Unlikely US-Russia outreach on Syria all but dead
It seems unlikely President Vladimir Putin will back down now, leaving the diplomatic track blocked.
WASHINGTON (AFP) - On Monday, John Kerry said it would be "diplomatic malpractice" to abandon talks with Russia on restoring a ceasefire in Syria. On Wednesday, he threatened to do just that.
In a phone call to his sparring partner in a year-long diplomatic bout, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the US secretary of state demanded that Russia halt the Syrian regime’s assault on Aleppo.
"He informed the foreign minister that the United States is making preparations to suspend US-Russia bilateral engagement on Syria," Kerry’s spokesman John Kirby said.
If Russia does not force Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to halt his attack on rebel-held eastern Aleppo, Washington will cancel a plan to open a joint US-Russia military targeting cell, he said.
In Moscow, the defense ministry said "we are ready to continue joint work with our American partners on the Syrian issue" but gave no sign that Russia is ready to ground the Syrian air force.
Last week, Lavrov declared calls for a new ceasefire "senseless" unless the United States is able to persuade moderate rebels to separate from the terrorists Moscow says it is fighting.
So it seems unlikely President Vladimir Putin will back down now, leaving the diplomatic track blocked and a quarter of a million people in Aleppo under bombardment from Russian and Syrian jets.
"Unless we see something extraordinary, something significant very, very soon, we are going to have to take those steps to suspend our bilateral engagement on Syria," Kirby said.
"The purpose of the call today wasn’t to express an aspiration that they’ll suddenly see the light and do the right thing. It was to say: ‘We haven’t seen you do the right thing.’"
Kerry’s spokesman said the secretary warned Lavrov that Russia would now be held responsible for the situation, including "the use of incendiary and bunker-buster bombs in an urban environment."
Just a day before Kerry’s ultimatum, the State Department was defending his efforts to keep the door open to Moscow.
Under skeptical questioning from reporters, spokesman Mark Toner said "really, until the past few weeks, we felt like we were on a firm path towards a possible diplomatic resolution to this."
This previous optimism has attracted much criticism, even scorn, in Washington, where critics have lined up to accuse Kerry and President Barack Obama of being fooled by Moscow.
Even after Kerry’s ultimatum, hawkish Republican Senator John McCain sneered: "Finally, a real power move in American diplomacy.
"Secretary of State John ‘Not Delusional’ Kerry has made the one threat the Russians feared most: the suspension of US-Russia bilateral talks about Syria.
"After all, butchering the Syrian people to save the Assad regime is an important Russian goal -- but not if it comes at the unthinkable price of dialogue with Secretary Kerry."
The State Department dismissed the criticism.
"There’s nothing that the secretary is going to apologize for... about talking to the Russians, who have the most influence on Assad, to try to get this to stop," Kirby said.
"But as he also has said, his patience is not limitless, and I think you can tell from his comments in recent days... that that patience is wearing extraordinarily thin."
But the criticism has not only come from the US administration’s political opponents, but from frustrated former allies as well.
The State Department’s own former special adviser on Syria, Fred Hof, was scathing, mocking the administration’s faith that Russia’s demand for military cooperation represented a diplomatic opening.
"This is the sad, pointless diplomacy of desperation and wishful thinking," he wrote on the blog of think tank the Atlantic Council.
For Hof, Kerry’s mission was a "fool’s errand" mainly because Obama gave him no tools to pursue any other option -- no leverage to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin that military victory is impossible.
It has become a mantra of US officials -- now repeated by Lavrov and UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura -- throughout the process that "there is no military solution" to the crisis in Syria.
War crimes
But this has not stopped Obama’s critics from proposing them.
"A careful consideration of military options is not pleasant work for any American president. Yet in this case it must be done," wrote Hof, arguing that Assad’s brutality must exact a price.
Washington’s Arab allies, led by Saudi Arabia, have demanded that opposition rebels fighting Assad be given advanced weapons such as MANPADS -- shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles.
This might alter the balance of power on the battlefield and make Moscow and Damascus more ready to talk. But US officials worry that the arms would leak from moderate groups to militant extremists.
Turkey has called for a no-fly zone and for US assistance to carve out a buffer zone in northern Syria to shelter rebels and refugees, but Obama has been wary of getting US troops drawn into the war.
Tougher sanctions may be applied on Syrian and Russian officials, but many in Putin’s inner circle are already blacklisted for their roles in the annexation of Crimea, with no change in his stance.
In the meantime, Putin and Assad remain bent on pursuing a military solution -- and the victim is not just the Syrian people but for many in Washington the credibility of US leadership.
