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Possible responses

The Syrian government side ended the still-born ceasefire the Russians and Americans initiated last week with a bang: a double tap attack on a Syrian government-approved aid convoy, destroying half the trucks involved and killing at least a dozen aid workers, including Syrian Red Crescent leaders. We can hope the Russians were not responsible. This is more likely Bashar al Assad’s intentional response to the Coalition attack on Syrian forces near Deir Azzour that mistakenly killed several dozen Syrian troops. According to the Americans, they had informed Russian counterparts in advance of that target and received no objections until after the fact.

Double tap attacks are not accidental but are intended to kill rescue workers when they rush to the site of a previous attack. The State Department spokesperson expressed outrage. That is not enough. An attack of this sort is intended to send a message: Bashar is saying that he is prepared to do anything, even prevent relief supplies from being delivered and kill Syrian Red Crescent workers, to regain control of Aleppo, where the supplies were headed. The eastern quarters of the city, which the opposition controls, are under massive bombardment.

The message back so far is that Washington will do nothing to respond. Moscow, so outraged by the attack on Syrian forces near Deir Azzour that it called a special UN Security Council meeting Saturday night, has said nothing about the attack on the aid convoy. Secretary Kerry is saying that the ceasefire agreement now widely violated is with Russia, not Syria, so he is holding Moscow, not Damascus, responsible for getting it back on track.

It isn’t going there unless Washington decides to up the ante. What can it do?

The most obvious response would be to destroy (on the ground) the planes that attacked the UN convoy or the helicopters that subsequently dropped dozens of barrel bombs on eastern Aleppo. This would not require putting US aircraft at risk. It can be done with cruise missiles and need not be acknowledged. The President would need to sign a covert action finding, thus avoiding reliance on the existing Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) that applies only to Al Qaeda and its derivatives. The problem with this idea is that the Syrians and Russians may escalate further in response, attacking non-extremist opposition forces and possibly even US special forces on the ground inside Syria.

On the diplomatic side, the US should be calling for a meeting of the UN Security Council to underline that this incident is at least as bad (in fact far worse, since it was an intentional attack on unarmed civilians with authorization to do what they were doing) as what happened at Deir Azzour. Just asking Moscow to get Damascus back into line with the ceasefire is clearly a non-starter. Quick passage and signature of additional sanctions (already pending in Congress, but delayed last week at White House request) on the Syrian government would be likely to generate a better response.

The International Syria Support Group met this morning in New York and may meet again this week. But it is hard to see how that group can do much more than encourage Syria and Russia to renew the ceasefire. That would not be an adequate response.