Russia's two-track, legal approach
Double vetoes kept coming from both states, while Russia, consulting with regional powers and the BRICS, invited the opposition to peace talks with Damascus -- which the opposition kept refusing.
NATO powers and their Mid-East allies kept saying "Assad must go" -- but, lacking NATO air cover while Damascus controlled the Syrian skies, the Daesh juggernaut came to a halt, even as its ranks swelled to tens of thousands with waves of foreign recruits, including men and women from the West, and even as it spilled over into Iraq in 2014.
Caught on the back foot as Russia insisted on law and legitimacy, and on the need to crush Daesh, NATO and allies dodged and hedged.
Then without seeking any request from Damascus (Article 51 of Chapter VII of the UN Charter which Harper invoked in the case of Iraq), they said they would hit Daesh -- but they hit Syrian infrastructure instead and they continued to supply Daesh, "by mistake"!
Invited by Syria, Russia moved in with an aero-naval task force out of Lattakia, and began real air raids on Daesh targets last September 30. It was welcomed by most Middle Eastern peoples, and by Iraq and Iran. The NATO emperor appeared as having no clothes.
Russia bombs Daesh, a global turning point
A quarter century after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, Russia took a principled stand and put an end to unilateral NATO bombings under the control of the U.S. superpower, apparent "winner" of the Cold War equipped with its "Project for a New American Century."
Since then, as Russia also keeps alive the diplomatic track on the basis of the 2012 Geneva Communique, NATO and allies have been backtracking laboriously -- and Paris, Washington, London don't say "Assad has to go" anymore, at least not immediately.
But the war machine unleashed by NATO and allies just lurches on. Extremist neo-con factions within NATO and allies want to continue the war for Western supremacy over a unipolar world, moderate circles want a return to law and legitimacy, and ultra-Daesh factions also want to continue their reign of terror, if only out of their own relative political agency.
Hence the savage blowback, carried out by Daesh elements but probably not without a little help from their godfathers in NATO, the Gulf Arabs and Israel.
In rapid succession, a Russian airliner is blown out of the sky over the Sinai with the loss of 224 lives, a double suicide-bombing kills 43 people and wounds 239 in the Hezbollah stronghold of South Beirut, and the toll for the Paris attacks stands at 129 dead and 350 injured, 100 seriously.
NATO stands, loosely, with Russia in Vienna
If these horrible crimes were meant to derail the Vienna Conference on Syria November 14, they failed.
Kerry and Lavrov, their "chemistry" in sync, replied to Daesh and the rabid warmongers with a three-point plan: immediate search for a ceasefire in Syria, six months to form a unity government excluding all terrorists, Daesh and Al Nusra, and 18 months to frame a new constitution leading to free elections.
"The future of Syria will be decided by the Syrian people only," they both said. "Assad must go" is not a U.S. precondition anymore; instead, it's "No Daesh, no Al Nusra."
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