Trump Re-Draws Red Line in Syria

In response to intelligence that the Assad regime was preparing another chemical weapons strike in Syria, the Trump Administration last night stated that any further use of chemical weapons would result in American retaliation. As the Financial Times reports:

Two months after Donald Trump launched 59 cruise missiles at Syria in response to a gas attack that killed dozens of civilians, the White House on Monday night said the US had detected signs that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was planning another attack.

The Pentagon said the US had “observed activities at Shayrat air base that suggest possible intent by the Syrian regime to use chemical weapons again”. The US thinks the April attack originated from Shayrat — which was the target of its cruise missiles soon after.

The White House said that if Mr Assad conducted another chemical weapons attack, “he and his military will pay a heavy price”. Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the UN, said Russia and Iran would also be held responsible for any such action.

This latest episode gives us a chance to think through the logic underlying President Obama’s own decision not to act in the face of Assad’s earlier barbarities. President Obama and his advisors argued that enforcing the red line would somehow end up boxing the U.S. into a corner that would inevitably lead to the United States committing tens thousands of ground troops to the conflict. Many weeks after President Trump’s decision to launch a Tomahawk strike against Assad’s forces, the logic of President Trump’s decision still seems overwhelmingly transparent: use chemical weapons, and we’ll hit you with cruise missiles—nothing more, nothing less.

Of course, just because a red line on chemical weapons use doesn’t constitute a slippery slope for ever-increasing involvement doesn’t mean that the United States won’t get bogged down elsewhere in Syria. As we’ve noted recently, the fight in the country’s east presents ample opportunities for the Trump Administration to get sucked into a mess if it’s not careful. But on the narrow chemical weapons issue, President Trump’s willingness to enforce a real red line shows that sufficient force applied in a limited fashion to maintain a specific norm might just work pretty well.

The post Trump Re-Draws Red Line in Syria appeared first on The American Interest.