The most straightforward scenario for a Syrian collapse would be de facto partition, with the coastal regions dominated by the Allawi minority -- the regime's main supporters -- breaking away from the Sunni Arab provinces inland. "That would be fairly clear-cut," said White. But Damascus lies outside the hypothetical "Allawi-stan," and White doubts the regime would be willing to give up the capital and retreat to the coast: "What I think is more likely is the regime will fight for Damascus as long as it can, and when that falls it will be a matter of flight, every man for himself."
Yet the alternative to retreating to the coast for a state on par with Lebanon is not trying to hold everything until collapse.
The alternative to collapse is retreating to a smaller Syria that can be dominated by the core "Allawi-stan." Assad doesn't need a pure Allawite rump Syria (with whatever other minorities want to bet their futures on Assad rather than a Sunni-majority state). Assad just needs to reduce the number of rebellious Sunnis to a manageable level. Assad can do this with a rump Syria that extends from the Turkish border and runs down the coast, into Damascus, and down to the Israeli border. If there are too many Sunni Arabs there, Assad's forces can practice ethnic cleansing to push these suspect populations into the ungoverned spaces to the east of rump Syria.
I don't know what percent of the population of rump Syria has to be composed of Allawites and their allies, but Iran runs a police state with about half non-Persians. I assume that there is a level below half that Assad could work with and suppress the majority. A third Allawite and allies? Forty percent? I guess it depends on how many loyal troops the rump state can generate and whether they can put toops representing 2% of the population (yes, I know the number is in dispute, but it will do for blog work) into the field to control/protect those people.
Russia would likely be happy to support a rump Syria that gives Russia a naval base at Tartus. And Iran would accept a rump Syria that still gives them access to Lebanon to support Hezbollah.
That's the problem with refraining from committing to regime change and assuming Assad will inevitably lose. It assumes that Assad fights to hold it all and simply lets his control of all Syria collapse in a futile effort to hang on to it all.
Then you have to wonder what happens to the parts of Syria outside of the rump Syria. Do Iraq and Turkey annex parts of eastern Syria? Would Syria's Kurds try to establish an independent state or try to join Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region? Would Jordan want any of the desert to their north?
Indeed, would Iraq's Sunni Arabs in Anbar province secede from Iraq if they could extend their hold into Syria's eastern Sunni Arab regions?
How long would Iraq's Kurdish regions remain in Iraq without the additional weight of Iraq's Sunni Arabs to balance the Shia majority?
We fear the consequences of defeating Assad. But there are scary consequences for any outcome--including Assad's ultimate victory in whole or even survival in a part of Syria. After all, Assad is likely to want to keep his WMD and ballistic missiles within his rump regime in order to reduce the appetite for foreign intervention to sweep up loose chemical weapons. Will Assad feel kindly to the West and the Arab world after surviving our clear desire to see him go? That quiet Israel-Syria border might not be so quiet in the future.
PRE-SCHEDULED POSTING UPDATE: After I wrote this but before its scheduled posting, I ran across another article on Assad retreating to the Allawite core. This one adds that Assad needs more than the coastal enclaves. Assad needs inland positions as a buffer. The article also notes that Iran and Russia could learn to accept a rump Syria.
I still think rump Syria needs to be a bit bigger than the coast and even inland blocking positions, and must include Damascus to retain the UN seat. And once you retain Damascus, you might as well keep going down to the Israeli and Jordanian borders.
Also, the article doesn't mention what happens to the areas outside the rump Syria that Assad retreats to.
But what I first wrote about in January is getting a lot more attention as an option.
