A lot was written about the “struggle over Syria”, especially since its independence which was consecrated with the French withdrawal from its soil in the mid-1940s. The majority of what was written linked this struggle to the stage of internal turmoil and coups. Perhaps among the most prominent goals of the “corrective action” undertaken by the late President Hafez al-Assad in 1979, is that he dissociated this conflict from the internal situation, i.e. turned Syria from an arena for foreign international and regional powers into a player, on the regional level at least. And from the justification of this action – through criticisms made against the extremism of the brothers in the Baath Party (dubbed the February Group) and their isolation of the country from its environment - it seemed clear that it constituted a first step toward restoring normal relations with the environment through the reinstatement of the so-called Arab solidarity and by distancing the country from any axes. In other words, it aimed at finding balance at the level of Syria's regional relations, at reestablishing balanced international relations with the United States and the former Soviet Union, and at opening up to Europe. Whenever there was talk about strategic balance, it was never limited to the military balance of power with Israel, and also affected the balanced political relations in the region, and between the East and the West. Even at the peak of the “front of steadfastness and deterrence,” the late president maintained good relations with the peace camp. He also severed the relations with Anwar al-Sadat's Egypt following the signing of the peace accord with Israel, then restored them through a decision from the Arab Summit, and not through a unilateral one. Moreover, when the late president supported war on Iraq following the invasion of Kuwait and engaged in the war, he did so in the context of an Arab and international decision, and not in that of a battle between two rival regimes. At the time, in light of Egypt's exit from the conflict and the major flaw affecting the military balance of power, Syria considered that its regional role and its protection from any Israeli monopolization resided in its stable Arab relations – especially with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf – and in remaining part of the Arab consensus. This policy, especially following the disengagement in the Golan, produced balance at the level of its international relations, and it considered that the continuation of this balance will protect it from any predominance that may be imposed on it. However, this balance which upheld Syria's stability started to falter with the collapse of the Soviet Union, one of the two pillars of the strategic balance. And among the Syrian expressions of anger toward the policy of Mikhaïl Gorbatchev (the Glasnost and the Perestroïka which contributed to the undermining of the Eastern Bloc), was the campaign launched by the Syrian official media against the Soviet leader, to the point of using the Stalinist expression in describing him as being “counterrevolutionary.” In other words, Damascus realized - early on - the threat residing in the collapse of the Soviet Union over its policies in the context of the strategic balance and the consequences of unilateral predominance, i.e. that of the United States, over its role as a player in the region. It thus went back to benefitting from the card of the resistance in Lebanon against the Israeli invasion in 1982, in order to re-impose its role whether at the level of the struggle equation or the regional equation. However, this card, which has become the backbone of the Syrian policy - in what later became known as rejectionism – generated a major transformation at the level of Syria's regional relations. Consequently, Damascus went from being in line with the Arab consensus and solidarity, to a pole in an axis with Iran at the expense of its Arab relations. Strategic balance, in the sense mentioned earlier, responds to the traditional Arab nationalistic feelings of wide factions among the Syrian people. However, the move into an axis with Iran was not met with a similar reaction, and started to be viewed as being an exit away from the Arab concerns, which would explain some of the slogans launched during the recent protests. Officially, these slogans were perceived as being a project of sectarian strife and turmoil, but these interpretations remain mere justifications unless they detect the meaning drawn by the Syrian people from the rejectionist policy.
