Trump’s airstrike against Syria can lead to a total meltdown of US-Russian ties

In what can be seen as the biggest foreign policy crisis since he took his office, US President Donald Trump ordered the strike of 59 Tomahawk missiles targeting the Syrian airfield Shayrat, which was linked to Tuesday’s chemical weapon attack on Syrian civilians in the rebels-held Idlib province of the war-torn country.

This came after Trump said that the chemical attack had “changed his attitude over Syria and President Bashar al-Assad”, with the White House even asking Moscow to seriously introspect its support for the Assad regime in Syria. Russia and Iran, both Syria backers, as well as China, have condemned the US strike, while NATO allies such as Israel, UK, France, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have welcomed the airbase strike, saying it’s a fitting response for the April 4 chemical gas attack on Syrians that left about 80 dead in Khan Sheikhoun of northwest Syria.

Even though the US has said this was a “one-off” strike, aimed at retaliation in “vital national security interest”, the missile attack could seriously escalate US-Russia tensions, leading to a direct confrontation. Two US warships fired dozens of Tomahawk missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea at the airfield, and the footage of the missiles being launched at 8:40 pm EDT (of April 6) have gone viral on social media, being played on loop on all the news channels since the news of the strike broke.

Trump was meeting Chinese president Xi Jinping at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, when he ordered the strike. “Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically,” Trump said, before he ordered the missile strike that took out a number of airpower facilities, aircraft and support infrastructure at the Syrian base of Shayrat Airfield.       

Although, political leaders, particularly the NATO representatives, have presented an almost united front on the missile strike, welcoming the “tough action”, commentators and security analysts have sounded a grave cautionary note.

UK prime minister Theresa May, France’s Francois Hollande, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu, and even Germany’s Angela Merkel have said that the missile strike by the Trump administration aimed at Syria’s airbase so far held responsible for the April 4 chemical gas attack – possibly sarin – is but a fitting response to Assad’s inhuman atrocities and despotism against his own people.

It must be noted that both Syria and Russia have denied Assad’s involvement in the chemical attack, saying the airstrike caused the leak from a rebel-held stash of chemical weapons, and that it was an accident.

Commentators and journalists such as George Monbiot, Glenn Greenwald, Adam H Johnson have all called out the Trump administration for its hasty retributive attack, while pulling up the respective “liberal elites” for pushing a Republican president to bomb an already bomb-ravaged country all the more to be seen as doing something about Syria.

The stink of grandstanding on the part of western establishment, while losing the war of strategy to Putin’s machinations, couldn’t have come at a worse time.

While it has not yet been conclusively proved that the chemical gas attack had indeed Assad’s role behind it, that many within Washington desperately wanted Trump to fall in line with vested NATO interests and curb Vladimir Putin’s military expansionism in Eurasia, is hardly a secret. The chemical attack – whether or not launched by Assad’s air force – came barely days after US officially said that its policy in Syria would give removing ISIS bigger priority than dethroning Assad.

Both US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, had said that the US would leave alone Assad and would focus its energies on eliminating the Islamic State terrorists in northern Syria.

The question many are asking right now is this: Why would a head of state, no matter how despotic, destabilise his own position by committing the vilest, internationally despised atrocity on his own citizens just after he gets an assurance from his biggest enemy in the global theatre of permanent war that no one is going to topple him from the seat of power?

Though there’s no clear answer to the above question, that Trump administration has fallen prey to the vicious cycle of endless war – typical US strategy to gain legitimacy when domestic policies are failing and how – within two and half months of his taking the President’s office, says how unstable the 45^th president of the United States is, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

It’s obvious that the US administration, particularly the anti-Russia compradors who have been leaking Trump’s many a link with the Putin regime during the presidential election campaign, is directly benefitting from the new development, which it is losing no time to ascribe to Basar al-Assad’s forces. It is also interesting that a leader of a crucial NATO ally, France’s foreign minister, has said that the suspected chemical weapons attack is a way of “testing the Trump administration” and Washington’s stand on Assad and Syria.

It could very well be said that the attack, since it’s directed at one airfield and is rather limited in its deterrence value, is more at a symbolic level than having any greater role. But does this mean that US-Russian ties are once again back to the status quo of cold war/hot peace?    

How is the Syrian chemical attack of “vital national security interest” to America, which wasn’t attacked? It’s obvious that Trump wanted to sound and appear presidential by launching the attack, seeing in this an opportunity to shore up the dwindling approval ratings, given that even the Democrats are baying for some Syrian bloodshed.

What moral right does Donald Trump have to bomb the Syrian airfield when he had tried, unsuccessfully, to shut US door to the conflict-ravaged Middle Eastern and North African refugees? Short answer: he doesn’t have any.

Trump is erratic and his latest foreign policy decision is a bit of international messing around. To think that he’s in charge of the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal is something.

Also read - Heartbreaking, no one deserves to suffer like the children of Syria