Life more uncertain now for Canadians

For someone who claims to not be much interested in foreign affairs and wants the U.S. to largely disengage from the world, President Donald Trump has already been a very busy commander-inchief.

As Canada and the world watch anxiously from afar and wonder what it might portend for them, the missile barrage launched at Syria Friday morning was Trump’s most dramatic action yet. Not afraid to use military options, in less than three months in office the president has dispatched additional combat troops to Syria, moved U.S. advisers much closer to the front lines in the fight against ISIL in Iraq and launched a controversial — some have said botched — commando operation in Yemen.

The president and what amounts to his war cabinet have in the past few weeks threatened war against North Korea and Iran and angered China by moving U.S. warships, including an aircraft carrier and an assault ship, through disputed waters in the South China Sea. They have also approved half a dozen military exercises in eastern Europe while demanding that NATO partners spend far more on defence than they wish. new administration. The reality is that Trump has acted swiftly after years of dithering by Barack Obama about what to do about Syria’s Bashar Assad and what to do about Putin, who has had almost everything go his way for years, from Georgia, to Crimea, eastern Ukraine and the Middle East.

U.S. influence in the region was seriously undermined when Obama dared Assad to cross a line by using chemical weapons and then, when Assad’s troops attacked with chlorine gas, he did nothing. The contrast with Trump’s emphatic response is stunning.

Many senior U.S. politicians, including Sen. John McCain, strongly supported Friday’s attacks and are pressing their demand that Assad be overthrown. This fits with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s declaration this week that Assad had “no role” in the future of the country.

The fear, of course, is that if this attack is followed by a counter-attack of some kind by Russia, the situation could quickly spin out of control.

In a statement Friday morning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada fully supports what he described as the “limited and focused action” in Syria. The prime minister also denounced Assad’s use of chemical weapons, saying “these gruesome attacks cannot be permitted to continue operating with impunity.”

Peace-loving Canadians may think Ottawa can remain a sleepy hollow and avoid being drawn in if things worsen. They would be wrong about this.

Canada is intimately tied to the U.S. through NORAD and NATO and is part of the U.S.-led coalition deeply involved in the Middle East. Trudeau’s government has just extended its military advisers’ mission in Iraq, where they are now assisting Iraqi as well as Kurdish troops, and Trump has said he is looking for western allies to join the fight in Syria. RCAF jets are being used to identify targets there for bombing target specialists from Canada, the U.S. and several other nations.

The Royal Canadian Navy has a warship permanently operating in or near the Russian-dominated Black Sea or in the Middle East. It is also sending combat forces to within a few kilometres of the Russian border in Latvia, as Russia is about to hold its largest military exercise (as many as 130,000 troops) nearby.

Ottawa’s strained relationship with Moscow has been seriously aggravated by its deployment of troops to the Baltics and its again vociferous support for Ukraine. And Canada could end up playing enough of a peripheral role in the western Pacific, too, earning the enmity of China.

It is a small, inter-related, dangerous world where crises can erupt suddenly. Trump has already asked partners to step up in Syria, too. Ottawa will almost certainly resist playing a bigger military role in that region and elsewhere, but events early Friday morning in the Syrian desert could soon touch Canadians. A photo released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency on Friday reportedly shows Syrian Armed Forces chief of staff Ali Abdullah Ayyoub, centre left, visiting Shayrat airfield after American forces fired 59 cruise missiles at the base.