Donald Trump launches airstrikes on Assad, but is there a plan for Syria?
On Thursday evening, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an airstrike on Syria. Two U.S. Navy ships in the Mediterranean launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a military air base.
At least six people are said to have been killed in the strike — the first U.S. military action against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Talking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump called Assad a "dictator" and said he had ordered the strike in response to the deadly chemical weapons attack in Idlib province a few days earlier, which killed more than 80 civilians, many of them children.
"Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," Trump said.
And while there was wide approval of the strikes both domestically and internationally, critics of Trump's administration worry about potential and unanticipated fallout.
To date, the world community has shown little willingness to intervene in Syria against Assad, but several American allies have expressed their support for the American airstrikes. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters: "Japan supports the U.S. government's determination to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons."
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called the strikes a "warning" to "a criminal regime." Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said America's show of force offered "a vitally important message" that the world community would not abide the use of chemical weapons.
The prime minister spoke to Trump directly on Friday morning and offered his support.
"In face of such heinous war crimes, all civilized peoples must speak with one voice," Trudeau said.
Others, however, have raised concerns. For one, the decision was an abrupt reversal on Trump's longstanding objections to military intervention in Syria. For another, Trump appeared to act unilaterally, without a comprehensive plan or strategy.
Writing in The Atlantic, David Frum observed, "Trump has walked into a military confrontation that implicates regional and global security with only the haziest notion of what might go wrong."
Then he added: "Trump's strike was symbolic and demonstrative, not decisive. It signaled, but did not compel. It leaves the Syrian and Russian leadership an array of options about how to respond — and it may well have committed the United States to potential next steps that the president did not imagine and does not intend."
However, he echoes fears that the Trump administration intervened without proper consultation or with a strategy about how to proceed after the strikes.
"What kind of foreign policy president is Trump going to be, if he turns around the entire apparatus of the American diplomatic and military machine based on his emotional reaction to individual events?"
Russia, which has protected and propped up the Assad regime, has condemned Trump's use of force in Syria. President Valdimir Putin said the airstrikes were "a significant blow" to Russian-American relations.
And with those relations already tense, Klaas says that Trump's management of the situation moving forward could have serious consequences.
In January, Brent Bambury spoke to Ambassador Frederic C. Hof about President Barack Obama's checkered legacy on Syria. You can listen to Brent's interview with Hof here.
To hear Rachel Giese's conversation with Brian Klaas, download our podcast or click the 'Listen' button at the top of this page.