But if airstrikes are limited, would they scare Assad into peace talks or make him more determined to dig in?
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“It’s quite clear that the current military balance favours the [Assad] regime with Russian and Iranian support – and the regime is essentially said to shirk the United Nations talks”, Daniel Serwer, Middle East scholar and professor of Conflict Management at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told The Independent.
“This is an existing official vehicle that’s in place to allow State Department employees to convey alternative views and perspectives on policy issues”, Friedman said in response to a question.
The cable calls for “targeted military strikes” against the Syrian regime in light of the near-collapse of the ceasefire brokered earlier this year, the Journal reported, citing copies of the cable it had seen.
More spin: why has Obama been so “against” unleash a full blown invasion on Syria?
Russia, which said when the cease-fire began that it would suspend its own bombing on Assad’s behalf, cut back but never fully stopped, according to US officials who have repeatedly charged the bombs are largely directed at the USA -backed moderate opposition.
The names on the memo are nearly all midlevel officials – many of them career diplomats – who have been involved in the administration’s Syria policy over the last five years, at home or overseas.
But the administration’s alternative policy – to work with Russian Federation to secure a ceasefire in Syria’s civil war and talks on a political transition – has made little headway. The recent letter marked a move by the heart of the bureaucracy, which is largely apolitical, to break from the White House. “And we have an evidentiary record of what happens when we’re there – almost a decade in Iraq”, President Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told The New York Times Magazine.
A letter sent through the department’s internal “dissent channel” but leaked to the news media was signed by 51 State Department officials, including a Syria desk officer and the consul general in Istanbul.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the calls for military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government “can’t but worry any reasonable person”.
Neumann, now president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, said the internal petition for a change in US policy on Syria will be read at the highest level of the administration, but that does not mean that current policy will be altered or reviewed.
The U.S. backs several key Syrian rebel groups fighting ISIS, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The best option forward for Syria is a political process that leads to a transition to a government away from Bashar al-Assad, a political solution. The rebels are led by Syria’s Sunni majority, though they also include representatives of other groups.
Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses, the document added. would only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as the Islamic State, even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield.
Adam Ereli, a former principal deputy assistant secretary of state – a senior position in the US diplomatic corps – agreed with Neumann that it is unlikely the petition will result in any internal policy review. Don’t believe us? Read the following line muddled as the administration continues to soften its position on Assad’s future.
Brennan also said Islamic State’s “terrorism capacity and global reach” had not been reduced.
The US and Russian Federation are joint sponsors of a truce agreed in February. Actually that may well be the point: the U.S. is humiliated that a small, feeble middle-eastern nation dares to defy it for years, just because it has the backing of the Kremlin.
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Secretary of State John Kerry, who has supported U.S. military action in Syria, told reporters in the Danish capital Copenhagen yesterday: “I think it’s an important statement”.
