MUNICH — The Obama administration’s struggle to craft a cease-fire in Syria’s civil war has resulted in a confusing mix of shifting priorities that have exposed a policy toward Syria that few understand, and even fewer see working.
As it tries to navigate a truce to spur peace talks, the administration has become increasingly torn in between its loyalty to Turkey as a NATO ally and to its longtime Arab partner, Saudi Arabia, and the cold pragmatism of Russia.
As Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Munich on Wednesday in search of compromises that could yield a truce and revive peace talks that were suspended before they really started, the administration was being pressed by all sides to clarify its strategy.
‘‘We will approach this meeting in Munich with great hopes that this will be a telling moment,’’ said Kerry, whose peace push on Thursday will coincide with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter gathering in Brussels with NATO partners to hash out military options.
Meanwhile, the offensive continued against Syria’s biggest city, Aleppo, rebel territory under bombardment by the Russian-backed Syrian military, complicating the task of convincing President Bashar Assad’s government to negotiate honestly with the opposition.
Brett McGurk, the Obama administration’s point man for defeating the Islamic State, said Russia’s Aleppo offensive was having the perverse effect of helping the extremists by drawing local fighters away from the battle against ISIS and to the war against Syria’s government.
‘‘What Russia’s doing is directly enabling’’ ISIS, McGurk told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington.
The panel’s top Democrat echoed some of the frustration of his Republican colleagues with the larger US strategy.
‘‘It seems as if we’re only halfheartedly going after ISIS, and halfheartedly helping the [rebel] Free Syria Army and others on the ground,’’ said Representative Eliot Engel of New York. He urged a ‘‘robust campaign, not a tentative one, not one that seems like we’re dragging ourselves in . . . to destroy ISIS and get rid of Assad.’’
Committee chairman Ed Royce said the administration’s lack of censure on Russia for the Aleppo campaign has resulted in ‘‘predictable failure.’’
Kerry emphasized on Tuesday that US officials ‘‘are not blind to what is happening.’’ He said the Aleppo battle makes it ‘‘much more difficult to be able to come to the table and to be able to have a serious conversation.’’ But the United States has staked its hopes for an end to the five-year civil war in Syria on peace talks and a negotiated transition that would result in Assad’s eventual departure, saying the American public has no appetite for a military solution.
The war has killed a quarter-million people, created the greatest refugee crisis since World War II, and allowed the Islamic State to flourish.
Yet Kerry underlined the US dependency on Russia. He urged Moscow to ‘‘create an atmosphere within which you can actually have a negotiation.’’ Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that he had presented a ‘‘concrete’’ plan that the United States was considering.
Left unsaid by Kerry was the growing US sentiment that the rebels and their primary backers share some of the blame. The opposition walked out of peace talks last month in Geneva, the first attempt at a negotiation in two years. And Turkey, which wants Assad’s ouster and last year shot down a Russian plane that crossed into its territory, is believed to be calling the shots.
US officials say they feel increasingly exasperated with Turkey’s support for some of the most hard-line rebel groups and its failure to close its Syrian border to foreign fighters.
The Turks aren’t pleased with the Americans, either, particularly their support for Kurdish militants they consider terrorists but who have proved the most effective fighting force against ISIS in Syria.
The United States is being asked to explain if talks between Assad’s government and rebels are designed to produce a cease-fire, or would only start after the fighting ends. The United States has said both.
Washington also has been unclear about what it sees as Assad’s future. And the United States is struggling to explain how the whole negotiation would reinforce America’s overriding mission: defeating ISIS.
