RUTHFULLY YOURS

The goal of American foreign policy should be to make our friends more secure and our adversaries less secure. The balance of countries then have to decide how they want to position themselves. A successful policy will have tactical goals that fit into a larger strategic picture. The American attack on Syria’s al Shayrat military air base fits squarely into the rubric.

The UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Poland approved publicly. So did Democrats Dick Durbin, Ben Cardin, Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, and Nancy Pelosi. Opposed were Russia, Syria, Iran, and Bolivia (keep reading). China and Sweden made statements that hedged. Among the more odd responses, Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr called on Assad to resign, and MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell called it a “false flag” operation, planned by President Trump and Vladimir Putin to help Trump prove he isn’t pro-Russian.

The first Russian response — after a furious announcement that they were tearing up the deconfliction agreement with the U.S. in Syria (they quickly thought better of it) — was to report that planes had flown from the base, so the U.S. attack had been a failure. Not so. Photos from the UK Daily Mail clearly show that hangars, fuel storage, airplanes, and service buildings were destroyed, confirming the Pentagon’s assessment. An Israeli report indicated that 58 of 59 Tomahawks hit. Flying some planes to al Shayrat and rolling them down abandoned runways is typical Russian obfuscation — the planes didn’t come from there, can’t stay there, can’t be maintained there, and can’t be refueled there. As punishment, the strike was a success.

If the tactical goal was met, what about the strategic ones? The Trump administration had announced that America’s priority in Syria would be the ouster of ISIS rather than the removal of Bashar Assad. Does the attack change that? Does it mean “regime change” is back on the table? Is the U.S. about to enter the Syrian civil war?

Not necessarily. Ambassador Haley’s comment that no political solution is possible with Assad does not mean that the U.S. is looking for a military solution. We faced a violation of international law that constituted an international emergency.

Not because of the numbers — more than 400,000 Syrians have already been killed, 11 million are displaced internally and externally, and life expectancy has declined by more than a decade. (U.S. comparables would be 5.6 million dead and 154 million total refugees – factors of 14.) Chemical weapons have been outlawed precisely because the world has generally agreed that they are uniquely hideous and terrifying. The appearance of CW threatens one of the world’s few consensus points.

Which is to say, the consensus on CW was actually shattered in 2013-14 with President Obama’s “red lines” and “game changers.” But then a different consensus coalesced around the fiction that Syrian chemical capability had been eliminated by a U.S.-Russian joint operation. Voices of disbelief were few and far between –- no one wanted to take on Putin or Obama. One result was to embolden Assad and his patrons. The past three years have seen Syrian and Russian strikes on relief convoys and civilians, including the use of chlorine –- though not nerve gas –- to pursue their campaign against Syrian Sunni Muslims.

The U.S. Navy has canceled planned port calls in Australia for the USS Carl Vinson and is instead sending the aircraft carrier toward the Korean Peninsula amid concerns about possible new weapons tests by North Korea, military officials said.

Speaking on Fox News on Sunday, U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said the president has ordered him to prepare “a full range of options” to the nuclear and missile threats North Korea poses to the U.S. and its allies, adding that it was a prudent move to send the Vinson strike group to warn Pyongyang against additional provocation.

But North Korea’s Foreign Ministry indicated on Sunday that it wasn’t cowed by the U.S. moves, calling Thursday’s U.S. strike against its ally, Syria, “an undisguised act of aggression against a sovereign state” and vowing to beef up its nuclear force .

Shortly after the strike, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the attack showed “[President Donald Trump] is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line,” in remarks widely regarded as being directed in part at Pyongyang.

The Vinson strike group, including the carrier and two guided-missile destroyers, is being dispatched to operate in the western Pacific Ocean in response to Pyongyang’s recent missile tests.

There is widespread speculation, based on satellite imagery and analysis, that North Korea might try to carry out another weapons test in the coming days as it prepares for its most important national holiday—the anniversary of the birth of the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung, on April 15.

