Asad of Syria: The Struggle For The Middle East (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 181 of China's most outspoken young intellectuals—men and women he considered critical to the modernization of China's economy. Hu exhibited much the same spirit when he led a successful counterattack against the 1983 party campaign to eliminate so-called "spiritual pollution," a campaign initially backed by Deng. Hu showed his principles again as an active supporter of an institutionalized succession process for top leadership positions, and as the outspoken advocate of a program to promote young cadres to the aging upper ranks of state and party hierarchies. He would finally meet the limits of Deng's tolerance in 1986 when he associated himself with the student movement. To survive so many political battles throughout his long career, Hu must have been an adept politician. Yang candidly reveals Hu's close personal ties both to Mao and Deng in the 1930s at "Resistance University" (Kangda), contacts that undoubtedly helped to advance his career. He clearly supported Mao, until disillusioned by the leader's betrayal of the Hundred Flowers movement. After the fall of the "Gang of Four," Hu returned to the party fold as a staunch ally of his former bridge partner, the new premier Deng Xiaoping. Yang's historical record also bares Hu's less palatable roles in the anti-rightist campaign, and as a critic of Peng Dehuai at the Lushan Plenum of 1959. Yang argues in the closing chapter that while such activities seem to contradict his characterization of Hu as the consummate progressive reformer, they should be considered only minor transgressions. Hu himselfjudged, as he looked back on his career, that he had been "two percent wrong." In Yang's eyes, "considering the historical conditions of the time," Hu's mistakes were "understandable " lapses in judgment redeemed by his "determined rush toward the intelligent path of reform." In the final analysis, this biography represents much more than a record of an important Chinese Communist leader. It is also a political statement by a Chinese citizen who hopes that, in writing a "free and critical assessment" of Hu, he will help "advance the people's rights to freedom." Yang's book reflects the hopes shared by many Chinese intellectuals for the future of their country. Yang likens Hu's historical role to that of Tan Sitong, a martyr of the 1898 reform movement from Hu's home county of Hunan. Like Tan, Yang writes, Hu "is a true son of the people, a flag of hope flying on high, a flag of battle against the forces of evil and corruption." Asad ofSyria: The Struggle For The Middle East. By Patrick Seale. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. 552 pp. Reviewed by Moiara Ruehsen, Ph.D. candidate, SAIS. "Dictator, dictator," the cab driver explained when I asked him about the flattering portraits of Hafez al-Asad, Syria's president for the past 19 years, plastered over every available wallspace and building facade. Military police, some wearing camouflage fatigues, others in civilian clothing, patrolled every street corner in Damascus with AK-47s slung menacingly over their shoulders. It was the 182 SAIS REVIEW summer of 1982, and the Syrians were waging a war in adjacent Lebanon and still recovering from blood spilled at Hama from the Muslim Brotherhood uprising only three months earlier. Today, the soldiers are less visible but Asad still looks down upon his subjects from every billboard and building. To the Israelis, Asad is a formidable foe; to the Muslim Brotherhood, a bete noire; to Iraq's President Saddam Hussein, a mortal enemy; and to many Arabs, their last hope for ever-elusive Arab unity. But to most of us, he remains an enigma. Patrick Seale seems to have been more successful than any other Syrian specialist at unravelling the mystery of Asad. He unveils the Damascene sphinx, with the sphinx's wholehearted cooperation, and reveals him to be not merely a statesman but a quintessential realpolitiker who has managed to retain the reigns of power by ruthlessly holding to the philosophy that the endsjustify the means. Seale traces Asad's life from his peasant background, following his rise through the military to the presidency and his ultimate consolidation of power. Initially...