I have drawn upon international relations theory to explain how Syria's regime has survived the past decade. Although unfashionable and somewhat maligned, realism, with its focus on the structure of the international political system, competition among states and the importance of alliances, and emphasis on sovereignty, provides for a compelling explanation. Realism describes and depicts the exercise of power as it is, rather than how it should or could be.

Modern Syria is a small country seemingly of little relevance to the global order. Indeed, it is not a “stand-out” country in the Middle East region, especially when compared to hegemons such as Turkey, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. However, its recent history has placed it at the crossroads of both regional and global change. Hafez Asad built the Syrian state by capitalizing upon competition among regional powers, such as Iran and Iraq (Karsh 2010), Israel and Palestine (Brand 1990) and Saudi Arabia and Egypt (Schenker & Henderson 2009). In doing so, he secured rent from the Gulf Arab states, led the Steadfastness Front and established enduring relations with Iran. In other words, Syria has been able to leverage, to its advantage, the desire among regional states to dominate the regional balance of power.

Similarly, Asad was able to exploit the Soviet Union's desire to compete with the US's influence in the Middle East. Egypt's peace treaty with Israel in 1979 presented Syria with an opportunity to play upon Soviet weakness and impress upon Moscow its pivotal role in the regional order. As such, Syria's importance to Russia grew, and, a result, Asad's quest to achieve strategic parity with Israel – his own bid to outweigh Tel Aviv – was given a major boost.

A lot has been written over the years about Hafez Asad's pragmatism, guile and statesmanship. It is not relevant to our case study, but one facet of his personality to note was his patience, or at least what appeared to be patience. It is not clear to me whether Asad consciously exercised strategic patience or just refused to act – like a rabbit in the headlights – but the outcome of waiting served him well.

In her excellent book The Wisdom of Syria's Waiting Game, Bente Scheller (2014) describes how the Asads sit tight and wait for the tide of international relations to turn.