And so here is the first Assad effect: The perception that democracy is costly — perhaps too costly. It seems to demonstrate that any demand for democracy eventually translates into chaos, and chaos invites the return of colonialism. It’s a typical pitfall of the intellectual left in the Arab world to think that colonization is always Western, never Russian or Iranian. But Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s leader, is worse than Assad, so dictatorship is preferable to a caliphate. Assad has won, but he has only won time.

Source: New York Times July 07, 2017 08:37 UTC