Foreign Affairs - 11.2019 - 12.2019

Recent Books

214 μ¢œ¤ž³£ ¬μ쬞œ˜

Middle East

John Waterbury

Assad or We Burn the Country: How One

Family’s Lust for Power Destroyed Syria

BY SAM DAGHER. Little, Brown, 2019,

592 pp.

Syria’s Secret Library: Reading and

Redemption in a Town Under Siege

BY MIKE THOMSON. PublicA
airs,

2019, 320 pp.

T

hese two books o
er wildly

contrasting portrayals o‘ the

regime o‘ Syrian President

Bashar al-Assad and the hugely destruc-

tive civil war that has raged in Syria

since 2011. Dagher started reporting

from Damascus for The Wall Street

Journal in 2012. He interviewed key

actors and dissidents, among them

Mana– Tlass, once a close friend o‘ the

ruling Assad family. Mana–’s father was

a regime stalwart, a longtime defense

minister, and a key liaison between the

Alawite Assads and the majority Sunni

population o‘ Syria. Mana‘ eventually

defected from the regime after Assad

brutally suppressed the largely Sunni

opposition. Dagher tells a story o‘

paranoia and unbridled violence. He is

unequivocal in his condemnation o‘ the

Assad regime and catalogs the world’s

acquiescence in the regime’s brutality,

enabled in part by the focus on battling

the Islamic State (or ž˜ž˜). Dagher

Understanding Russia: The Challenges of
Transformation
BY MARLENE LARUELLE AND JEAN
RADVANYI. Rowman & LittleÄeld,
2018, 184 pp.

Instead o‘ rekindling Western powers’
historical fears o“ Russia, Laruelle and
Radvanyi present the country as an
“ambivalent” nation—part o‘ a con-
tinuum o– Western politics rather than
an outlier. The authors skillfully place
Russia’s 30-year transformation since
the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s
perestroika reforms in the context o‘
broader developments in Europe, North
America, and elsewhere. This slim but
wide-ranging volume comes at a crucial
time, as growing domestic unrest tests
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
20-year rule and as opposition mounts
to his repression o‘ dissenting voices.
At the same time, the book is also a
forceful reminder that “Russia is much
more than its president” and that
understanding the country requires
nuanced consideration that goes beyond
merely analyzing Putin. The authors
explain, for instance, how the Kremlin
has channeled both nationalism and
globalism in addressing a slew o‘
Russia’s problems, including the dispari-
ties between urban and rural life and a
persistent brain drain. Laruelle and
Radvanyi argue that although Russia
wants to advance an alternative to the
current world order, its motivations are
more complicated and less sinister than
many Western pundits assert.
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