Syria (2011–2020): From a Revisionist Power into a Conquered State

Abstract

The state failure in Syria represents a unpredictable case which can only be explained by the drastic incoherence between the respective share of each of its two sects (Shia vs. Sunni) within the national population and the sectarian composition of the governing group. Still, for nearly four decades this potential source of domestic dissension had been both suppressed by the autocratic policing of the state and, at least traditionally, absorbed by the regime’s Arab nationalist discourse—which was politically nationally encompassing with the vast majority of the population being of Arabic ethnic. Yet, the surge of sectarianism in 2000s in the region had gradually displaced the nationalist discourse of the regime as a unifying ideational force; and, the outbreak of anti-regime Sunni protests in early 2011 and the resistance by the regime to accommodate the demands of the majority for change combined to sink the country into the rank of failed states from its proud regional power status.