Back to a no-fly zone over Syria, after so many lives

"The Americans will always do the right thing, after they've exhausted all the alternatives." That quotation is impossible not to recall after hearing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speak in the U.N. Security Council meetings on Sept. 21 in an address to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about grounding Russian and Syrian planes during the delivery of humanitarian aid to certain designated zones. Kerry was practically suggesting a temporary no-fly zone over Syria, limited to humanitarian aid deliveries, which was also backed by Germany.

It is not exactly the same suggestion that Turkey has been putting forward since 2012 as a method to contain the Syrian civil war, but it is a small-scale version of it.

That's why I recalled that well-known quotation, which (like almost all wise political quotations throughout human history) is often wrongly attributed to British statesman Winston Churchill. The original quotation was actually as follows: "Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources," spoken by Israeli statesman Abba Eban in Japan in 1967.

The suggestion for a no-fly or security zone was first discussed in a meeting in Ankara between Turkish and American officials back on Aug. 23, 2012, a time when post-Assad scenarios had started to be brought to the agenda. The meeting, attended by diplomats and military and intelligence officials from both countries, had been planned during a meeting between then Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Istanbul on Aug. 11. 

The suggestion was considered worth working on by then French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabious, who visited the refugee camps in Kilis on the Syrian border together with Davutoğlu on...