Trump Stikes Syria, Again

Syrian research facility, in Barzeh, hit by the US and its allies on April 14th. SANA/AP. 

Below is a conversation between Drs. Brad Nelson and Yohanes Sulaiman, conducted via email over the last few days, on last weekend's strikes on Syria.

Brad Nelson: So, Yohanes, what’s your take on America’s latest round of airstrikes on Syria?

Yohanes Sulaiman: Trump just lobbed a few missiles that will not change the reality on ground. And seeing that he already declared "Mission Accomplished," that means there's no way he is going to escalate the situation further.

On the flip side, there's no way the Russians will allow Assad to lose, but at the same time, I doubt if they really want to escalate this into a war.

All of them know it. Trump knows that Putin will not escalate and Putin knows that Trump will not escalate further. This is a game of full information.

BN: What's new, to me anyway, is that Trump actually went after Syria's chemical weapons facilities. The previous US air strikes on Assad were symbolic, really. In April 2017, Trump targeted the Shayrat airbase, which was quickly repaired. It mostly a show of force, no more than that. Now, the latest attack set back Syria's chemical weapons program. The other thing is that Trump ordered the attack as part of a minilateral coalition, with Britain and France as partners; it wasn't a pure unilateral act against Syria. In some ways, that's reassuring. It shows that, at least when national interests converge, Trump is able to work well with others internationally, at least temporarily. 

Overall, though, the Syria attack revealed the utter chaos inside Trump's national security team and the confusion of Team Trump on Syria. One day, Trump wants to stay in Syria for years, helping to build an on-the-ground force significant enough to prevent ISIS from re-emerging and Iran from spreading its tentacles. The next, Trump wants out as soon as possible. The latter position, getting out of Syria, seems to be the policy de jour, as reports indicate the US seeks to pull out quickly and put an Arab force in its place. That probably won't work and carries risks, but, okay, fine, Trump wants out of Syria. I see the logic of that thinking. And it's consistent with his America First platform.

Yet at the same time, Trump pushed the military for a quick, harsh engagement against Assad. In response, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the generals wanted to route the attack through Congress, to provide legislative oversight, and had to pressure Trump to back down and settle for a more selective, pinprick attack. Now, this turn of events is puzzling. A more devastating attack on Assad would've been extremely risky. It could've triggered a military response from Russia and Iran. And that, in turn, could've pulled the US deeper into the Syrian conflict, which runs counter to Trump's stated preference for staying/getting out of foreign wars.

In part, I'm sure this mushy thinking is product of Trump's emotional, erratic, narcissistic personality. But maybe this also portends the future of Trump's security team going forward, especially given the rise of new NSA John Bolton, a notorious hawk. In short, we might see even more visible fractures between moderates and hawks on various foreign policy crises. If so, we're going to have to hope that the generals (the moderates) have enough influence and are persuasive enough to override the Bolton wing in the White House.

YS: I am not sure how much the attack set back Syria's chemical weapons program. Once Syria know how to make such WMDs, it just needs to stockpile enough and then hide it all over the country. It is not as complicated as running a nuclear weapon program. And with Russia or Iran willing to provide them with as many ingredients as Syria wants, Assad can likely just rebuild it all again.

But I agree that this may be different in the sense that Trump was able to actually bring a coalition to do the dirty work: Britain and France. Granted, they often working closely with the United States (e.g. Libya), but for unilateralist Trump, this is actually an encouraging development. I hope he learns this lesson when he is going to deal with Kim Jong Un in a few weeks!

On your comment on chaos in the Trump's administration, I suspect that things are actually far more stable than we think it is. Maybe I am spending too much time writing and not really paying much attention to the news lately, but seems that after the resignation of Tillerson, the Trump administration is actually moving with one voice. Obviously there are squabbles (e.g. Bolton demanding a much stronger response), but isn't that normal in any deliberations? I mean, think about RFK’s "Thirteen Days," which chronicled the Cuban Missile Crisis, where you have so many options being discussed, including a full force invasion to Cuba that could have triggered a Third World War.

I mean, Trump has his policy preferences, which is, as Kori Schake notes, that he wants to pull US out of Syria, preferring instead to position the US as an off-shore balancer, let the Arabs and other powers share the responsibility to police their own hot spots, and then, once in a while, when he is watching innocent civilians get gassed, demand the military to lob missiles to make his point. Seems like a pretty good policy, actually, rather than declaring a red line that everybody in the end crosses without much repercussions.

BN: On the impact of the attack, yeah, I'm probably being a bit generous to the White House. And the US military has admitted that Assad likely has more chemical weapons stockpiles elsewhere in Syria. Still, it seems the attack was effective, at least in a very narrowly defined sense: the US degraded Assad's ability to use and manufacture chemical weapons.

I still stand by my claim that the Trump team is riddled with chaos and confusion. You're right, every country, regardless of location or regime type, experiences foreign and domestic policy divisions, even sharp fractures. Indeed, this has been an endemic feature of US policy for years. Some would even argue that that is a feature, not a bug, of democratic, decentralized US policymaking. So, sure, this problem isn't just a Trump problem. That said, the internal divisions within Team Trump do seem more than a bit unusual. There has been constant turnover in senior positions in the White House: prominent names like Tillerson, McMaster, Priebus, Hicks, Cohn, Spicer, The Mooch, Flynn, Comey, and a bunch more are all gone.

Furthermore, name an issue and you'll find mixed messages broadcast publicly since day one of Trump's tenure in office. You'll also find constant turf wars and public rebukes involving Trump's security team, and his administration more broadly. Who can forget the very public, open infighting between Reince Priebus and The Mooch? Which lead to the infamous quote:  "I'm a Wall Street guy. I'm more of a front-stabbing person." That's been present on an array foreign and security issues as well. See the various public battles: Rex v. Trump, Trump v. Mattis, Trump v. Haley, Haley v. Kudlow, Trump v. McMaster, Kushner v. Miller and Bannon, and so on. It's wild. And it's attributable to Trump. He's confessed that he thrives on conflict and chaos. He's stated: “I like conflict, I like watching it, I like seeing it, and I think it's the best way to go." This is how he operated the Trump Organization and it's how he runs the White House.