Will the ceasefire hold? (Reuters/Mohammed Badra)
Michael Weiss, Daily Beast: Does Obama Want to Carve Up Syria?
A stray comment by John Kerry this week—laying out a last-ditch, now-don’t-hold-me-to-this prescription for ending a modern and globally transformative holocaust—acknowledges an unfolding reality.
A decade ago, the current U.S. vice president wanted to partition Iraq as a political solution to a civil war that ended militarily. Now the current secretary of state believes that partition may be the only viable course left for Syria if and when a ceasefire he co-brokered fails.
The odds of such a failure are high, as John Kerry admits, because the whole accord might well be a “rope-a-dope” exercise by Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to gobble up more territory and destroy more of the mainstream Syrian opposition under the guise of abiding by international diplomacy.
Testifying Tuesday before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the secretary said: “I’m not going to vouch for this. I’m not going to say that this process is going to work, because I don’t know. But I know that this is the best way to try to end the war, and it’s the only alternative available to us if indeed we’re going to have a political settlement.”
Read more ....
Update: Ignoring the lessons of history, the US is considering a partition of Syria (Aamna Mohdin, Quartz)
WNU Editor: If there is one thing that history has taught us .... partitioning states usually ends up in chaos. I came from the Soviet Union .... that break-up has produced tensions and conflicts that are still continuing today. In the case of Syria and Iraq .... where the sectarian divisions are even more deeper .... I do not see how such a break-up will bring about stability. If there is a solution that I would recommend .... it is to implement a federal system such as Canada's. In Canada the regions/provinces have a great deal of power, but there is a central authority. There are problems .... but in Canada compromise and accommodation has always been the rule rather than the exception. This may .... in the end .... be Syria's hope. But for the moment .... sadly .... everyone is focused on the war.
