It is unlikely that US President Barack Obama will follow the State Department’s dissent advice and make a 180-degree shift in his foreign policy toward Syria: it will be up to Obama’s successor how to untie the Syrian knot.
Commenting on the diplomatic memo, which calls upon President Obama to reconsider his Syrian policies and crackdown against Bashar al-Assad, Daniel R. DePetris, an analyst at geostrategic firm Wikistrat, Inc., dubbed it “a wake-up call to the White House.”
The State Department diplomats who signed the communique are asking for President Obama to authorize the use of US military air power against key Assad regime installations for one reason and one reason only: to make the Geneva diplomatic process more credible,” DePetris insists in his article for the National Interest.
According to the analyst, Moscow is “not concerned about the ceasefire” in Syria. At the same time, DePetris accuses Bashar al-Assad of bombarding Syrian civilians.
“The cessation of hostilities has fallen apart. There is no nationwide ceasefire,” he claims.
These remarks are apparently aimed at evoking US Secretary John Kerry’s “Plan B” that envisages the partition of Syria. Indeed, back in February 2016 Kerry declared that Washington will implement its Plan B if the Syrian ceasefire fails.
Interestingly enough, Riyadh is expressing enthusiasm about the plan’s realization.
“We believe we should have moved to a ‘Plan B’ a long time ago,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters in late May, as quoted by Reuters.
On June 17, commenting of the diplomatic cable, al-Jubeir confirmed that his government supports airstrikes against the Syrian Arab Army and Bashar al-Assad.
There should be more robust intervention. If the Bashar regime feels that it can continue in a stalemate, much less prevail, there will be no incentive to take the necessary steps to bring about a transition,” al-Jubeir told reporters in Washington as cited by the Wall Street Journal.
What is really remarkable about DePetris’ article is that he defines Washington’s major objective in Syria — since the very beginning of the Syrian turmoil — as a “regime change.”
“If the Obama administration’s objective in Syria is the same as it has been since the war began (remove Assad and establish a transitional unity government), then the White House needs to think long and hard about whether more US military force is needed to meet it,” he writes.
It looks rather strange, since the White House previously claimed that its goal in Syria and Iraq is to defeat Daesh in the first place.
However, the analyst acknowledges that Obama is unlikely to make a 180-degree shift in his foreign policy toward Bashar al-Assad.
Still, experts warn that if Hillary Clinton replaces Barack Obama, it is likely that the dream of the diplomatic memo authors will come true.
According to former Republican Congressman Ron Paul and US political analyst Daniel McAdams, the proponents of yet another US military intervention in the Middle East are playing with fire.
In their latest Liberty Report the experts point to the fact that neocons’ logic that Washington would weaken Daesh by targeting Bashar al-Assad, “is not immediately apparent.”
Citing American journalist Robert Parry of Consortiumnews.com, Dr. Paul dubbed the memo “State Department’s collective madness.”
“What they are urging the US administration to do is to stop its focus on ISIS [Daesh] in Syria and start bombing the Assad government,” Daniel McAdams underscored, stressing that there is no sense in such an approach, since it has been the Syrian Arab Army that was fighting Daesh all these years.
McAdams called attention to the fact that the memo was signed by only 51 US State Department diplomats. According to the political analyst it is a very small faction. However, the New York Times made a big story out of it.
This is how warmongering propaganda works, the experts noted.
Paul and McAdams suggested that the recent demarche is likely “a preview of a Hillary presidency.” There is a huge neocon group behind Hillary Clinton, they noted, adding that the most likely candidate for the position of the Secretary of State in “Hillary’s administration” is Victoria Nuland, an apparent mastermind of the Ukrainian coup of February of 2014.
Those 51 diplomats are looking forward to Clinton’s victory hoping that their political careers would go up, according to the experts.
