Although the effects of this red-line episode were hard to measure, a large number of foreign diplomats told me afterward that America’s “flip-flopping” had damaged President Obama’s global reputation. I found much of this criticism maddening, given that many of these same ambassadors represented countries that would never have stood publicly with the United States had we gone ahead with air strikes. But it is undeniable that the perception of the “unenforced threat” shadowed our administration’s subsequent efforts to influence Assad and other actors in the war. This moved us further away from
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