The Trump administration is in full retreat from its array of right-wing populist promises.
Instead of scrapping NAFTA, they are merely looking for minor adjustments. Instead of showing China who’s boss, they have retreated on Taiwan, and are promising a far more favorable stance on trade in exchange for whatever help China might offer on North Korea — while telegraphing that they know help is bound to be limited.
.. Most dramatically, Trump reversed the overwhelming thrust of his campaign with respect to foreign policy, ordering an attack on Syria and welcoming Montenegro into NATO, saying that the Atlantic alliance is “no longer obsolete.”
.. Most dramatically, Trump reversed the overwhelming thrust of his campaign with respect to foreign policy, ordering an attack on Syria and welcoming Montenegro into NATO, saying that the Atlantic alliance is “no longer obsolete.”
Faced with any difficult problem, he chooses the easiest way out, which in politics will mean appeasing whoever presents the most current threat.
Why Russia Supports Assad
They have vital interests in the region. Appealing to the moral high ground won’t change their position.
Russia is not supporting the Syrian regime with considerable military power because they like Assad or his despicable policies.
Their objective is to enhance their ability to exert influence in the region, stabilize areas near their own borders that contain large Muslim populations, and ensure continued access to their Mediterranean port at Tartus.
.. Russia is not supporting the Syrian regime with considerable military power because they like Assad or his despicable policies.
Their objective is to enhance their ability to exert influence in the region, stabilize areas near their own borders that contain large Muslim populations, and ensure continued access to their Mediterranean port at Tartus.
.. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was dismissive of Tillerson’s advice: “I believe everyone realized a long time ago that there is no use in giving us ultimatums. This is simply counterproductive,” she said.
.. Russia is acting in ways consistent with how it sees its national-security interests in the region. Until senior U.S. leaders recognize this fact and order our own behavior accordingly, we can count on a continual worsening of relations with Russia and other competing powers.
.. In 1971 the USSR signed an agreement with then-dictator Hafaz al-Assad for access to the Syrian naval base at Tartus, which is still in effect today. It is Russia’s only naval access to the Mediterranean, and they are not going to give it up. There is no rational basis upon which to expect Russia to renounce its support for Syria.
.. It can be assumed, however, that Putin will not support any outcome that results in a Syrian government that is not friendly with Moscow.
Just What Is Trump Trying to Do in Syria?
One week after the missile strike, we still don’t know what it was meant to accomplish.
Effective signaling in foreign policy and warfare is both vital and no simple matter, as every president discovers.
.. In the annals of pinprick strikes, Trump’s Tomahawk attack now stands as the pinprickiest.
.. That strike was undertaken in response to the discovery of an Iraqi plot to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush during a visit to Kuwait.
.. Iraq never again attempted to kill a U.S. president, and, indeed, never supported another terrorist attack against Americans
.. the Russians notified the Syrians, who reportedly moved their most important aircraft elsewhere before the strike. The very next day, Syrian airplanes were once again flying from the base to hit rebel targets.
.. from the perspective of international politics, the fact that the airstrip was in the use the next day was not negligible.
.. This attack possibly even eroded the chemical weapons taboo by convincing any would-be transgressors that the worst they could expect would be the loss of a small number of inessential aircraft after an advance warning—in other words, a slap on the wrist.
The clearest signal of all would have required a serious punitive attack on the regime itself, a step whose legality would be open to question and that would risk a dangerous escalation with Russia.
.. The fact that Trump chose the least aggressive option available suggests that the principal audience for the strikes was not in Damascus or Moscow, but in the United States.
.. So was the strike political kabuki
.. Sean Spicer suggested in a news briefing Monday that there was now open-ended U.S. commitment to intervene to stop the killing of civilians.
.. Rex Tillerson added to the confusion by issuing his own series of conflicting signals.
.. the era of Assad family rule was coming to an end—an assessment at odds with most military analysts’ views
.. H.R. McMaster .. suggested that the administration had embraced the goal of regime change in Syria
.. Nikki Haley won the sweepstakes by enunciating war aims more far-reaching than McMaster’s: It is a U.S. priority, she said, “to get the Iranian influence out” of Syria
.. historic conduit to the Shiite community in Lebanon.
.. Trump’s own rhetoric has both echoed and contradicted Haley, as he said on April 11 that “we’re not going into Syria” after asserting just days before that “we have a vital strategic interest in Syria.”
.. boasts of his unpredictability while showing no ability to think one step ahead.
59 Missiles Don’t Equal a Foreign Policy
the public performance of President Trump and his team throughout this tragic episode hardly inspires confidence. On the contrary, the administration demonstrated a dangerous degree of incoherence and inconsistency.
.. Despite a brutal six-year civil war in which Mr. Assad’s forces have been responsible for the deaths of about 200,000 civilians, and despite near universal opposition to his rule by leaders of the civilized world
.. Ms. Haley thought it was the right time to send a signal to Mr. Assad and his allies, Russia and Iran, that the new American president’s priority “is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed this new view, which Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, described as a simple recognition of “political reality.”
.. For months they have suggested that “America First” meant that the country should not become mired in the region’s civil wars and violent upheavals.
.. public reversal
- .. Mr. Trump raised doubts about the longstanding “one China” policy, only to endorse it weeks later.
- .. contradictory statements about NATO
- .. There had been talk of scrapping the Iran nuclear accord
.. Where the administration stands on any number of major issues can depend on the day of the week.
.. inability or refusal to articulate — or even formulate — an overarching foreign policy beyond Mr. Trump’s nationalistic slogan “America First”
.. disconnect between Nikki Haley .. and the White House
.. give heart to dictators who view inconsistency as weakness.
.. Mr. Trump has allowed, or perhaps encouraged, the creation of confusing lines of authority and alternative centers of power within the White House
.. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, has emerged as the president’s foreign policy troubleshooter, playing a prominent role in the administration’s talks with China, visiting Iraq
.. These are jobs traditionally given to seasoned diplomats, something Mr. Kushner is not.
.. Fixing this problem is a straightforward matter of political power, will and discipline.
.. he has put down America’s moral leadership in the world while talking up dictators and strongmen