https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/01/03/insoluble-syria/feed/PJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usWed, 10 Jun 2026 02:56:58 -0400<![CDATA[Let&#8217;s cut through all the pious pronouncements about the horrible Assad regime in Syria. We err when we apply majoritarian democratic criteria to tribal societies.  There is a reason that Syria has labored under brutal minority regimes for half a century, since the Ba&#8217;ath Party coup of 1963 led by the Christian Michel Aflaq, followed by the Alawite Assad dynasty&#8217;s assumption of power in 1971. If you create artificial states with substantial minorities, as British and French cartographers did after the First World War, the only possible stable government is a minority government. That is why the Alawites ran Syria and the minority Sunnis ran Iraq. The minority regime may be brutal, even horribly brutal, but this arrangement sets up a crude system of checks and balances. A government drawn from a minority of the population cannot attempt to exterminate the majority, so it must try to find a modus vivendi. The majority can in fact exterminate a minority. That is why a majority government represents an existential threat to the minority, and that is why minorities fight to the death.]]>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:49:14 -0500<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2013/01/03/insoluble-syria-n131143