The State Department on Wednesday refused to say that U.S. policy and strategy has failed to bring peace to Syria, and instead argued that the failure is a result of policies pursued by Syria, Russia and Iran.
State Department spokesman John Kirby was pushed hard at Wednesday’s briefing about the years the U.S. spent pursuing a political resolution of the bloody civil war, only to see those efforts fail over and over again. Secretary of State John Kerry has been working for months to negotiate a cease-fire in Syria that would allow humanitarian aid to reach the rebels, but Russia and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad have declined to comply with those deals even when struck and persisted in bombarding the rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo.
Aleppo fell this week to Assad forces this week, and even a cease-fire aimed at getting U.S.-backed rebels out of the city collapsed Wednesday. But Kirby rejected the idea that these events were the result of any failure on the part of the United States.
“The failure is in the belief that this war can be solved militarily, and the failure is on Russia for not putting the proper pressure on the Assad regime to stop the brutality, the gassing, the surrender, the starvation of their own people,” Kirby said. “That’s the real failure.”
“The failure is on the part of the regime and its backers, including Russia and Iran, for the way they continue to try to find a military solution to what should be a political one,” he said.
Kirby also declined to say if President Obama or Kerry would change their tactics in the waning days of his administration. “I’m not going to telegraph changes in the days and weeks ahead, one way or the other,” he said, as the press shot back that the administration has said that for months without any real changes to its strategy.
He also said Kerry plans to continue negotiating with Russia. “The outcome that we want is the same outcome that, frankly, we’ve been trying to achieve for 18 months which is political talks that can lead to a meaningful transition in Syria,” he said. “The secretary of state, John Kerry, does not feel that it’s too late to continue to try to find a political solution to this conflict.”
