Does Syria strike signal shift in Trump doctrine?
Haley: No “political solution” with Assad
President Trump’s decision to strike Syria with cruise missiles after its use of chemical weapons signals a fundamental shift in the “America First” doctrine he espoused during last year’s cam- paign. Unless it doesn’t.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley offered different responses to that question Sunday, reflecting a lack of clarity about whether Trump is pivoting to a more expansive view of the U.S. role of the world or simply responding in one particular case to heart-wrenching photos of “beautiful babies” dying. As the new president moves toward the 100-days milestone of his tenure at the end of the month, foreign governments, congressional leaders and even his own aides continue to search for clues to what might compose a Trump doctrine on foreign policy.
“One strike does not a strategy make,” former CIA director David Petraeus cautioned on CNN.
The stakes ahead aren’t limited to Syria. The potential repercussions around the globe extend to how tough a line Trump might take toward North Korea for its nuclear weapons program and whether he’ll pursue warmer relations with Russia. It could affect U.S. relations with China, Iran and Europe. At home, there are political consequences after the strike brought praise from unlikely sources — among them former Obama administration officials and such frequent GOP critics as Sen. John McCain — and alarm from some who had backed his election.
“I guess Trump wasn’t ‘Putin’s puppet’ after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet,” Paul Joseph Watson of the alt-right Infowars complained in a tweet Thursday night. “I’m officially OFF the Trump train.” (The next morning, he tweeted that he was “off the train” only on Syria policy.)
During the campaign, Trump promised an approach that would focus on defeating Islamic State terrorists while withdrawing from much of the international economic and security engagement that has defined U.S. policy since World War II. He had urged then-president Obama specifically to stay out of Syria, arguing that its civil war shouldn’t become America’s problem.
But in remarks late Thursday from his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida, Trump said he ordered Tomahawk missiles launched at a Syrian airfield because it was in the “vital national security interest of the United States to pre-
vent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.”
So does the administration now seek the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad?
Haley said yes. “There’s not any sort of option where a political solution is going to happen with Assad at the head of the regime,” she said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Tillerson said no. “I think the president was very clear in his message to the American people that this strike was related solely to the most recent horrific use of chemical weapons against women, children, and as the president said, even small babies,” he said on ABC’s This Week. “Other than that, there is no change to our military posture.”
National security adviser H.R. McMaster declined to clarify just where Trump stands on Syria, denying that Tillerson and Haley had contradicted one another. “While people are really anxious to find inconsistencies in those statements, they are in fact very consistent in terms of what is the ultimate political objective in Syria,” he said on Fox News Sunday.
“There’s not any sort of option where a political solution is going to happen with Assad at the head of the regime.”