Russian Cancels Syria Meeting as France Demands Assad Be ‘Smashed’

UN Diplomats Say NATO Would've Spurned Meeting Anyhow

Just one day after they announced it, Russian officials have canceled a high profile meeting to negotiate a settlement on Syria. Details were scarce, but UN diplomats say that only Russia and China were planning to attend in the first place, so the meeting became pointless.

NATO in particularly is clearly not keen on the whole “negotiations” thing with respect to Syria, with France in particular pushing heavily for a war, saying today that they want Assad to be “smashed fast” and that he “doesn’t deserve to be on this earth.”

US officials haven’t talked about the Russian meeting at all, but recent US comments related to Syria appear entirely military related, with yesterday’s reports that the US believes it would need to send 50,000-plus ground troops to Syria to capture their chemical weapons.

Russia and China have been the lone voices on the Security Council opposing a NATO-imposed regime change, with Russia repeatedly and loudly rejecting the idea of a no-fly zone because NATO used this exact same strategy to insinuate itself into Libya’s Civil War.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.