Donald Trump, the United States President, has a powerful ability to shock and to dominate headlines. Even if he does launch an air strike on Syria, as he promised a few days ago, there is no real prospect of his starting a longer campaign. He can be expected to deplore the barbarity of last week’s chemical weapons attack, fire a few missiles and then walk away.
This, anyway, was Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s calculation week before last in the attack on Douma in eastern Ghouta, which looks to be the latest in his chemical weapons campaign. At the time, the atrocity was greeted with astonishment as well as horror. Trump had only recently decided to withdraw American troops from Syria, so why would Al Assad do anything to pull the US back in? Why not just keep hostilities to a minimum while America retreats?
Any use of chlorine gas would be certain to provoke Trump because he defines himself against former US president Barack Obama. When a chemical bomb killed 1,400 in Damascus four years ago, Obama failed to respond. So Trump’s instant reaction was to promise swift and firm revenge. It is a fairly standard pattern of behaviour: If he feels challenged, he will respond. After punishing a Syrian chemical weapons attack last year, he had no choice but to do the same now — with an alliance of the willing, from the French to the Saudis. Al Assad’s tactics could be seen as lunacy.
Until you look at what Trump means by “hitting hard”.
Former US president George W. Bush had once put it well: The military is not there to underline a verbal point. No president, he said, should be prepared to “fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent”. If you act, it needs to be “decisive”.
When Al Assad dropped Sarin gas on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun last year, Trump dispatched $100 million (Dh367.8 million) worth of Tomahawks to the Al Shayrat airfield from which Al Assad had launched the attack. It was costly, but it certainly wasn’t decisive. Those 55 missiles destroyed a few hangers, and about 20 aircraft. But tarmac takes hours to repair and just days later, Syrian warplanes were taking off from the same air base, to bomb the same rebels. Al Assad had felt the wrath of the American president, and although it was a setback, it was far from a devastating one.
So rather than deter the use of chemical weapons, Trump’s response last year served to encourage them. A new precedent was established: That if poison gas is used, the guilty party (and their backers) can simply deny it. The West will give a strong verbal response, but the military response will be half-hearted. The United Nations estimates that Al Assad has carried out at least four more chemical weapon attacks since then — each one denied by the Syrians and Russians. Worst of all, such weapons are certainly effective. Al Assad’s latest target is rebels from Jaish Al Islam — who had held out against encirclement, mortar attacks and aerial bombardment. The Russians had entered talks with them, but to no avail. After last week’s attack, everything changed.
The rebels agreed to surrender their positions in return for safe passage to northern Syria. The Kremlin says the retreat is now under way, with up to 8,000 militants and about 40,000 civilians on the move. Syrian state media is boasting that the rebels have released captives in return. So militarily, this is quite the result for Al Assad.
And yes, we can expect another hail of missiles — the “nice and new and ‘smart’” ones Trump promised on Twitter — but Al Assad will have calculated that this is a price worth paying. Not just to rout the rebels, but to let his surviving enemies know that he’ll be prepared to see their children choke on poison gas. There will be a few more runways destroyed for the benefit of American satellite images. But Al Assad may still be in business, with the Russians and the Iranians.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, will not only continue to have a client on the Mediterranean, but will also have used the whole episode to take a stand against America. Not so long ago, chemical weapons were a red line which, if crossed, were supposed to have devastating consequences for the aggressor. But this understanding perished in Syria, along with the thousands killed by those bombs. It has all served to demonstrate how hamstrung the West really is. Former British prime minister David Cameron lost a vote in striking Syria five years ago, and British Prime Minister Theresa May will probably not dare to hold a vote now. The French will send a few of their missiles behind American ones, but there’s no serious talk about deposing Al Assad.
Trump made a campaign promise to crush Daesh, and helped American troops do so by relaxing their terms of engagement. But in general, his inclination is to use less military — which is why he was all set to pull out of Syria week before last. He has grown fond of pointing to the results.
People mocked at him for saying he had a “much bigger and more powerful” nuclear button than North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. But, he says, it ended up with Kim agreeing to come to the negotiating table. His threats of a trade war with China were also deplored, but he sees vindication in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s offer earlier this week to cut tariffs on American cars.
So it’s hard to cast Trump as a warmonger who’s itching to start the Third World War. Like Obama, he has failed to enforce what is supposed to be a global ban on chemical weapons. His fire and fury may last a day, or perhaps a week, then he’ll move on. And Al Assad will be left to his endgame.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2018
Fraser Nelson is the editor of the Spectator and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph.
