{"id":195158,"date":"2015-10-28T17:55:01","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T17:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/seeing-syrian-crisis-through-russian-eyes\/"},"modified":"2015-10-28T20:33:58","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T20:33:58","slug":"seeing-syrian-crisis-through-russian-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/seeing-syrian-crisis-through-russian-eyes\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Syrian Crisis Through Russian Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Ray McGovern<\/p>\n

\u201cTo jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war,\u201d as Sir Winston Churchill put it at a White House luncheon on June 1954.\u00a0The aphorism applies in spades today as the U.S., Russia and\u00a0other key countries involved in troubles in Syria decide whether to jaw or to war.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s recent military intervention in Syria could open up new possibilities for those working for a negotiated solution \u2014 or not.\u00a0There does seem to be considerable overlap in U.S. and Russian interests and objectives.<\/p>\n

For instance, both sides say they want to suppress terrorism, including the Islamic State (also known as ISIL, ISIS or Daesh) and Al Qaeda\u2019s affiliate, the Nusra Front, and both the U.S. the Russia talk about the need for political reconciliation among Syria\u2019s disparate religious and ethnic groups. The chief disagreement is over the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whether he \u201cmust go,\u201d as U.S. officials insist, or whether that issue should be left to the ballots of the Syrian people, the view favored by Russia.<\/p>\n

Yet, what happens in the next week or so \u2014 whether it turns out to be a belated \u201cjaw-jaw\u201d or an escalated \u201cwar-war\u201d \u2014 will have a significant effect on bilateral U.S.-Russian relations, as well as developments in Syria, Iraq and the whole neighborhood, which now includes Europe because of the destabilizing flow of refugees.<\/p>\n

So, I think it makes sense for me to undertake what we did at some of the best moments inside the CIA\u2019s analytical branch: view a crisis from where the other side stood and thus project how an adversary (or a friend) might react to a U.S. initiative. A common trap in…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By Ray McGovern \u201cTo jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war,\u201d as Sir Winston Churchill put it at a White House luncheon on June 1954.\u00a0The aphorism applies in spades today as the U.S., Russia and\u00a0other key countries involved in troubles in Syria decide whether to jaw or to war. Russia\u2019s recent military intervention in Syria […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-195158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}