Trump’s strike is a timely reminder

DONALD Trump’s decision to launch a missile attack against the Assad regime in Syria was widely supported, with criticism coming only from the Russians, the Iranians and some disgruntled US Democrats who complained mostly about Congress being kept out of the loop.

The sight of children gasping for life after being subjected to a horrific chemical weapons attack would move any but the hardest of heart. And it moved President Trump to reverse his policy of letting the Syrians sort out Syria and allow the Russians free rein in the Middle East as long as they kept attacking Isil and al-Qaeda. But the big question we are left with now is, what next?

The US still has allies all over the Middle East, from Israel and Jordan to Saudi Arabia, but it has made little use of that influence for several years now. President Obama maintained a stance that said Assad must go but did little to make that happen. He drew a red line on the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime but failed to follow up on his threat in 2013 when Assad deployed sarin gas against his own people, killing 1,400, and repeated this ghastly exercise again last year. In effect, America created a vacuum in the Middle East which Russia was only too willing to fill. Now at least a worthwhile message has gone out that America is no longer willing to stand idly by. But was this an emotional gut-reaction one-off or a change of policy?

Regime change was never a target for President Trump. He learned the lessons of Libya and Iraq. Now Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who visits Moscow on Tuesday, says Assad must go. That is the message he must carry to Moscow this week and it must be reinforced when President Trump comes face to face with the Russian President, now that he has somewhat freed himself from the yoke of being considered Putin’s puppet. The possibility is that Putin believed he had fulfilled his promise to effectively remove Assad’s chemical weapons and the latest gas attack has embarrassed and enraged him. His instinctive public reaction has been to lash out at the Americans, even suspending the agreement that ensures US and Russian planes would not accidentally come into contact in the region. But when tempers cool, he will see how dangerous this is.

Assad’s removal cannot be like the end of Muammar Gadaffi or Saddam Hussein. Such an event would lead to a takeover of the country by Isil and al-Qaeda who would easily brush aside the American-backed Syrian faction opposed to Assad. Indeed there are many ordinary Syrians who look back with fondness to a time just six years ago before 400,000 of them died and millions fled, when they were ruled firmly but in relative safety and security by the dictator Assad and his father before him.

But Assad’s reputation for savagery is so toxic now that he cannot realistically be seen as having any role in the hoped-for eventual solution.

It is his own Ba’ath Party hierarchy which will have to ease him aside and present a more acceptable face to the world. This may not suit one of their current allies, the opportunistic Iranians pushing Sunnis out and putting Shias in — but Putin must see, or be made to see, that it is the only option.

Tillerson said as much when he declared last week: “We will start a political process to resolve Syria’s future...that ultimately will lead to a resolution of Bashar al-Assad’s departure.”

And whether it was the intention or not, President Trump’s precision strike against a Syrian airbase last week will help to focus Russian minds — and those in North Korea and their sponsors in China — and remind them that what is still the most powerful military force on the planet has not gone away.