Caught between Turkey’s demands and Kurdish ambitions, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has an impossible mission in Syria in which he is both the peacemaker and the war-maker.
India's National Magazine from the Publishers of THE HINDU
Caught
between Turkey’s demands and Kurdish ambitions, U.S. Secretary of State
John Kerry has an impossible mission in Syria in which he is both the
peacemaker and the war-maker. By VIJAY PRASHAD
UNITED
STATES SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN Kerry seems to have inexhaustible
reserves of energy. He has been going back and forth between the various
Arab capitals and Turkey’s capital, as well as between Geneva and
Washington, D.C. Kerry’s brief is a complex one. On the one hand, it
appears that he is tasked with bringing peace to Syria and Iraq as well
as the other conflict zones in West Asia and north Africa: he is, in
other words, to be the peacemaker. On the other hand, Kerry’s mission is
to coalesce the diplomatic efforts against the Islamic State (I.S.) and
against other threats to the U.S. In this role, Kerry is a war-maker,
given ballast by the massive U.S. military presence in the region and
the considerable U.S. military sales to its allies such as Saudi Arabia
and Israel.
Ancient Romans gave their god of war—Mars—a peaceful
incarnation, Mars Pacifier. It is Mars who wore the olive branches that
were associated with peace, the crossed branches of which are on the
United Nations’ flag. Mars’ conflicted mission will be familiar to
Kerry, who enters conversations that are putatively about peacemaking
with arms sales and belligerence on his sleeve. It is an unenviable
position. http://www.frontline.in/world-affairs/syrian-file/article9103415.ece?homepage=true
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