James Mattis, America's Secretary of Defense, attacked Syria last night.
As part of a coordinated attack with the British and the French,the retired Marine Corps general and current cabinet member in the Trump Administration launched about 100 missiles at three targets. The targets were thought to be research and storage facilities used by Syria to produce chemical weapons. Most of the missiles were aimed at the Barsah research center in Damascus. The rest targeted two storage facilities west of Homs, a city 100 miles north of Damascus.
The attacks were a response to last weekend's chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government on a rebel held area in the town of Douma. That was the second time during the Trump Administration and the third time overall that Syria's President, Basha al Assad, had used chemical weapons, which are banned by the Geneva Convention to which Syria is a signatory.
After the first attack, the Obama Administration backed a Russian plan to remove chemical weapons from Syria and more than 1300 tons of chemical agents were in fact removed. This did not eliminate the entire stockpile, essentially because some chemical agents (e.g., chlorine) were legitimately used (e.g., for water treatment) and could not be listed and removed. Back home, of course, this led to thunderous outcries of partisan condemnation inasmuch as Obama had announced a red line which the Syrians had then crossed, all without sufficient consequence in the minds (and lungs) of the partisans.
Enter Donald Trump.
The putative antidote to all things Obama.
Throughout his campaign and his still young but exhausting presidency, Trump has reflexively condemned and opposed anything Obama did or supported. Exhibit A on the domestic front is Obamacare, which Trump wanted to repeal without having anything to replace it and regardless of the consequences. Meanwhile, on the foreign policy side, his love affair with Putin and tough talk on North Korea and Syria are all meant to contrast with Obama's supposedly feckless and ineffective policies on these fronts, as is his embrace of Brexit and constant criticism of the European Union.
In the end, however, all of this turns out to be mere rhetoric.
Trump is about to sit down with North Korea's Kim Jong-un. He is doing so without preconditions and without having received anything in exchange for Kim having obtained a long sought seat at the table with the United States. No administration in the past has been willing to give up that leverage, but Trump did it unasked.
He hasn't enforced the legislated sanctions against Russia that were Congress's response to the cyber-attacks on our 2016 election. Instead, he has criticized the investigation into Russian meddling as a partisan hoax and "witch hunt" and defamed all the investigators, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his prosecutors.
And then -- or now -- there is Syria.
He has no policy on Syria per se or on the conflict itself. He is not willing to use American leverage to help oust Assad, a war criminal, and his cat and mouse game with Putin in any case makes that impossible. One day Putin is up with Trump, the next he is down. A small contingent of US forces is deployed in the eastern part of the country to clean up the remnants of ISIS. Otherwise, however, Syria has been left to the Russians and Iranians, neither of whom are willing to see Assad go.
In truth, his policy on Syria, to the extent he has one, is no different from Obama's. Both have been reluctant to get involved, principally because there appears to be no strategy that can oust Assad and replace him with a stable government that is not allied with Iran.
Nevertheless, Jim Mattis attacked Syria last night.
Oh, I know, Trump, not Mattis, authorized the attack.
But that was only the show.
The strategy was Mattis's.
Principally because Trump doesn't have one.
Instead, he has tweets and bombast. He got into a school yard brawl with Putin this week, warning the ex-KGBer -- in response to Russia's vow to shoot down any missiles fired on Syria -- that Putin should "get ready . . . because they will be coming, nice and new and 'smart!'" While, however, the kid President was playing in his twitter sand box, promising to punch the Russian bully, the adults were busy at the Pentagon fashioning a very limited response to the Syrian chemical attack that did not in any way bloody Russia. In fact, the reports this afternoon are that Russians actually evacuated from the areas that were attacked, which suggests they were tipped off to the attack in the first place.
Will this strategy work?
Count me dubious.
As part of a coordinated response with Britain and France, it has the advantage of sending at least some message that the west is still allied against any use of chemical weapons and is willing to enforce that prohibition at some level. The alternative is dulce et decorum est in the middle east, and that did not work out so well in Flanders a hundred years ago. At the same time , however, last year's attack in response to the use of chemical weapons did not stop Syria from using them last week, and last night's attack is being correctly perceived as a pinprick.
We'll see if last night results in any progress.
In the meantime, we can count ourselves lucky that, for now at least, this is . . .
Mr. Mattis's war.
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