The one line the West keeps repeating about Syria that is helping Assad win the war
Days earlier, Gareth Bayley, the UK's special representative for Syria, told reporters in Geneva that "there is no military solution" to the conflict.
As the diplomats called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis, however, pro-regime forces were encircling Aleppo - Syria's largest city - aided by heavy Russian airstrikes that are estimated to have killed scores of civilians.
Some experts now say the line oft-repeated by Kerry and many of his western counterparts - that there is "no military solution" to the crisis in Syria - has actually allowed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies to pursue such a military solution with impunity.
He added: "The Assad regime, being borne aloft militarily at the moment by Iran and Russia, is not very interested. Kerry is trying hard to talk them out of this. But each is interested in forcing the West into a binary choice between Assad the Barrel Bomber and Baghdadi, the ISIS 'caliph.' And both are confident that the West - led by the US - will reconcile with their guy, Assad, if Baghdadi is the only alternative."
Jeff White, a defense analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that while Russia, Iran, and Assad are not interested in a political solution, pretending that they are while pursuing military objectives on the ground has come to form the core of their war strategy.
"The regime and allies are in it to win, not to negotiate a 'transition,'" White said in an email to Business Insider last week. "Negotiations and fighting are related parts of their war strategy."
He added: "The war will keep going until the regime prevails, increasingly likely, or Assad's allies abandon him, unlikely for the foreseeable future."
Government troops, accompanied by Iran-backed Shiite militias and Hezbollah forces, reached the cities of Nubl and Zahraa outside of Aleppo last week. As such, the regime "succeed[ed] in a few days in what it had failed to do for over three years" thanks to heavy Russian air support, according to an Atlantic Council analysis by Faysal Itani and Hossam Abouzahr.
The offensive, moreover, was a huge blow to Turkey - a staunch opponent of Assad - as it effectively cut off Ankara's supply line to the rebels it had been supporting in Aleppo.