In July 2011, that first year, the American and French ambassadors visited Hama to see the demonstrations. The Syrians opposing the regime thought that they were also going to be helped from abroad. But the power structure of the Syrian regime is quite different from that in Egypt or Tunisia, and the Syrian opposition apparently were not aware yet of the disaster-in-waiting. On top of that, there was the attack on Libya, where the regime was toppled thanks to foreign intervention. But the opponents of the regime were very optimistic, or rather overoptimistic, partly because of the so-called Arab Spring, which resulted in President Mubarak of Egypt and President Ben Ali of Tunisia voluntarily stepping down. I predicted that in the 1996 edition of my first book on Syria, The Struggle for Power in Syria. Everyone with some knowledge of Syria should have known beforehand that trying to topple the regime would lead to a bloodbath. For people who haven’t read your latest book yet, can you explain how we’ve got to where we are now? At the time, I was naively optimist you already seemed to know it was going to end badly. Almost as many have become internally displaced persons. Nearly half a million people are dead, and more than six million have fled Syria as refugees. You described a beautiful country, much of which has now been destroyed. We last spoke in May 2011, before these peaceful demonstrations in Syria turned into a vicious civil war. Foreign Policy & International Relations.