Trump suggests bigger U.S. role in Syria conflict
President WASHINGTON — Donald Trump warned Wednesday that he would not tolerate the “heinous” chemical weapons attack in Syria, opening the door to a greater U.S. role in protecting the population in a vicious civil war that he had always said the United States should avoid.
The president declined to offer any details about potential action. But he said his horror at the images of “innocent children, innocent babies” choked by poison gas in a rebel-held area of Syria had caused him to reassess his approach. Only days after the White House declared it would be “silly” to persist in trying to oust President Bashar Assad of Syria, Trump said, “My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.”
“It crossed a lot of lines for me,” the president declared at a news conference in the Rose Garden, referring to the “red line” that his predecessor, President Barack Obama, had drawn before a 2013 poison-gas attack by Assad’s forces. Obama’s failure to strike Syria after that, Trump contended, sowed the conditions for this new assault. The estimated death toll was reported to have exceeded 100.
Syria was one of several places, along with North Korea and Iran, where Trump on Wednesday threatened a forceful American response. But in all these cases, he declined to disclose options, arguing that there was a need for surprise but stoking worries that his fledgling administration is not ready to deal with multiple threats across the Middle East and Asia.
At the United Nations, Trump’s ambassador, Nikki Haley, warned that the United States might take unilateral action if the Security Council failed to respond to this latest atrocity in Syria. A shift in policy could include airstrikes, which were considered and ultimately rejected by Obama.
The president, standing alongside King Abdullah II of Jordan at the news conference, told reporters, “I’m not saying I’m doing anything one way or the other, but I’m certainly not going to be telling you.”
Trump’s stern words and lack of specifics attested to a leader, 75 days into his presidency, who is determined to show a more muscular style than Obama but is grappling with many of the same complexities that dogged his predecessor. And they raised anew a question that Trump until now has avoided: his criteria for using force, both in a humanitarian cause and in facing a direct, if distant, threat to the United States.
“It is usually better to threaten unspecific consequences until you are at a more advanced stage of planning,” said Walter Russell Mead, a foreign policy expert at Bard College. “The danger is you become so distracted by these multiple crises that you can’t focus on the most urgent one, or the one where the U.S. actually has a chance of succeeding.”
Trump’s challenge is complicated by the new upheaval in the ranks of his national security aides, with the abrupt removal of his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, from the senior policy panel of the National Security Council. Today, Trump is to meet President Xi Jinping of China in Florida, where the president plans to push for more Chinese support in the campaign to pressure North Korea.
Trump said he viewed North Korea, which tested an intermediate-range missile on Tuesday, as a “big problem.” But he offered no remedies.
Similarly, he vowed to send a message to Iran, which is backing pro-Assad militias in Syria and which he said had benefited from a “onesided” nuclear deal with the United States negotiated by the Obama administration. But he did not say what form it would take.
Until this week, North Korea and Iran both figured higher on Trump’s list of pressing foreign problems than Syria’s civil war.
In September 2013, when Obama confronted a chemical weapons attack not unlike the one Trump faces today, Trump said on Twitter: “President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your ‘powder’ for another (and more important) day!” As a candidate, Trump said repeatedly that forcing Assad out of power was not as urgent a priority for the United States as vanquishing the Islamic State.
But on Wednesday, he said the images of death inside Syria affected him, presumably in ways they did not under similar circumstances four years ago.
“I will tell you that attack on children had a big, big impact on me,” he said. “That was a horrible, horrible thing.”
Trump has declined to define what kind of humanitarian crisis would prompt him to act. 2 LOCATIONS FROM: TO CHOOSE