discarding the value
of alternative conceptual explanations, the thesis will argue that Syria’s position towards the
US has been significantly (though not exclusively) influenced by a politically embedded set
of ideas and principles that have evolved from an anti-colonial Arab nationalist ideology.
Though recent constructivist debates have (rightly) brought the role of identity and social
structure back to the fore, ideological or value-laden motives are still at times treated
dismissively as an instrument of power politics (particularly in relation to Middle Eastern
regimes) or, conversely, as a sign of regime irrationality. The apparent methodological
impasse in credibly connecting ideational motives with foreign policy implementation and
the perceived incompatibility between ideas and pragmatic decision-making have prevented
a deeper and more sophisticated exploration of ideological influences within IR.
Thus the second aim of the thesis is to redress this imbalance by introducing a
methodological framework of analysis for studying ideology in foreign policy-making; this
will be operationalised by historically charting the development and influence of ideas on
Syria’s position towards the US, drawing upon original archival material that has hitherto
not been utilised in existing literature on this subject. I argue that in Syria’s case state
interests and security concerns are not dichotomous to ideational values; rather the two are
coterminous goals in Syrian foreign policy. In doing so the thesis employs historical
analysis and FPA methods to assess the significance of the following factors in influencing
Syria’s ideology, and thereby its relations with the US: Syria’s colonised past and
contemporary US interventionism in the region; the policies and ideology of Israel; and
finally the structure of the Syrian regime, and its connection to public opinion.
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