Senators press State Department on ‘plan B’ in Syria

Senators from both parties on Thursday lamented the apparent lack of a “plan B” in Syria as Russia vowed to continue pressing ahead with an offensive that is devastating Aleppo.

“There is no plan B,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee during a hearing. “When I refer to Secretary [of State John] Kerry as a sympathetic figure, I say that because he gets up every day. Some say he should resign over lack of support or at least threaten to, but there’s no support.

“It’s impossible to be successful in negotiating an agreement with someone if there’s no consequences. In this case, the consequence that you’re laying out is that Russia will fully determine the future of Syria.”

Senators from both sides of the aisle pressed Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the need for a fallback plan.

Blinken sought to reassure committee members that the administration is looking for new options in the event a cease-fire is not restored.

“The president has asked all the agencies to put forward options — some familiar, some new — that we are very actively reviewing,” he said. “When we are able to work through these in the day ahead, we’ll have an opportunity to come back and talk about them in detail.”

But he declined to elaborate on those options, saying he did not want “to get ahead of where we are.”

Blinken did, however, cite an argument the administration has made since Russia intervened in Syria a year ago: that Moscow will find itself in a quagmire that gets worse and worse.

“Plan B is the consequence of the failure of as a result of Russia’s actions in plan A,” Blinken said. “If this now gets to the point where the civil war actually accelerates, all the outside patrons are going to throw in more and more weaponry against Russia, and Russia will be left propping up Assad in ever smaller pieces of Syria.”

A U.S.-Russia brokered cease-fire has all but collapsed as Syrian President Bashar Assad, with Russian backing, carries out the fiercest assault on rebel-held parts of Aleppo of the civil war.

Secretary of State John Kerry issued an ultimatum to his Russian counterpart Wednesday that the United States will end talks with Moscow about Syria if the bombing in Aleppo does not stop and humanitarian aid is not restored.

But on Thursday, the Russian government dismissed Kerry’s threat and vowed to continue the offensive.

In a conference call with reporters, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Russian air force operations to support Syrian troops would continue, according to The New York Times.

Sergei A. Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, also told reporters the United States’ call for at least a weeklong cease-fire was unacceptable, according to the Times. 

“A seven-day pause is a time period that is quite sufficient for terrorist groups to take necessary steps in order to stock up on supplies, allow terrorists to rest and regroup forces,” Ryabkov said. “It is as though the duration was specially chosen to tackle such tasks, and, consequently, a seven-day period is unacceptable for us, and the proposals of 48-hour pauses remain on the table.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said during the hearing that Russia is clearly not willing to cooperate and the United States should to try something new.

“That says to me, and I think the news has been very clear, that Russia has escalated the civil war in Syria, and they intend to continue to do that, and Assad intends to continue to do that no matter what the expense is to his own people,” she said. “It seems to me that we need to look at all of those options because the current effort is not working.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) was the lone voice on the committee pushing back against the idea that the administration could easily turn the tide in Syria. 

“At the heart of the most spectacular U.S. foreign policy failures over the last 50 years is hubris, is this idea that there is a U.S. solution, usually a U.S. military solution, to every problem in the world,” he said. “This idea that is sort of being proffered on this committee, frankly on both sides of the aisle, that there are these clear alternatives to the current policy in Syria or Iraq that would lead to a radically different reality on the ground is fantasy.”

The United States can be helpful in working with partners, he added. But it’s likely not a coincidence, he added, that the situation in Syria has gotten worse as the United States has become more involved. 

“I reject the idea that there are easy, clear alternatives that the administration just isn’t looking at,” he said. “This is a hard problem with no easy solutions, and we should operate from an assumption that there are not always U.S.-led solutions to terrible, intractable problems in the world.”