THE IMPACT OF SANCTIONS ON THE AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES` BEHAVIOR: THE CASE OF SYRIA

Abstract

This study examines the sanctions been imposed on Syria. Despite Syria is a country that received sanctions from more than four decades, starting from 1979, when first U.S sanctions were imposed on Syria. The scholarly filed had not dealt very often with Syrian case, for many reasons. Some of this reasons were a result of the sanctions nature, since they were not very harsh sanctions. Moreover Syria during the 1979 sanctions and later in the 1986 wave of sanctions were still receiving huge amount of financial support from Arab countries, and Soviet Union financial and military support. That is why this study after the conceptual part, is going through Syria`s modern history and tries to find how the previous mandate system and the Syrian foreign relations had shaped Syria – U.S & E.U relations. Based on the objectives of this research, which are presented in the main question of the paper; what are the impact of sanctions on the authoritarian regimes? The study is examine how Hafiz al- Assad, took control over the Syrian armed forces and the security branches, then the political life in Syria. That is one of the new steps in this study, which is connecting the internal factors and the foreign relations of Syria, and showing how those factors led Syria to face sanctions from U.S. and E.U countries. The study also shows that the economic sufferance of Syria was not only as a result of the effects of the 1979, and 1986 sanctions, but other factors were present, like the Israeli occupation of Beirut port in 1982, and the cut of the funding from Arab countries to Syria after 1985, as a result of the Syrian support to the Iran against Iraq in the Iranian – Iraqi war, and the Syrian policies in Lebanon. Beside the isolation was imposed on Syria when Egypt and Jordan made independent peace agreements with Israel. By tracking those changes either in the Syrian foreign policies, or the internal authority developments, this study is one of the first in this regard, that covering Syrian developments and connecting it to the sanctions that imposed on in Syria. Although Syria had faced sanctions in 1979, 1986, and 2003, and now from 2011 and still ongoing, but still the topic has not received what is deserve from coverage, that is why this paper is from a comprehensive type that covers those old wave of sanctions, and the ones that started from 2011. In this regard and starting from 2011, more than 1100 Syrian entity including individuals and institutions were sanctioned only by U.S and EU, beside huge set of sanctions from other countries, but still the Syrian regime neither fell nor changed its behavior. The thesis is trying to cover those set of sanctions and their effect, however the paper reaches to a conclusion that sanctions were not successful in their goal in the period that the study tried to cover more extensively, which was from 2011 until 2018.