THE DANGER

Unpredictable president may make Syrian situation worse

In the aftermath of the Trump administration’s strikes against a Syrian airbase on Thursday night, there is a certain satisfaction in seeing President Bashar Assad pay even a minimal consequence for his murderous actions.

However, while footage of the strikes from U.S. ships is dramatic, the overall impact on the Syrian conflict will likely be small. It essentially amounts to a five-minute strike of 59 missiles that appear to have partially damaged one of many Syrian airbases. Overall it does little to weaken Assad’s capacity to inflict suffering upon his own people.

While we can expect Syria and its allies, Russia and Iran, to strongly denounce and protest this attack, they will likely recognize its minimal nature, and gamble that so long as they do not over-react in their response, it is a one-off move.

Instead, the overall impact should be understood as political, intentionally or unintentionally sending a series of messages to U.S. allies and rivals.

First and foremost, governments around the world will be taking notice of the speed at which the Trump administration appears to have engaged in a major about-face with regards to its policy on Syria. Just last week, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley stated that the U.S. was no longer interested in removing Assad from power. This echoed Trump’s comments throughout his election campaign that he was focused more on defeating the Islamic State than on forcing Assad to step down, as well as his actions to prevent Syrian refugees from entering U.S. territory.

Yet, within three days of the Assad regime’s alleged sarin gas attack which killed more than 70, Trump appears to have radically changed course, describing the U.S. airstrike as a response to an attack against innocent Syrian civilians. While his motivations may have been to demonstrate that he is willing to act where his predecessor did not, this is a major about-face in terms of both rhetoric and actions in an extremely short period of time.

Moreover, the U.S. appears to be communicating the significance of this action in an incoherent way, making an assessment of whether or not this is a longer-term change in U.S. strategy difficult. While Trump noted in his Thursday address that years of inaction and the deteriorating situation in Syria represented a threat to U.S. security, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson almost simultaneously released a statement indicating that U.S. policy in Syria was largely unchanged.

In the international system, it is true that countries sometimes benefit from being unpredictable. In particular, it may make rivals less likely to engage in actions that will test or that could potentially provoke. However, it is not clear that this level of uncertainty will benefit the U.S. — or any country — in the long term.

Major countries such as China seek a stable, predictable U.S. as they try to chart their own foreign policy. President Xi Jinping, who is visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago this week, was given a front-row seat to Thursday night’s events. He may very well take this as a troubling sign that China cannot take the Trump administration’s word as to what its foreign policy priorities are or that it is willing to keep its promises.

Already, U.S. officials gave warning this week that “all options are on the table” when it comes to dealing with North Korea’s advancing nuclear program — something the U.S. is looking to China to co-operate on. Xi may see the actions in Syria as a sign that the U.S. will be willing to go it alone in North Korea as well.

U.S. allies, including Canada, have shown some support for the attacks, but there can be little doubt that they too see the airstrikes as yet another indicator that the U.S. will behave unpredictably under Trump. Without a sense of American priorities, or the sense that these priorities may change quickly, it will be difficult to make foreign policy decisions where the U.S. is involved.

As such, while the Trump administration’s airstrikes (its first directly targeting the Assad regime) may be seen by some as a sign that the world’s superpower is finally willing to act in Syria, these actions may have made solving the problem there worse. While U.S. intentions and policies for the region are unclear, and while it is an unpredictable actor, it will be difficult to bring together the international coalition necessary to solve the civil war. A strong ceasefire, diplomatic solution and aid for the humanitarian crisis in Syria will only come about with strong, stable U.S. leadership, not unilateral symbolic attacks. Stephanie Carvin is an assistant professor of international affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, and a former national security analyst with the federal government. She is also a senior research affiliate with the Canadian network for research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS).