By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, April 13, 2017
The world is agog at Donald Trump’s head-snapping
foreign-policy reversal. He runs on a platform of America First. He renounces
the role of world policeman. He excoriates parasitic foreigners that (I
paraphrase) suck dry our precious bodily fluids — and these are allies! On
April 4, Trump declared: “I don’t want to be the president of the world. I’m
the president of the United States. And from now on, it’s going to be America
First.”
A week earlier, both his secretary of state and his U.N.
ambassador had said that the regime of Bashar Assad is a reality and that
changing it is no longer an American priority.
Then last week, Assad drops chemical weapons on
rebel-held territory and Trump launches 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria.
This was, in part, an emotional reaction to images of
children dying of sarin poisoning. And, in part, seizing the opportunity to
redeem Barack Obama’s unenforced red line on chemical weapons.
Whatever the reason, moral or strategic, Trump acted. And
effectively reset his entire foreign policy.
True, in and of itself, the raid will not decisively
alter the course of Syria’s civil war. Assad and his Iranian, Russian, and
Hezbollah co-combatants still have the upper hand — but no longer a free hand.
After six years of U.S. passivity, there are limits now, and America will
enforce them.
Nor was the raid the beginning of a campaign for regime
change. It was, however, a reassertion of an American stake in both the conduct
and the outcome of the war. America’s abdication is over. Be warned.
Moreover, the very swiftness of the response carried a
message to the wider world. Obama is gone. No more elaborate forensic
investigations. No agonized presidential handwringing over the moral dilemmas
of a fallen world. It took Obama 10 months to decide what to do in Afghanistan.
It took Trump 63 hours to make Assad pay for his chemical-weapons duplicity.
America demonstrated its capacity for swift, decisive
action. And in defense, mind you, of an abstract international norm — a
rationale that dramatically overrides the constraints of America First.
Trump’s inaugural address had boldly rejected the 70-year
American consensus to bear the burdens of world leadership. Less than three
months later, the Syrian raid abruptly changed that course with a renewed
interventionism — not, to be sure, in the service of a crusade for democracy,
but in the service of concrete strategic objectives, broadly defined and
extending far beyond our shores.
To the North Pacific, for example. The Syria strike sent
a message to both China and North Korea that Trump’s threats of unilateral
action against Pyongyang’s nukes and missiles are serious. A preemptive strike
against those facilities is still unlikely, but today conceivable. Even more
conceivable — perhaps even probable — is a shoot-down of a North Korean missile
in flight.
The message to Russia was equally clear. Don’t push too
far in Syria and, by extension, in Europe. We’re not seeking a fight, but you
don’t set the rules. Syria shared the Sharyat base with Russian troops. Russian
barracks were left untouched, but we were clearly not deterred by their
proximity.
The larger lesson is this: In the end, national interest
prevails. Populist isolationism sounds great, rouses crowds, and may even win
elections. But contra White House
adviser Steve Bannon, it’s not a governing foreign policy for the United
States.
Bannon may have written the come-home-America inaugural
address. But it was the old hands, Trump’s traditionally internationalist
foreign-policy team, led by Defense Secretary James Mattis and
national-security adviser H. R. McMaster, who rewrote the script with the Syria
strike.
Assad violated the international taboo on chemical
weapons. Who would enforce it, if not us? Candidate Trump would have replied:
None of our business. President Trump brought out the Tomahawks.
His foreign policy has gone from mere homeland protection
to defending certain interests, values, and strategic assets abroad. These
endure over time. Hence the fundamental continuity of our post–World War II
engagement abroad.
With apologies to Lord Palmerston, we don’t have
permanent enthusiasms, but we do have permanent interests. And they have a way
of asserting themselves. Which is why Bannonism is in eclipse.
This is not to say that things could not change tomorrow.
We’ve just witnessed one about-face. With a president who counts
unpredictability as a virtue, he could well reverse course again.
For now, however, the traditionalists are in the saddle.
U.S. policy has been normalized. The world is on notice: Eight years of
sleepwalking is over. America is back.
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