As Yogi Berra put it, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” The Russians are in Syria big-time and Obama has surprised almost everyone by choosing, while taking care to include de rigueur bashing of Moscow, to welcome the Russian move as an opportunity to turn primary attention to stopping the Islamic State and the flood of Syrian refugees into Europe.
Some of the earlier preconditions to talks have been waived, and negotiations began on Friday in Vienna. Moreover, the key powers seem agreed that, as Defense Secretary Ashton Carter conceded on Tuesday, “The structures of the Syrian state are going to be important in the future, and we don’t want them to dissolve entirely. … The U.S. approach to removing Assad has been mostly a political effort.” (Could it be the Smart People in Washington have learned something from the debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya?)
From Ray’s perspective, those are the key pieces of the news this week – not the familiar attempts by Secretary Carter to flex his muscles, announcing token military reinforcement, to show that the Pentagon means to stay in the game, somehow, in Syria.