When John Kerry on February 13 said this:
"We need to address the question of President Assad's calculation currently. I believe there are additional things that can be done to change his current perception"
He likely thought of this:
A surge of rebel advances in Syria is being fueled at least in part by an influx of heavy weaponry in a renewed effort by outside powers to arm moderates in the Free Syrian Army, according to Arab and rebel officials.
The new armaments, including anti-tank weapons and recoilless rifles, have been sent across the Jordanian border into the province of Daraa in recent weeks to counter the growing influence of Islamist extremist groups in the north of Syria by boosting more moderate groups fighting in the south, the officials say.
There are U.S. special forces on the Jordan boarder with Syria. They will likely have trained the insurgents on their new weapons. Israel is kept informed of these weapon transfers and will have a veto about what gets delivered.
The hope is that these weapons will not fall into the hands of the Nusra front and other Jihadi groups. But unless U.S. and other special forces are on the ground closely working with the insurgents that is still bound to happen. A helicopter shot down near Aleppo today and earlier videos showed the first complete SA-24 anti-air systems in the hand of some northern group. While Turkey makes of show of capturing some ammunition on its border with Syria the new stuff is still coming through and will easily fall into the hands of people who hate not only the Syrian government but also the "west".
The further weaponization of the conflict is the typical U.S. policy of more of the same. If something does not work, like sanctions on Iran or creating local "police" gangs in Afghanistan, repeat it again and again until everything fails.
There are foreign Jihadis from some 20 countries in Syria and they will not go away should the Assad government fall. The only way to get rid of them and to prevent another failed state is to help Assad to win the fight over them.
But such reasonable thought is not allowed in Washington DC. Instead we get the same stupid ideas of some corridor repeated in this or that form or unimaginative hand-wringing.
The Syrian government is ready to negotiate with anyone involved, even the armed groups. But those militants, freshly motivated by the new weapons, do not want to negotiate. The U.S. created exile opposition is childishly boycotting a conference with its supporters while demanding ever more money that it will then be unable to deliver to where it matters.
The new weapon delivery will not, as Kerry believes, change the Syrian government's "current perception". It will only reinforce it: Syria is under an external attack, it needs to fight back with all it has and with the majority support we still have, we will be able to win. The carnage will thereby continue until some outer circumstances change or sanity arrives in DC. As Washington is incapable of learning, the first is more likely to happen.