Idlib
Vladimir Putin, his apparent belief that the only vital U.S. interest in Syria is the defeat of the Islamic State group, and his occasional need to look tough by ordering minimally effective airstrikes.
Even John Bolton’s latest threat to hit Assad harder if he uses chemical weapons in Idlib doesn’t rise to the level of meaningful policy. Punishing the use of chemical weapons without exacting a devastating price on the user is just the sort of feckless gesture the national security adviser would gleefully have mocked when he was out of government.
What would be a serious policy? Trump warned — in a tweet! — that Assad “must not recklessly attack Idlib Province.” Such an attack should be the administration’s red line, regardless of whether the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons. If Assad crosses it, the U.S. can destroy everything that remains of the Syrian air force and crater the runways Iran uses to supply its own forces in Syria. If Assad continues to move, his presidential palaces should be next.
After that, Assad himself. By then he will have been fairly warned.
The larger goal is to establish that the U.S. has the ability and will to achieve core foreign policy objectives at a relatively reasonable price. Those objectives are to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe; exact an increasingly heavy toll on Assad and his allies for prosecuting their offensive; create leverage for future diplomacy; and demonstrate to regional allies that we can be an effective, engaged and reliable partner, provided they’re willing to do their share.
What the objective is is to dictate Syria’s future or solve its problems, much less get into the weeds of sorting out Idlib’s bad rebels from the more moderate ones. Down that road lies Iraq II.
But American policymakers desperately need to learn how to find the middle road between overreaction and inaction; between a missionary zeal to solve other people’s agonies and the illusion that we can remain aloof from them. The Obama administration thought it could largely wash its hands of Syria. It ended up acting as a bystander to genocide, to borrow Samantha Power’s famous phrase.
The Trump administration might still think it can fire off a few cruise missiles and the odd tweet in the face of Assad’s depredations. If so, it will wind up as a midwife to the mullahs’ ambitions, however many sanctions the president might otherwise slap on Tehran.
The countdown for the siege of Idlib has begun. America’s enemies know the stakes. Do we?