© Kevin Lamarque/ReutersUS Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva, Switzerland, on September 9, 2016.
In Geneva on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, announced a plan to impose a cease-fire in Syria beginning Monday evening, September 12.
Provided the cessation of hostilities holds for seven days—which is no sure thing—the United States and Russia will take, in the words of Lavrov, "coordinated steps" to target both ISIS and the extremist al-Nusra Front, recently rebranded as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. The agreement, which the Syrian government supports, also calls for the grounding of the Syrian air force over non-ISIS held territory and for the creation of a humanitarian corridor to supply the besieged city of Aleppo.
While Lavrov correctly noted on Friday that "no one can give a 100 percent guarantee" that the plan will achieve its objective, the American war party lost little time in trying to undermine the diplomatic breakthrough. As the AP reported on Friday, the "proposed level of U.S.-Russian interaction has upset several leading national security officials in Washington, including Defense Secretary Ash Carter."
Meanwhile, the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Texas Congressman Michael McCaul, appeared on MSNBC Monday morning, telling Joe Scarborough, "I don't really trust the Russians." One prominent neoconservative pundit sneered, "If Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November, he might want to make Secretary of State John Kerry his special envoy for U.S.-Russian cooperation in the war on terror." Whether or not hardliners like McCaul trust the Russians, securing a cease-fire would go a long way toward addressing the rapidly unraveling humanitarian crisis on the ground, while increased US-Russian cooperation might lead to the defeat of ISIS and al-Nusra in Syria.
Comment: Diplomatic discussions are better than armed aggression to be sure, but it was Russia's skill in managing the Syrian situation that more or less forced the U.S. to the table. By outmanoeuvring the U.S.' attempt overthrow Assad with its proxy army of Saudi-funded head-chopping jihadists, the Empire had no choice but to engage with Russia. To do otherwise would have blatantly exposed the hypocrisy of its actions in Syria for the world to see.