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| Nikki Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and Volodymyr Yelchenko, left, representative of Ukraine, at a Security Council meeting on April 7. |
It has been a head-spinning week watching the Trump administration stumble into its first international crisis only to emerge with a transformed policy on the use of force in the Middle East, announced on Thursday with the unleashing of 59 sea-launched cruise missiles against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
While the limited missile strike was a commendable and overdue response to the use of chemical weapons and to countless other war crimes perpetrated by the regime in Damascus, the public performance of President Trump and his team throughout this tragic episode hardly inspires confidence. On the contrary, the administration demonstrated a dangerous degree of incoherence and inconsistency.
Consider the chronology. The debacle began with a remark by the new United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, in New York at the end of March. Despite a brutal six-year civil war in which Mr. Assad’s forces have been responsible for the deaths of about 200,000 civilians, and despite near universal opposition to his rule by leaders of the civilized world, Ms. Haley thought it was the right time to send a signal to Mr. Assad and his allies, Russia and Iran, that the new American president’s priority “is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed this new view, which Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, described as a simple recognition of “political reality.” Intentionally or not, American policy with respect to the world’s worst military and humanitarian crisis had been changed dramatically.
The unsurprising consequence of this shift was a newfound confidence within the Assad regime that it need not worry about paying a heavy price if its forces committed new acts of barbarity aimed at demoralizing the nation’s remaining rebels. And sure enough, the Syrian Air Force soon began dropping nerve gas on civilian neighborhoods in an insurgent-held town in Idlib province.
Stunned by this atrocity, Mr. Trump and his team then reversed course. For months they have suggested that “America First” meant that the country should not become mired in the region’s civil wars and violent upheavals. But this week, Mr. Trump suddenly decided that the Assad regime’s latest outrage required a military response.
This was yet another dramatic turnabout. After having criticized President Barack Obama for over-involving the United States in Syria’s problems, President Trump, by using military force against the regime, has now gone further than Mr. Obama was willing to go.
Syria represents the most consequential public reversal by the administration to date, but it is certainly not the only one. Even before his inauguration, Mr. Trump raised doubts about the longstanding “one China” policy, only to endorse it weeks later. As a candidate and as president, Mr. Trump has made contradictory statements about NATO, even as his foreign policy team has busily reassured European leaders that the United States values its alliances with them. There had been talk of scrapping the Iran nuclear accord, but now there is talk of maintaining it, at least for now. Where the administration stands on any number of major issues can depend on the day of the week.
The administration’s inability or refusal to articulate — or even formulate — an overarching foreign policy beyond Mr. Trump’s nationalistic slogan “America First” and his plans to spend billions rebuilding the military are the major sources of the problem. But there are bureaucratic problems as well. The departure of Michael T. Flynn as Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser just weeks after the inauguration no doubt slowed the formulation of a coherent set of policies. Delays in filling senior leadership positions in the State Department and Pentagon surely haven’t helped.
The apparent disconnect between Nikki Haley, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, and the White House has also added to the disarray. Ms. Haley has articulated politically popular positions that conflict with the White House, taking a harder line on Russia and emphasizing the importance of human rights even as the White House has downplayed the issue. Whatever her motivations, the messages have been mixed. And that can only give heart to dictators who view inconsistency as weakness.
Most troubling is the way Mr. Trump has allowed, or perhaps encouraged, the creation of confusing lines of authority and alternative centers of power within the White House. Despite his recent removal from the National Security Council, Stephen Bannon, Mr. Trump’s top political adviser, remains an influential figure who is viewed warily by senior intelligence and national security officials. And Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, has emerged as the president’s foreign policy troubleshooter, playing a prominent role in the administration’s talks with China, visiting Iraq on a fact-finding trip and taking over the Middle East peace portfolio. These are jobs traditionally given to seasoned diplomats, something Mr. Kushner is not.
Regardless of which of these factors is most to blame for the incoherence of administration foreign policy, it is imperative that the president address the problem as soon as possible. Unlike in domestic policy, where nuances often matter less, small changes can have big consequences in foreign affairs. The White House needs not only to clarify its policies, but also to establish and enforce better controls over the public explanation of those policies, before more damage is done to the country’s reputation and alliances.
Fixing this problem is a straightforward matter of political power, will and discipline. The stock of the new national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, is almost certainly sky high in the White House right now, given the bipartisan plaudits Mr. Trump has received for the missile attack, arguably the administration’s first unadulterated policy success. In normal circumstances, the national security adviser should be able to enforce the articulation of a consistent and coherent national security policy. But in this administration, General McMaster has his work cut out for him.
So does Mr. Trump. During the campaign and his first months in office, he has put down America’s moral leadership in the world while talking up dictators and strongmen, from Asia to the Middle East to Europe. Might his reprisal against the Assad regime for waging chemical warfare be a sign of a new respect for democracy? The world can only hope so.
James P. Rubin served as assistant secretary of state for public affairs during the Clinton administration.
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