Missiles send a message, but what comes next in Syria?
President Trump’s authorization of missile strikes was an appropriate way to punish Syrian President Bashar Assad for gassing his own helpless people. The nerve agents employed by Assad’s military are among the most barbarous and indiscriminate weapons ever devised. The world was so appalled by their cruelty during World War I that when leaders later met in Geneva to impose international restrictions on warmaking, they barred chemical and biological weapons.
Americans, and leaders around the world, have now learned that the new president is willing to deploy U.S. military power more aggressively than his predecessor. That might prove useful in dealing with this and other conflicts. But, more troubling, Trump’s rapid response appears untethered to any long-term strategy for dealing with the hideously complex, multifactional Syrian civil war that has claimed nearly 500,000 lives in six years and produced millions of refugees.
Thursday’s launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles from two U.S. destroyers in the Mediterranean — on, coincidentally, the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into the first world war — pounded a single Syrian airfield the Pentagon says was the base from which jets carried out chemical warfare attacks two days earlier, killing more than 80 people, including a number of infants.
The U.S. military response to Assad’s latest war crime was measured and proportional, allowing Trump options for expanded attacks on other Syrian airbases should Assad fail to get the message. It could also provide the kind of negotiating leverage former Secretary of State John Kerry begged for from President Obama, and was denied.
Yet it’s hard to see any coherent foreign policy doctrine at work here. Until Thursday, Trump was an avatar of isolationism and foreign policy realism, ignoring human rights during a sit-down with an Egyptian dictator and seemingly accepting the political reality of Assad remain- ing in power. Then Trump saw videos of writhing “innocent babies — babies! — little babies” and was reborn as a righteously indignant interventionist, firing missiles at a country that is no direct military threat to America.
The abrupt turnabout is enough to raise new concerns about whether the administration has thought all this through. Further evidence of that came on Sunday’s political talk shows, when officials gave conflicting accounts of whether regime change is now part of the administration’s policy toward Syria.
Any deeper involvement carries a number of risks, including the prospect of confrontation with Russia and Iran, which back Assad’s regime. The missile strike could also further complicate the security of about 1,000 U.S. troops already in northern Syria, supporting an assault on the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa. And if Assad’s fortunes were suddenly to reverse and his regime falter, any power vacuum could quickly be filled by extremist groups.
World War I, supposedly the war to end all wars, began a century ago when a seemingly disparate series of violent acts stoked tinder-like conditions into a raging conflict. Pulling the trigger once is the easy part. Trump has managed that. Navigating the treacherous consequences that can follow takes far greater skill.