“Assad’s ideology is
Me - Power; Cost - irrelevant.”
That’s how things work over there. That is why Iraq is falling to Al-Qaida and Afghanistan will always be a crap hole.
Assad knows the only way to keep ancient enemies from killing each other is to make them fear you more than each other. The Russians understood this too in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania.
The key to understanding the Third World is family life.
If your family can lay claim to your success and is a network of interlocking relationships in which you don’t get to choose your spouse, nor live in a nuclear family without ties to your extended family then your country will be backwards.
That’s the formula.