The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | December 14th, 2024: Inside The Collapse of Assad & China’s Massive Military Drills
Sat, 14 Dec 2024
In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: We're starting in Syria, where the fall of Bashar al-Assad has dramatically shifted power dynamics in the Middle East. We'll discuss what this means for the region with Brian Carter from the American Enterprise Institute. Plus, China's latest military exercises around Taiwan are among the largest in decades, with nearly 100 vessels mobilized. Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Steve Yates, joins us to break down the implications. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Blackout Coffee: https://www.blackoutcoffee.com/PDB Patriot Gold: Call 1-888-870-5457 for a free investor guide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: 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...
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Chapter 2: What does Syria's future hold after Assad's regime?
And they've been talking already about the succession plans. And the IRGC, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the IRGC is angling to play more of a role in who that will be at the end of the day. So with the Iranian regime, is there a sense that they're done in Syria? Or is there a sense that perhaps...
They'll come to some accommodation with the new government, whatever that new government looks like. What do you think about that? I don't know. I think there's a sense that they're going to try. I don't know how successful they will be. Obviously, HTS and the rebels writ large have been fighting the Iranians for years at this point. So there's no love lost there.
And I think that's a really important piece of context to keep in mind. But at the same time, I don't think Iran necessarily sees itself as bounded by this government in power. I think that it will try to work with this government. But I also think Iran will try to get its hooks into other organizations in Syria, try to rebuild some sort of resistance network in Syria.
In fact, they've talked a little bit about this. The Supreme Leader said just the other day in a speech about Syria, he said, the Syrian youth will rise up again, just like the Iraqi youth rised up against the U.S. occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2011.
clearly alluding that there is some idea in his mind that, hey, maybe we can build some sort of resistance organizations in Syria to fight this so-called occupying government. I mean, in the short term, the rebels, I think the citizens of Damascus, they took to the streets and they ransacked Iranian facilities, certainly the embassy and other offices.
But you look at the Russian side, and it seems like the Russian government has been able to somehow orchestrate an accommodation, because it doesn't appear as if there's been any movement towards those Russian facilities or even the embassy in Damascus. I'm not exactly sure what is going on behind the scenes.
I will say that the Russians have been slowly kind of withdrawing their forces over the last couple of days. We're seeing indications now of Russians moving west to east towards Tartus and towards Khmeimim, where they have their naval base and air base, respectively. You know, honestly, from the rebel perspective, I'm sure it's a little bit of...
hey, we've got Damascus, let's try not to bite too much off, more than we can chew here, and try to consolidate what we've got rather than trying to break into the Russian base and fight the Russians. It's similar in a sense to how the Taliban perhaps had a little bit of a disengagement system with the U.S. forces at Hamid Karzai International Airport during the Afghanistan evacuation.
To what degree do you understand the various elements? Obviously, HTS is the lead dog in this pack of rebels who engaged in the offensive. But what do you know about the other groups? And to what degree do you believe HTS is going to be successful in cobbling all of them together and holding them together rather than having some disastrous chaotic fracturing as we saw in a way in Iraq? Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How are Israel's actions influencing the situation in Syria?
And Xi Jinping, in his infinite wisdom in recent years, has been kind of picking fights with them. So there's a lot in all of this. We often just think of it as it's just China and Taiwan or it's something of the United States. I think whatever's going on with Xi Jinping right now is kind of bigger.
And in some ways, it's harder to try to counter because a lot of our policy habits would just look at this and say, okay, well, can't the president talk to Xi Jinping? Or is there something going on in Taiwan we have to address? China's got a lot of capabilities now. We've given them a lot of money. They've taken a lot of technology and we've been really distracted.
So this is not a great set of circumstances coming together in these headlines.
Is this working towards an actual takeover in whatever form that is of Taiwan or is this all about messaging at this point?
Well, that's the money question. And we don't really get the luxury of knowing the answer. They're kind of able to go pursue both at the same time. They get a lot of what they would really want, we think, by just pressuring Taiwan and allies in the United States to sort of back off and make a deal and just concede that this area of responsibility is China's jurisdiction. And they push
allies and the United States out beyond the first island chain to the Pacific impacts an immense amount of global trade, the likes of which I don't think people have really digested. But you don't have a tech juggernaut out of South Korea and a huge amount of economic exchange with Japan without encroaching on the territorial sea and airlines and communication around Taiwan. So a lot's at stake.
But I think it's really ultimately a pressure campaign and a messaging campaign. But when you're playing with big ticket items like aircraft carriers and things that can go out in the deep blue water areas, you have to take it at face value. You can't bank on it just being a comms exercise.
You think part of it is the fact that the Chinese military really hasn't been tested for a very long time and that part of this is an effort to kind of see what their current status is, what their capabilities are?
Yeah, I don't think a lot of the world stage has really paid as close attention to China's military modernization as our intelligence community and a lot of specialists and policy areas have. And so it might be news to a lot of people how many big ship platforms they have. Now, this is kind of one of the dilemmas we've faced. This is a big, new material navy that they have.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of China's military drills near Taiwan?
I think that basically the Communist Party of China never was planning to be our friend, but it certainly was happy to receive advantage over many years. I think it's been in a low-grade economic and political war with us for some time, and it's acquired the capability to be in a hot war with us.
Whether and how that plays out, I think that whether you look at what happened with COVID, whether you look at what's gone on with weird efforts to compromise parts of the United States or sow division through psychological apps like TikTok and other kinds of things, they clearly are engaged in what the Communist Party is built around, which is political warfare, ideological warfare, above all else.
so that you get your opponents to divide and sort of get conquered by themselves so you don't have to rise up as high to be the top dog. That, I think, has been tried and true for them. It's playing out more. And so are they on a war footing? I'd say they always have been to a degree. It's just these different lanes where it's accelerating or getting emphasized more.
I think it's a little more shocking to see the military part space, AI, and technology really reaching farther and faster now. But the fundamentals really were us deluding ourselves that they thought otherwise during a reform and opening period. And Xi Jinping, I think, is a different leader that way.
What can you tell us in the remaining time that we've got, Steve, what can you tell us about the state strength of the Chinese economy?
Yeah, well, there are more questions than answers when it comes to China's economy. It's always been thus. When I was a very, very young intelligence officer and my job was to kind of assess what was going on in the Chinese economy, some of our sources in government were better than what the private sector had. Now I'd say it's absolutely the reverse.
The private sector has a better view into what's happening inside of China in terms of data. But that's still very, very incomplete. When it comes to their statistics, I think we fall back on the truism. They lie, but we still can sort of see trends. Their property sector has been weak for some time. Their people have significant restrictions on moving capital out of their country.
They have significant lack of trust in the viability of their banks. And so they put a lot of their life savings into real estate.
And so when people see pictures of real estate high rises crumbling or largely vacant, that's the hopes and dreams of a generation of Chinese workers who haven't been living a lavish lifestyle, but we're trying to save for retirement or their children's better life, etc. They have some really bad fundamentals inside, but they're at scale very big.
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