PDB Situation Report | December 14th, 2024: Inside The Collapse of Assad & China’s Massive Military Drills
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What led to the fall of Assad in Syria?
Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. This weekend, coming to you from the Middle East. Let's get briefed. We're starting things off in Syria, where the fall of President Assad has dramatically shifted power dynamics in the Middle East. We'll be joined by Brian Carter of the American Enterprise Institute for more on that. Plus, we'll take a look at China's latest military exercises around Taiwan, and there have been a number of them, which are among the largest in decades, with nearly 100 vessels mobilized. That's a lot of vessels. Okay, joining us to break down the implications is Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a good friend, Steve Yates. But first, today's Situation Report Spotlight.
Just last week, we were discussing on this program the astonishing speed of the rebel advance in Syria. And then, just one day after that episode aired, the Assad regime fell. Overnight, rebel forces stormed Damascus, toppling Bashar al-Assad's government and ending over 50 years of authoritarian rule by the Assad family. And might I add, brutal rule. The embattled leader fled to Moscow, as his grip on power collapsed and is reportedly now shacking up with his best friend, Vladimir Putin. Now with the Assad dynasty gone, Syria stands at a crossroads, its fate in the hands of a motley coalition of rebels cementing their grip on power. And credit where it's due, our next guest predicted this outcome on last week's program. Joining me again is Brian Carter.
He's the Middle East portfolio manager for the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. Brian, welcome back and thank you for showing up two weekends in a row. It's very impressive. Thanks for having me. Good to be back. Now, listen, we finished up last weekend's episode as the rebels were advancing and we all saw what was happening, which was a very rapid advance. But then I think my last question for you last weekend was, do you expect out of all of this activity, do you expect Assad to be toppled? And you said yes. But did you expect it to happen in the span of a few days? No, not at all. I thought he had, you know, at least a couple more days beyond that. It all happened so fast.
You know, I think one of the comparisons I've been drawing over the last couple of days is for those of us who watched the collapse of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, it was very reminiscent of that, except even faster, which was, I think, very surprising for a lot of us who have watched this conflict for many years. And, you know, we haven't seen the front lines move at all in four or five years. Why the speed of the regime's fall? What was it that led to it? Look, he battled them almost into submission back in, what, 2015, 2016, obviously largely with the Russians' help. But what was a major contributor to his downfall this time? Yeah, I'm not quite sure on specifics, although it was very evident just based on what we were seeing, that there was a bunch of institutional rot and demoralization within the Syrian Arab Army. I mean, if you watched what was happening and how these forces were just collapsing, it was very clear that there was something very wrong with these forces. We saw, for example...
I think it was right before I came on your program last weekend, the rebels had advanced to this large bridge over a major river, and instead of blowing the bridge, the Syrian Arab Army kept retreating and had an aircraft bomb the bridge, which is not very practical. It usually doesn't work to actually destroy a bridge. And so that was a big indicator for me that something is badly wrong within these military formations, and they're collapsing very rapidly. And to what degree was it a factor, the lack of support from either the Russians or the Iranians? Yeah, I think that was a factor. But I think if the Syrian Arab Army hadn't collapsed as quickly as it did, the Russians and the Iranians would have tried to get forces, get some resources in there to try to stem the bleeding a little bit. The reality is everything happened so fast.
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