A Research On Contemporary National Interests Of Syria

The possible international and regional power redistribution and the benefit balance assessments of the related nations and organizations mostly draw the international society attention to the current Syria crisis.However,the national interests of Syria itself is always neglected.It is also quite difficult to define Syria national interests for its feature of interweaving with Arab national interests.Influence of concepts constantly changes the national interests during its social practice and under its new identification.Identification changes by the shift of nation's concept,national interests then tend to change according to the new identification.While Syria is in an intense political and social upheaval,the changing direction of her new identification is dominated by the culture of system.This dissertation is to research the construction of Syria's national interests under Bashar's reign by systematical elaboration and analysis of its historical development and decision-making evolution as well as the culture of international system that Syria is involved in.The dissertation consists of six chapters and a conclusion.As the introduction,the first chapter contains a review of the literature,an outline of the dissertation's structure,and an explanation of the methods and materials used in the study.Chapter two starts with the definition of national interests under constructivism theory,then introduces the identification and conduct of nation to analytical structure while clarifies the theory selection reasons.The current world political theories believe that the economical and social perspectives are the two main angles of view in the study of national interests.As the latter perspective,constructivism has an unique understanding of national interests,and it differs from both realism and liberalism,claiming that objectivity should be applied on political actors,and overall epistemology of structuralism is indispensible in the analysis of world politics.So Alexander Wendt brought out an assertion to profess that national interests is not an exogenesis from social structure,but constructed under certain conditions in a systematical structure by nations.By the guide of social theory,Wendt defines national interests as the reconstruction or security demands of "national social complex",and,based on the classification of national interests by George Akerlof and Robert Keohane,he summarized the content of national interests as "survival,independence,property and collective self-esteem." A nation who can fulfill these interests may live,or it would gradually break down.This chapter takes national security,international environment,national comprehensive strength,technical capacity and nation's subjective cognitive level as the determination standards of Syria's national interests,and based on the constructivism's understanding on the content of national interests,also nature of integrated development type of constructing nation,generally classify Syria national interests into nation's security interest,political interest,economical interest and culture interest.Chapter three analyzes the construction of Syria national interests from a domestic dimension.A dynamic procedure of changing concepts on Syria national interests and national identification are presented by changing description and traits conclusion of Syria domestic political cultures,which lead to a finding of main characters for Syria political culture under Bashar's reign.These forming characters are mostly evolved from its existing unique Arab socialism political culture based on an absolutism political system.Besides,this chapter also describes a changing process of national interests before Bashar government from domestic and international levels,from Syria's independence and the civil government period,the Baath Party ruling period,Hafiz al-Assad authoritarianism period,until Bashar's week authoritarianism regime.The bureaucratic system of Bashar government and its foreign policy are also examined.For a comprehensive understanding of Syria's national interests,Syria's existing civil society which is part of the civil political culture and different from government political culture is exclusively introduced.Chapter four analyzes the construction of Syria national interests from an international dimension.Based on the core argument of constructivism that a nation's identification and interests are constructed in an international structure,this chapter comprehensively adopts both Wendt's "empirical" and Martha Finnemore's "ideal"constructive models to analyze Syria's national security,politicl,economical,and culture images and interests by examining Syria under Bashar government's interaction with the international system.Specifically,these international systems are"international responsibility" security and political system under the major powers dominating world politics,economic system formed by a series of international and bilateral economic and trading agreements,and culture system typically represented by long living "Arab nationalism" which traditionally is maintained among Arab nations.Syria constructs her national interests according to her preferences supplied by a formed identity during the interaction with these systems.Chapter five is an analysis of Syria foreign relations under Bashar's reign in both international and regional levels,together with the shared interests in this process and the contradictions between interests of Assad regime and the Syria nation.The international leading powers gradually formed a "Lockean culture" interaction mode in the Middle East regional system.Facing the new regional situation,and urged by their traditional interests,the related external dominated powers like America,Russia and Europe nations successively adjust their Middle East policies,which also brings opportunities and challenges to the formation of Syria's new national identity.Since Syria obtains the complete expressing capacity for regional orders and powers preferences,and in order to clarify the features of Syria external identification,this chapter also observes the conducts and functions of Syria's regional foreign policies on the perspective of region's national identification and concept classification.Chapter six is a case study for a further validation of Syria's national security interest construction.As the core interest of national interests,security interest is especially important in Syria-Israel relation.For its special and complicated traits,the political culture of this relation still belongs to a bilateral Hobbesian culture,and will possibly drag the entire Middle East political culture back to Hobbesian culture.It is wildly believed that Israel represents the regional interests of America and Syria on the other side is Iran's partner,which reflects the other Hobbesian culture shared by America and Iran.This culture is greatly internalized in both Syria and Israel's national interests construction,and becomes their shared concept.This chapter comes to a conclusion that the "enemy" identity still maintains in both sides' concept and,so far,their interactive mode has failed to change and reconstruct,but the internalization level of Hobbesian culture slightly differs by the influence of system in different periods,by reviewing the history of Syria-Israel peace talk on their bilateral relation development and respective national security strategy to each other in this century under the constructivism view.In the conclusion of the dissertation.based on three kinds of Middle East nations national interests classified by different concepts to the contemporary Middle East international system,the author put Syria under Bashar government in the list of subordinate nations of the Middle East international system process.As for this nature,Syria is greatly effected by the international system culture,and several main international paradigms raised by Syria crisis are competing to lead the Syria new construction of national interests,in which process China is playing a big part.