Nouns And The Syrian War

This blog was originally published on Forbes as Nouns And The Syrian War on Thursday, October 1, 2015.

Nouns, by definition, define. The best noun to define the Syrian war is “conundrum.”

Consider this: The United States opposes Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for his military actions (tens of thousands of Syrians killed and countless thousands more flooding Europe seeking asylum). We also oppose ISIS for its brutalities across the Middle East. At the same time, ISIS opposes al-Assad, while Russia supports al-Assad and opposes ISIS.

Got that?

In the midst of this confusing mix, the Russians entered the fray yesterday for the first time with aerial attacks in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who happened to be in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly, met to deal with the sudden escalation. Following their closed-door session, the two statesmen held a press conference to announce their deliberations. In an effort to appear diplomatic, they departed from the usual formal diplomatic protocol and addressed each other by their first names—proper nouns define a friendly relationship.

But the nouns they employed in their statements belied friendly negotiations: “We agreed on the imperative of as soon as possible, perhaps even as soon as tomorrow, but as soon as possible…” said Mr. Kerry, indicating, in diplomatic terms, no agreement. And then, as if to confirm the conundrum, Mr. Kerry invented a brand new noun, by completing his statement this way: “…having a military-to-military deconfliction meeting.”

When “deconfliction” enters the vocabulary, it only serves to confirm the conundrum.

This blog was originally published on Forbes as Nouns And The Syrian War on Thursday, October 1, 2015.