Syria

Syria: The Chemistry of Continuing Conflict

By Frederic C. Hof

The framework agreement arrived at by Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, is a good beginning to a worthy end: removing all chemical weapons and their components from the arsenal of a regime that has used them in its longstanding and continuing campaign of mass terror against Syrian civilians.

NATO Secretary General Welcomes US/Russia Agreement on Syria’s Chemical Arsenal

By Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO

Statement by the NATO Secretary General on the framework for elimination of Syrian chemical weapons.

Diplomacy to the Rescue in Syria?

By R. Nicholas Burns

A huge collective sigh of relief from the White House, Congress, and Bashar Assad’s palace in Damascus was heard round the world earlier this week when the Russians came to the rescue. The unlikely savior — the cynical and calculating Vladimir Putin — seized the moment in the Syria quagmire by offering a lifeline of […]

Initial Reaction to the Geneva Joint Statement

Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and UN Special Representative Lakhdar just emerged from their discussion about a potential Geneva 2 peace conference to make brief, individual statements. Questions were not taken. According to Kerry, if progress can be made on the chemical issue he and Lavrov would likely meet in […]

Advice to President Obama on Syria

By Fred Hof

At a recent conference I was given the following question to answer: “What advice would you give President Barack Obama and his military advisers as they consider military and diplomatic action with regard to Syria?”  Here, for better or worse, is how I responded:

President Obama’s Syria Confusion

By Rajan Menon

President Barack Obama’s Tuesday evening speech explaining his plans for a military strike against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, though deftly delivered, will not put to rest the doubts that a large majority of Americans have about what the president aims to achieve with what he insisted would be a limited, targeted operation.

A Plea for Caution From Russia

By Vladimir Putin, New York Times

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage.