Why Trump’s strike was right thing to do

President Trump did the right thing, the necessary thing, in striking Syria’s Shayrat Air Base in response to the Assad regime’s gruesome gas attack on civilians.

In so doing, the president sharply reversed his own past stance and positions his team took just days ago on Syria. Despite his stubborn refusal to criticize Russia’s cyberwar on America, moreover, he may finally have grasped the need to display toughness to the Kremlin.

Call it the learning curve of Trump.

The big question now is whether the administration will use this military strike as more than a warning against the use of chemical weapons. The strike gives Trump new leverage to jolt a dying Syrian peace process back to life. But that would require him to play a global role he has previously disdained.

Back in September 2013, when President Barack Obama was agonizing over how to respond to a far larger Syrian gas attack, Donald Trump tweeted, “Do not attack Syria — if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing.”

Obama agreed. He failed to enforce his own red line, instead crafting a deal with Moscow that supposedly forced Bashar al Assad to destroy his chemical arsenal. But as I wrote then, the purpose of enforcing Obama’s red line was not to overthrow Assad, something Washington couldn’t achieve without boots on the ground. Rather, a strike could have been used to prod Syria and its backers into a serious peace process. That opportunity was lost. Fast forward to now. In using sarin gas, the Syrian leader did far worse than violate the 1925 Geneva convention that bans the use of chemical weapons. Assad also violated the 2013 deal brokered by Obama and Vladimir Putin that called for Assad to destroy all of his chemical weapons — obviously, he didn’t.

Moreover, the Syrian leader flaunted U.N. Resolution 2235, which authorizes the use of force if Damascus violated that deal (although Russian veto power makes it impossible for the Security Council to act).

If Assad had been allowed to ignore all these red lines, it would have given him carte blanche to continue gassing his own people. It would have demonstrated that the world, and America, had no will to stop the use of chemical weapons elsewhere.

In addition, it would have had two more dangerous consequences. First, it would have demonstrated that America Firster Trump truly had no interest in global leadership on critical issues where U.S. leadership is essential. And second, it would have displayed a continuing Trump unwillingness to treat Putin with the toughness required to convince the Russian that Trump is not an easy mark.

So Trump had to make clear to the Kremlin that the United States would not tolerate this brazen breach of the 2013 pact. “Trump has to read the Russians the riot act,” says Josh Landis, a noted Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. “He has to get the Russians involved, to ask them what the hell happened.”

But the bigger questions — that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson must explore on his scheduled visit to Moscow next week — is whether the Russians are willing to use this strike toward a productive purpose, despite their anti-U.S. bluster. So far Assad has been unwilling to contemplate discussing a political transition that would leave him in power but eventually lead to elections — and Russia had been unwilling to squeeze him.

The message that Russia needs to deliver to Assad, says Andrew Tabler, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is: “‘Don’t think you can gas your way out.’ They must encourage Assad to go down the road to a true political process.”

Yet Russia may have no interest in restraining Assad. Even without gas attacks, his barrel-bomb drops on civilians and the resulting refugee flows help Putin’s plans to undermine the European Union.

So the test of Trump’s learning curve will rest on whether he recognizes the need to hold firm with Putin — and whether he will invest in a diplomatic strategy for Syria that leverages his military action.

If he fails on either count, the broader impact of the military strike on Shayrat will be lost.

Trump had to make clear to the Kremlin that the United States would not tolerate this brazen breach of the 2013 pact.