Swift action in Syria — but what’s next?
Retribution was swift and deadly. Early Friday morning, in the dead of night, the United States launched some 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against a Syrian airbase. To put this in perspective, the U.S. launched some 500 Tomahawk missiles during the opening hours of the Iraq War.
The Syrian airbase, near the city of Homs, reportedly was home to the Syrian jet fighters who carried out the gas attacks in Idlib Province, leaving almost 100 civilians dead, including many children. The world was shocked and appalled. It was perhaps the worst atrocity of the 6-year-old Syrian civil war in which some 400,000 people have been killed and millions made homeless.
The attack, of course, was not the first Syrian toxic gas attack using nerve gas against its own people. The first we know of was what prompted President Barack Obama to draw a red line in the sand, a line he subsequently ignored. Since then, the Syrian government has frequently used barrel bombs as delivery vehicles for chlorine gas. In this, the Russians have either been complicit or simply turned a blind eye. It is an outrage, one that President Donald Trump has perhaps begun to recognize.
It seems to me there are two main factors in the U.S. attack. The first, of course, is the effect, if any, on the Syrian civil war and the fight against Islamic State militants. And the second is the apparent change in Trump. It is too early to judge the effect on the war, but certainly a large measure of uncertainty has been injected into the course of the war, which will give both the Syrians and the Russians pause for thought. All the major Western nations have lined up behind Trump, in effect diplomatically isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is not a position he wants to be in, as it leaves him little room for maneuver, whatever the rhetoric from the Kremlin.
The second factor is Trump’s volte-face in terms of the Syrian civil war and Russia itself. There is no doubt the president was deeply shocked by the use of poison gas by the Syrians, and the pictures drove home the point. But one has to ask: Where was he for the past six years? In fact, it could be argued that Trump’s relative indifference to the war in Syria, as well as his reluctance, if not outright refusal, to criticize the Russians actually encouraged the Syrian regime to take the action it did.
Sudden military action is like a shot of national testosterone, especially when there are no casualties. It comes at a time when the Trump presidency has been going through tough times. At a time when the war in Syria seemed hopeless, Trump took decisive, if limited, military action. Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, applauded.
Then Judge Neil Gorsuch won confirmation as a Supreme Court associate justice. Early in the week, Trump stood on the White House lawn with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, denouncing the Syrian government and receiving the approval of the Jordanian monarch. At the end of the week, Trump was sitting down with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
As weeks go, it wasn’t a bad one for the embattled president. Still, one has to ask if Trump’s sudden change in foreign policy is a good one and one not to be suddenly changed again. The world is a dangerous place and does not respond well to abrupt changes.
And in this dangerous world, who are the president’s foreign policy advisers? His sonin-law, Jared Kushner, has been given many hats to wear, including overseeing Middle East peace negotiations, meaning peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. This is an enormous responsibility for a young man, no matter how bright, with no previous foreign policy experience.
As King Abdullah II keeps reminding us, the core issue in the Middle East still is the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Without its resolution, there will be no peace. The king is right, as was his father, King Hussein.