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President Putin and his military strategize Mark Toner's suggestion of how to "put up."
Public comments confirm
reports of furious rows and recriminations between US officials at the way Russia has outplayed US in Syria. A very well sourced article, which has recently appeared in
The Wall Street Journal (
attached below), shows the extent of the policy disarray in Washington following the US-Russian "cessation of hostilities" agreement.
It seems there has been a massive row.
The heads of the US military and the CIA are clearly furious at the way in which they feel the US has been humiliated, and in
a series of angry meetings in the White House they have made their feelings known. Though they rationalise their anger with talk about how Russia cannot be trusted, and how US allies in the regions like the Turks and the Saudis feel betrayed, that is what it amounts to.
These recriminations have slipped into the open, as shown by the
recent angry comments of Mark Toner, the US State Department's deputy spokesman, who in exceptionally crude and undiplomatic language
called on Russia in Syria "to put up or shut up".
These comments have provoked a stern rebuke from Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry's formidable spokeswoman...
...whilst Alexey Pushkov, the Chairman of the State Duma's committee for foreign affairs, has
twisted the knife by Tweeting that "A deputy spokesman of the U.S. Department of State has broken down - frayed nerves. In the United States lots of people regard the ceasefire in Syria as a defeat: the papers are indignant and the neoconservatives are shocked."
The difficulty the US hardliners face is that for all the brave talk of a Plan B they have no realistic alternative to offer.
Comment: Further reading: Syrian cessation of hostilities: 'Largely successful' so far, but even 'failure' is a success for Russia