„The troubling thing is that the Putin policy on Syria has become hard to distinguish from the Obama policy. Sure, the Obama administration still pays lip service to the notion that Assad is part of the problem and not the solution, and that if the Syrian leader may survive through some political transition period he cannot remain beyond that. But these are words. It is President Vladimir Putin and Russia who are ‚making the weather‘ in Syria absent any corresponding commitment or articulable policy from President Obama. … Syria is now the Obama administration’s shame, a debacle of such dimensions that it may overshadow the president’s domestic achievements. Obama’s decision in 2013, at a time when ISIS scarcely existed, not to uphold the American ‚red line‘ on Assad’s use of chemical weapons was a pivotal moment in which he undermined America’s word, incurred the lasting fury of Sunni Gulf allies, shored up Assad by not subjecting him to serious one-off punitive strikes, and opened the way for Putin to determine Syria’s fate.“ (Der Kolumnist der New York Times Roger Cohen: America‘s Syrian Shame)
