> Assad had majority approval prior to the war (can't find any more recent adversarial polls, which may be telling) and his family has been in power for decades

"Some 55% of Syrians want Assad to stay, motivated by fear of civil war" is not 55% approval rating, it's 55% making the pragmatic choice against civil war.

> maintaining power without relatively widespread support is quite difficult

Strange claim in a thread about the Korean peninsula.