“Kissinger, Brzezinski: Obama’s Syria Actions ‘Misconceived, Badly Calculated’”, reports:
“Russia seized on an off-hand comment by Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday that Syria could avoid a U.S. missile attack by turning all its chemical weapons over to international authorities and has been trying to broker the deal.”
WATCHDOG: We recognize that this is a common view but we suspect rather naïve.
President Barack Obama had just returned from the G – 20 meeting at which he conferred with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Almost immediately thereafter Kerry ‘casually’ mentions that Syria might avoid a U. S. missile attack by turning all its chemical weapons over to international authorities.
Had Putin first mentioned such a possibility, it would have been much harder for Americans, including the administration and Congress, to have accepted the suggestion for emotional and political reasons.
Had Obama or Kerry handled is in any way other than an ‘off the cuff’ remark, they would have been perceived as appeasers and ‘turning tail’.
The word for how this was handled is diplomacy.
In perhaps fifty years, when State Department and Russian files are made available to historians, we may get to learn who was right, NewsMax or NewsLanc.
It has been reported in considerable detail in a NY Times Article within a day or two after Kerry casually dropped the suggestion and Putin picked it up and made it a Russian proposal, that the subject had been raised in discussions between Kerry and his counterpart and between Obama and Putin on several occasions in the last few months, including at the recent G10 meeting in Russia, when the subject was mentioned by Putin to Obama. Although the subject was never further pursued by either party on those occasions, it was clearly in both party’s contemplation when Kerry casually suggested it as a last resort in response to a question as to whether there was any way to avoid an attack on Syria.
There is therefore no need to wait 50 years for information on this subject.