Note how they adopted (not in the same words) two Assad slogans:
- "Assad or we ruin the country": We will never give up power even if it means complete ruin
- "Assad forever": We are the end of your history. We will rule you all our lives and then our children will.
- "Assad or we ruin the country": We will never give up power even if it means complete ruin
- "Assad forever": We are the end of your history. We will rule you all our lives and then our children will.
Variations and undertones of this can be clearly seen in the narratives of Arab dictatorships. MBS taking Saudi Arabia towards pariah status while simultaneously saying he'll rule the next 50 years. Sisi setting himself to become president for life.
Plus the erratic foreign policy that tests the limits of the relationship with their classical Western allies - torturing Western grad students, imprisoning Western academics, hacking Western elections, bribing Western politicians. This isn't rational strategy, it's hysteria.
My biggest fear as an Arab isn't that MBS, MBZ, Sisi and Assad will be the end of our history, because they won't. My biggest fear is that they'll do to the entire region what Assad did to Syria. They'll burn it all to the ground in an attempt to rule it forever.
