It has always been clear that the Obama Administration viewed a negotiated settlement as the only acceptable solution to the Syrian problem. Negotiations were only likely to succeed if none of the parties had the ability to win a complete victory. As a result, the objective was to maintain an acceptable balance of power, and to force a stalemate.
The concept wasn’t pretty, to be sure, but it made cold political sense. The problem was that the Administration wasn’t willing to ratchet up its commitment to the rebels when the Russians intervened in force. There were several legitimate reasons for that, including the lack of legal justification and domestic political support for our intervention, the fear that the rebels might not prove to be very “moderate,” and obvious concerns about the risks of a military conflict with the Russians. The bottom line, however, is that, whatever the merits of the approach, the execution was flawed, and the outcome was a failure.
What can we learn from this experience? If there is a lesson here, it is to avoid public overseas interventions when you know the other side is more motivated than you are to win. The application of this to military support for Ukraine is obvious.