Hawkish Statecraft: US Diplomats Now Want Pentagon to 'Clean Up' in Syria

Dozens of State Department employees signed and submitted a memo to President Obama earlier this week where they expressed disagreement with his policy in Syria.

The document urged the Obama administration to adopt a more aggressive stance against the Syrian government of President Assad, including the use of military force.

The 51 signatories to the document, which was sent through the department’s internal “dissent channel,” were largely mid-level diplomats based in Washington and overseas.

The State Department has immediately leaked the document to The New York Times providing the Russian media with a reason to suggest that the whole move is a “performance with which the US diplomacy pursues its own murky purposes.”

“This is not the first case of “organized rebellion” among the employees of the US State Department,” writes an article on the Russian news website Vzglyad.

“However it is worth noting that the majority of those “dissent” are always those who demand toughening of the US policy in this or that region, up to an open military invasion,” it adds.

The website further suggests that the move resembles a staged performance, which pursues certain aims.

The first, it says, is that the State Department earns a reputation of an institution where  “all US citizen employees, foreign and domestic, are able to express dissenting or alternative views on substantive issues of policy without fear of reprisal and in a manner which ensures serious, high-level review and response.”

The State Department’s dissent channel was established during the Vietnam War.

Secondly, it suggests that the Secretary of State in this conflict “goes into the background” as if saying “it is not me, it is my employees”.

The US media has already criticized John Kerry for his reaction to the document.

“For a cabinet member whose department had just erupted into open disagreement with the White House, Secretary of State John Kerry’s reaction to a critical memo on Syria policy signed by 51 diplomats was remarkably mellow. “It’s an important statement,” he told reporters in Copenhagen on Friday, “and I respect the process very, very much,” The New York Times wrote on the issue.

The Russian website further suggested that the US diplomats just admitted their  inability to settle the Syrian conflict by the diplomatic means and now want to shift all the responsibility to Pentagon, which could be further blamed for the chaos in the region, failures in Syria and “confrontation with Russia.”

By defining the government of President Assad as the main focus of the US military operations, the State Department employees directly deny the earlier declared aims of “fighting against terrorism and Islamist extremism, the website notes.

And wonders that it is the US diplomacy which is now insisting on a war with unpredictable consequences.