North Korea carried out three missile tests in the past month, including a midrange-missile launch on April 5 that triggered a terse response from the Trump administration.

“The United States has spoken enough about North Korea,” Mr. Tillerson said after that test. “We have no further comment.”

Now, one official said, the Navy is sending the strike group as a show of force.

The Trump administration has issued a series of warnings to North Korea about its missile tests.

Last month, during a visit to South Korea, Mr. Tillerson said the U.S. “policy of strategic patience has ended” and that “all options are on the table.” CONTINUE AT SITE

When it came to foreign policy, I was worried that the 2016 election would be a case of Clinton delivering the third Obama term. Instead, we have Trump giving us the third Clinton term.

President Donald Trump has now done what candidate Donald Trump committed not to do: He has launched a military strike against a foreign regime — a repulsive one, to be sure — in the absence of any threat, much less any attack, against the United States, in furtherance of no vital American interests.

Trump’s act of war is in violation of the Constitution, which requires congressional authorization for such an offensive use of military force, provoked by no aggression against our nation. Or, as someone once said:
Donald J. Trump

✔ @realDonaldTrump

What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional approval.
2:14 PM – 29 Aug 2013

Mind you, that’s just one in a series of “Syria is NOT our problem” tweets in which Trump ripped Obama for not recognizing that “the so called ‘rebels’ may be just as bad (or worse)!”

The U.S. attack is an impulsive intervention in a civil war in which both sides — the Damascus/Tehran/Moscow alliance and its Sunni-jihadist/sharia-supremacist opposition — are hostile to the United States. It is a war in which Bashar al-Assad’s continuation in power, dismal as that prospect may be, is in no way the worst conceivable outcome for American national security.

Further, the missile strike offends sound policy: If the United States has not been attacked or threatened, congressional approval should be sought, not merely for legal purposes but also to ensure that complexities have been thought through and public support for a risky intervention has been won. Here, quite apart from the want of American legal footing, Trump lacks even the fig leaf of international legitimacy — there are none of those cryptic U.N. mandates that progressives prefer to our quaint Constitution.

Supporters of Trump’s aggression indignantly focus on Assad’s latest war crime, the barbaric use of chemical weapons — an apparent sarin-gas attack said to have killed 80 civilians. (It is necessary to qualify media reports of “civilian casualties” in the Syrian conflict, since Assad’s jihadist opposition is frequently referred to as “civilian.”)

I guess Obama’s gone, so we’re all in on “R2P” now. But, to repeat, Trump acted without congressional authorization; and as explained by Harvard’s Jack Goldsmith (a former Bush Defense and Justice Department official), in the absence of a cause rooted in self-defense or a Security Council resolution, there is no international-law justification for military attacks against another country — even one whose regime uses poisonous gases against its own people.

The most dangerous moments in foreign affairs often come after a major power seeks to reassert its lost deterrence.

The United States may be entering just such a perilous transitional period.

Rightly or wrongly, China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Middle East-based terrorists concluded after 2009 that the U.S. saw itself in decline and preferred a recession from world affairs.

In that void, rival states were emboldened, assuming that America thought it could not — or should not — any longer exercise the sort of political and military leadership it had demonstrated in the past.

Enemies thought the U.S. was more focused on climate change, United Nations initiatives, resets, goodwill gestures to enemies such as Iran and Cuba, and soft-power race, class, and gender agendas than on protecting and upholding longtime U.S. alliances and global rules.

In reaction, North Korea increased its missile launches and loudly promised nuclear destruction of the West and its allies.

Russia violated its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and absorbed borderlands of former Soviet republics.

Iran harassed American ships in the Persian Gulf and issued serial threats against the U.S.

China built artificial island bases in the South China Sea to send a message about its imminent management of Asian commerce.

In Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State killed thousands in medieval fashion and sponsored terrorist attacks inside Western countries.