Syria’s Phony Peace Talks - WSJ Editorial | Syria Peace Talks Inch Ahead as Bombings Near Damascus Continue - The New York Times | Death of the GRU Commander - by Peter Zwack - Defense One | After Sanctions, Iran's Growing Role in the Caucasus - Stratfor | iran and south caucasus - Google Search | DHS Loses Hundreds of Badges, Guns, and Electronics | Chechnya's Kadyrov puts Putin critic Kasyanov in gunsights - BBC News | Could ISIL go nuclear? - NATO REVIEW | ‘Eyewash’: How the CIA deceives its own workforce about operations - The Washington Post

Leroy Neiman "Red Square"

• Death of the GRU Commander - by Peter Zwack - Defense One: 

"Finally, Flynn hosted an unprecedented dinner for his counterpart in my residence at the U.S. Embassy. The GRU director arrived with two generals and an interpreter. It must have been bemusing for them to go through U.S. Embassy security onto U.S. soil for the first time. Always inquisitive, Sergun showed particular interest in a colorful Leroy Neiman print titled “Red Square.” The customary toasts were hoisted, though Sergun himself was a modest drinker. The last toast called for making “the airlocks fit,” an allusion to the extraordinary Apollo–Soyuz link-up in 1975 during the heart of the Cold War, and an allegory for improving relations. He liked that. All departed with U.S. Embassy baseball caps for their children. The following night Sergun hosted our U.S. delegation at the venerable Sovietsky Hotel, where he gave us a personal tour of Stalin’s time-warped suite upstairs." 

• Syria’s Phony Peace Talks - WSJ:

"Regarding the Syrian peace talks that began over the weekend in Geneva, allow us to raise two questions: What peace—and what talks?

The regime of Bashar Assad is intensifying its longstanding “starve or kneel” policy against besieged enclaves containing an estimated half a million people. The regime has also scored recent battlefield victories against moderate opposition forces, aided by a combination of Russian air power, Hezbollah ground fighters and Iran’s elite Quds Force.

Meantime, the Institute for the Study of War reports that Islamic State (ISIS) has responded to its recent losses in Iraq by launching a fresh offensive in eastern Syria to consolidate control of the Euphrates River valley, while the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front is gaining strength in Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial capital. Neither ISIS nor Nusra are at the talks, and they will continue to fight regardless of what comes out of Geneva.

Also not represented are Kurdish forces, which have been the most effective ground fighters against ISIS but were excluded due to Turkish sensitivities.

Instead, the opposition is represented by an umbrella group backed by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia called the High Negotiations Committee, which is demanding that the regime lift its starvation sieges and end air strikes as a precondition to “proximity negotiations”—so named because the two sides won’t agree to sit in the same room. But the opposition’s diplomatic leverage has fallen with its battlefield fortunes, so any deal it might strike in Geneva would have little effect inside Syria.

None of this augurs well for the talks called Geneva III after the collapse of Geneva I and II. Why hold them at all? For President Obama, the effort fulfills his pledge after the San Bernardino terrorist attack to renew U.S. diplomatic efforts over Syria, regardless of the prospects for success... 

The Assad regime welcomes talks because they offer international legitimacy as well as new opportunities to extract political concessions from its opponents. Russia sees the talks as a vehicle for its own diplomatic rehabilitation amid Western sanctions, even as it defends its clients in Damascus and extends its influence in the Middle East... 

In reality, the regime and Islamic State are symbiotic enemies, each drawing political strength from the other’s brutality even as they both target more moderate forces. There’s a reason Russian warplanes have rarely targeted Islamic State and the Assad regime buys Islamic State oil... 

The only peace likely to come out of Geneva is if the U.S. bludgeons the moderate Sunni opposition into surrender."

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