Syria under Bashir Assad (closed end 2014)

[Dayuhan]

This going well off topic and probably should be moved elsewhere, but I'll leave that to David...

It's not an either/or proposition. Depending on the context (the country, the U.S. relationship with said country, the principal actors involved on both sides, the issue, etc) the U.S. exercises a range of influence over other countries. The American ability to influence regime decisions in North Korea, in Mexico, and in Saudi Arabia are unique to the conditions around those relationships. The U.S. has and will influence countries on behalf of priviate commercial interests, strategic political aims, and other reasons - some substantial, some trivial.

Influence in any given case depends on the extent and credibility of the incentives and penalties that the influencing power can deploy, and extent of resistance in the target of the influence. The second factor is key. Commercial concessions are generally not difficult, especially if there's something in it for those who rule. When we start talking about applying influence to force reforms that many ruling elites will see as immediate threats to their own positions, prerogatives, and even survival, resistance is very high. The response may be an outright refusal or an attempt to feign compliance with a charade of pseudo-reforms, but ruling elites in other countries are not going to simply surrender their power and perks because we want them to.

The U.S. simply does not prioritize developing and exercising this kind of influence for the purposes of facilitating pluralist government.

What's the basis for that statement? I think the US has placed a fairly high priority on efforts like "democracy promotion", reducing corruption, etc. The efforts just haven't been very productive, largely because nobody has any clear or convincing idea of how to do it.

The U.S. had no problems in 'facilitating' changes in 'communist' regimes for 50 years - why is the U.S. suddenly powerless in influencing positive reform in authoritarian regimes? I don't think it's a question of what's possible; it's one of preference and willingness.

When did the US ever effectively facilitate reform in Communist countries, up until the point where Communism collapsed from the inside? To put it simply, the US is generally powerless to force reform in authoritarian regimes because the penalties and incentives we are effectively able to deploy are not sufficient to overcome the very high level of resistance to reform in the target countries.

This is true, but only to an extent - and we witnessed that during the Cold War when the national liberation movements flocked to the 'communist' banner after the U.S. refused to support their bids for independence and in many cases, democracy.

I agree that this was a huge mistake and one that greatly strengthened our opponents in the Cold War. The extent to which that's analogous to current circumstances is very debatable.

When the U.S. does not strengthen democratic governance, what and who remains in power?

You can't strengthen something that isn't there, and outside attempts to create democratic governance have generally not been very successful.

It's not helped by the total absence of any long-term strategy for U.S. foreign policy. An interesting case study is Yemen's Saleh's exploitation of U.S. desperation for Arab counter-terrorism allies to fund and arm his government - which ended with predictable results when his regime imploded, leaving the Yemen terrorism problem unresolved. Ditto Somalia since 2001.

What were the alternatives in Yemen or Somalia? Certainly strengthening democratic governance wasn't an option, as there wasn't any to strengthen.

A better example might be the US effort to get Bahrain to respond to its Arab Spring with accommodation and reform, which clearly demonstrates the limits of US influence.

This debate tends to come back to the debate between realism and idealism: do you deal with what exists and try to make the most of it, or do you try to replace it, with a huge variety of potential unintended consequences, many of them very unattractive?

Since the unspoken focus of these generic discussions is so often Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, it might be useful to look specifically at the elephant in the drawing room. What specific policy reforms would we want to promote, what means could we adopt to promote them, and what would the probable outcomes be?