By Matthew Continetti
Saturday, April 08, 2017
President Trump did more than retaliate for Bashar
al-Assad’s illegal and inhumane use of nerve agents against civilians when he
ordered the launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles to destroy al-Shayrat airbase in
Syria. He also detonated a few shibboleths of his predecessor’s foreign policy.
First is the idea that President Obama’s 2013 deal to
remove Assad’s weapons of mass destruction was a success. Susan Rice and John
Kerry have lauded the agreement with Russia to supervise the extraction and
destruction of Assad’s weapons stockpiles as recently as the last year. But
Assad’s brazen attack on civilians in Idlib Province exposed their celebrations
as premature. Trump’s swift, decisive, and limited response ended more than a
half decade of vacillation toward’s Assad’s behavior. Obama diplomacy failed,
but hard power may yet deter Assad from using weapons banned for almost a
century.
The second casualty of the U.S. strike was the absurd
Obama line that the only alternatives available to a president are inaction on
one hand and a massive ground invasion and occupation on the other. Obama and
the architects of his echo chamber would slam any advocate of military measures
as a bloodthirsty warmonger ready to repeat the worst mistakes of the U.S.
experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the reality has always been that there
are a range of intermediary steps America can take to pursue her objectives and
enforce the standards of Western civilization. The destruction of al-Shayrat is
an example of coercive diplomacy similar to the airstrikes President Reagan
deployed against Muammar Qaddafi and President Clinton deployed against
Slobodan Milosevic. The immediate aim is punitive, to deter the further use of
nerve gas against civilians. The longer-term goal is to remove Assad from power
and reach a settlement that would in all likelihood partition Syria into
sectarian zones of influence. Both objectives are impossible through diplomacy
alone. Only through the introduction of force might we frighten the Syrians and
their supporters into giving up Assad — if not the Alawite power structure —
and winding down his war machine.
Which brings us to the final straw man Trump lit on fire.
When President Obama punted on Syria in 2013, he claimed there was no
international support for limited intervention. True, David Cameron lost a vote
in Parliament on the matter. But the actual powers Obama didn’t want to offend
were Iran and Russia. He worried they would scuttle the Iran nuclear deal as
payback. The loss of American credibility, the confidence of allies, and Syrian
civilians were all factored into the cost of an Iranian promise not to test a
bomb for 10 years.
Well, the rapprochement with Iran, if it ever existed, is
over. In recent weeks President Trump has met with the leaders of our
traditional Sunni allies: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. He has signed off on
aid to Saudi in its war against Iranian proxies in Yemen. He has approved
weapons to Bahrain, which is worried about Iranian influence over its Shiite
population. America is heavily involved in Iraq and Syria. And now, by striking
Assad, President Trump has targeted Iran’s most prominent servant.
Where things go from here is anyone’s guess. One of the
reasons I urged Congress not to support Obama’s airstrikes in 2013 was worry
not only over the president’s ambivalence but also possible escalation.
Presidential ambivalence is gone, but my worry remains. I do think that this
operation was about the best one could hope for: the message and objective was
clear, the focus limited, the force overwhelming, support broad and deep. Assad
may think twice before using these deadly agents again. Russia may be more
inclined to replace him with one of his generals. But it is still worth
thinking through possible responses if Assad crosses one of President Trump’s
many lines again. Whatever the future holds, we do know this: President Trump’s
foreign policy will look nothing like President Obama’s.
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