Secretary of State Kerry's talk with Putin and Lavrov yesterday brought back the Geneva consensus from last June which then Secretary of State Clinton had thrown out of the window immediately after she had agreed to it.
According to the Geneva plan the United States and Russia will convene a conference with the aim to find some consensual new Syrian government with each side promising to bring its supported party to the table.
For Russia that will be easy to do. The Syrian government has always agreed to such talks and is willing to send a delegation that will be able to discuss the various issues and to compromise.
But the United States now has a huge problem. It itself has little leverage over the various parts of the Syrian opposition. How can it then deliver on the promises it made?
There are two identified groups the U.S. is interacting with. The Syrian National Coalition (or whatever its latest name is) and the Free Syrian Army through General Idriss. To these groups the U.S. can give money or withhold money. It can give arms or withhold arms.
Giving arms would intensify the conflict and the created the bigger problems that come with escalated fighting. Those problems can not be kept contained in Syria and there are good reasons for the U.S. to avoid such an escalation. Withholding arms does obviously not give leverage over the fighters on the ground. It condemns them to lose.
Giving money or non-military goods to the FSA does not help either. General Idriss himself admits that despite a recent $123 million the U.S. funneled through him he still has no leverage over any forces on the ground:
The defected Syrian general whom the United States has tapped as its conduit for aid to the rebels has acknowledged in an interview with McClatchy that his movement is badly fragmented and lacks the military skill needed to topple the government of President Bashar Assad.
Gen. Salim Idriss, who leads what’s known as the Supreme Military Command, also admitted that he faces difficulty in creating a chain of command in Syria’s highly localized rebellion ..
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[Idriss] acknowledged that he has little influence over what the rebels do in Syria and no direct authority over some of the largest factions, including the Farouq Brigade, whose forces control key parts of the countryside from Homs to the Turkish border.
The U.S. can give or withhold money to the SNC but what is the SNC's leverage on the ground and who, except the Muslim Brotherhood, does it really represent? And if the U.S. withholds money from them will Qatar and other source do the same?
The view of the Syrian opposition on renewed Geneva terms has so far been negative. Without any leverage to change that view the U.S. will not be able to deliver on what Kerry promised in Moscow.
When the U.S. instigated the "Syrian revolution" it had planned for a short conflict and a fast fall of the Syrian government. When that did not happen it escalated by delivering communications equipment, intelligence and weapons to the insurgency and trained some of the insurgency forces.
It can now escalate again by throwing itself deeper into the fight but the risk is enormous. Countries next to Syria would likely be seriously effected and in the end the U.S. would be the one to hold the Syrian tar baby at great cost and with a severe loss of international standing.
The Obama administration has probably found that the Geneva consensus may be its only way out. But as that way will likely be blocked by a Syrian opposition over which the U.S. has little leverage the only other alternative may be a total retreat.
That still has not registered with the Obama administration.