'One-time shot' or 'sustained response'? Seeking a Trump Syria strategy post-missile strike
1 year after strikes on Syria for use of chemical weapons, Trump could 'take us down the same path'
This time, as the pre-dawn skies over Syria streaked with U.S.-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, it was a multilateral effort.
The U.S.-European operation was broader than last year's, hitting three targets rather than one Syrian air base. It was bolder, too, striking near the more densely populated capital of Damascus, after the regime unleashed a suspected chemical weapons attack on its citizens last weekend.
And, as U.S. President Donald Trump said in an address on Friday evening, it was to be part of a "sustained response" strategy.
Or maybe not.
"This is a one-time shot," Defence Secretary Gen. James Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon, minutes later.
- LIVE BLOG | Latest developments from Syria
So much for Trump's vow of a "sustained response."
"The strike appears to be more of a one-off," said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a research fellow focusing on Middle East security issues at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.
'Narrow intent'
"It seems the intent was to uphold the norm of non-chemical weapons use; to punish for the use of chemical weapons, and deter the future use of chemical weapons," Taleblu said.
"That's a fairly narrow intent."
Put another way, experts say it's not a protracted war the Trump administration is waging — it was a 17-minute military "operation" to deter illegal chemical warfare. And now it's over.
Even so, the conflicting descriptions of the plan by Mattis and Trump point to another concern: that there may not be any long-term strategy for Syria.
Instead, Taleblu said, the repeated destruction of Assad's chemical weapons is like "continuously slicing up bits of the problem, without dealing with the actual problem itself."
Twice as many missiles as last year
The U.S.-led precision strikes on Syria, conducted around 4 a.m. local time on Saturday with British and French allies, doubled the size of last year's launching of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat air base. The most recent missile strikes targeted a scientific research centre for producing weapons, a part of a military command post, and a facility used for making the nerve agent sarin gas.
"Today, the nations of Britain, France and the United States of America have marshalled their righteous power against barbarism and brutality," Trump said. Beyond his tough words, though, was a restrained order that critics say lacks a master plan.
"The longer the Trump administration goes without a justification for what we're doing, there's a grave potential for ineffectual use of military force," said national security analyst Jim Arkedis, president of the foreign-policy advocacy group Indispensible.
The punitive action is so tailored toward the chemical-weapons program that it arguably does nothing to weaken Assad's regime long-term or move toward bringing the seven-year Syrian conflict to a close, he said.
The longer the Trump administration goes without a justification for what we're doing, there's a grave potential for ineffectual use of military force.- National security analyst Jim Arkedis
Arkedis said Trump boxed himself in with his impulsive tweeting, in which he signalled a desire to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. Critics believe the pronouncement emboldened Assad to launch the chemical attack.
Further military action "is a waste," Arkedis fears, unless Trump can clearly articulate a policy outlining the U.S. future in Syria.
Defence experts broadly agree the U.S.-led strikes were important for showing American resolve. They also reinforced a global deterrent against Syria's blatant violation of international norms with respect to using chemical weapons, said former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford.
Assad 'will test us again'
"If the Trump administration sustains attacks every time against Syria, every time the Syrian government uses chemical weapons, that's a good step in restoring that international norm," he said.
But Assad's forces "will test us again," Ford predicted, by re-upping their chemical weapons to make up for their massively depleted troop numbers that have dwindled over the course of the prolonged civil war.
The problem is limited strikes don't address the underlying conflict, said Brett Bruen, who served as the White House director of global engagement from 2013 to 2015.
"Simply saying we're going to act until Assad throws up a white flag, that's going to take us down the same path we've repeatedly come up empty on before."
The world need not look further than last year. The strike on Syria's Shayrat air field only impeded the regime's capabilities for a few hours. Within a day, Syrian warplanes were again taking off from the air base for bombing missions on the town of Khan Shaykhun, which had been previously targeted by large-scale civilian poisonings by toxic gas.
Already, the U.S. missile strike of April 2018 may be struggling to differentiate itself. Targeting three sites will cripple Assad's ability to deploy more chemical weapons again, Bruen said, though it's arguably short-sighted.
Opportunity missed to call out Putin
A clear call-out by Trump on Friday for Russian President Vladimir Putin to demand Russian troops leave Syria and stop supporting Assad would have been a start, he said.
"This is a missed opportunity that Trump did not seize the moment."
Mattis and Trump made sure to specifically mention they were not targeting foreign interests, but were deliberately going after the Assad regime's chemical-weapons capabilities. Apparently left untouched, however, were delivery mechanisms for those chemical weapons, which might include conventional weapons such as rockets, missiles, artillery shells and helicopters.
The danger is how limited the message is if the operation focuses solely on the West's abhorrence for Syria's use of chemical warfare, said Jon Schanzer, a Middle East and counterterrorism expert who worked as an analyst for the U.S. department of the treasury.
No message against barrel bombs
The message, Schanzer said, is: "Don't launch chemical weapons." Still, he said that does little to dissuade Assad from resorting to barrel bombs and continuing to "slaughter" civilians, so long as he "doesn't violate international norms."
It at least became clear from the nature of the co-ordinated attack, why a decision that Trump promised on Monday to make within "24 to 48 hours" instead took four days.
"They really needed to prepare for this one, with a three-country situation" involving French and British forces, said Henri Barkey, a Middle East expert and the Cohen Professor of International Relations at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University.
While the coalition gives the nations diplomatic cover, it also reinforces suspicions neither France nor the U.K. are interested in a long-term conflict with the Syrians. A protracted conflict would risk escalation with the Russians as well as the Iranians backing Assad's regime. Russia is also a major supplier of natural gas to the Europeans.
The missile strikes did not surprise Barkey. Trump had, after all, telegraphed days before that Assad would "pay" for using an internationally banned substance.
"So, they lived up to what they've been saying all along," Barkey says. "Mind you, that still does nothing about the Syrian regime, which is still a mess, and Trump said this is not the end."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
