Syrian tragedy undermines Trump’s America First doctrine

The horrors of chemical weapons in Syria and the sidelining of chief strategist Steve Bannon have prompted Donald Trump to return to a more conventional foreign policy.

President Donald Trump receives a briefing on the Syria military strike from his national security team, including a video teleconference with defence secretary, Gen James Mattis, and chairman of the Show more

NEW YORK // Donald Trump rose to power on an “America First” platform, promising to avoid foreign entanglements except where US economic and strategic interests were directly threatened.

But the horrors of Syria, where as many as 86 people are reported to have died in a gas attack in Idlib province, caught up with him last week and prompted what some see as a return to a more conventional foreign policy.

Mr Trump explained his rethink during a news conference in the White House rose garden on Wednesday.

“That attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me — big impact. That was a horrible, horrible thing. And I’ve been watching it and seeing it, and it doesn’t get any worse than that,” he said as he stood next to Jordan’s King Abdullah.

“And I have that flexibility, and it’s very, very possible — and I will tell you, it’s already happened that my attitude toward Syria and [Syrian president Bashar Al] Assad has changed very much.”

By that point he had already asked his military commanders to begin planning the missile strikes that launched a little over 24 hours later.

Analysts say that after long warning of the dangers of deeper Middle East engagement, the first big international crisis of his time in office and those horrific images prompted a hurried rethink.

Last week Mr Trump also welcomed the Chinese president Xi Jinping to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, with North Korea’s recent missile launch on their packed agenda.

Jeanne Zaino, professor of political science at New York’s Iona College, said that Mr Trump was finding out that power came with heavy responsibilities, just as his predecessors had discovered before him.

“Other presidents may have been less forthcoming about how unprepared they were when they got into office and so this shift that you see, with the weight of the world on their shoulders, is much more transparent with Donald Trump,” she said.

Until now, Mr Trump had signalled a reluctance to intervene in what he sees as other countries’ problems.

He was ambivalent on Russia’s annexation of Crimea and warm towards strongmen such as Egypt’s Abdel Fattah El Sisi, focusing on building an alliance against Iran and ISIL rather than lecturing them on human rights.

Before the chemical attack, Mr Trump’s two most senior diplomats — secretary of state Rex Tillerson and Nikki Hailey, the US permanent representative at the United Nations — had both suggested that removing Mr Al Assad was a matter for the Syrian people rather than Washington.

It was part of the much-touted America First philosophy.

White House officials took pains to show how Mr Trump’s view of the world differed from his two immediate predecessors, George W Bush and Barack Obama, who they said became bogged down in faraway wars and nation building.

Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to Mr Trump, said in a recent interview: “This is not Bush-lite, it is not Bush mark III. We are not neo-Conservatives, we are not trying to imprint our model on anyone else.”

Mr Trump himself spelled out his position when he met union representatives earlier last week, just as shocking images from the Syria gas attack began circulating.

“I’m not, and I don’t want to be, the president of the world,” he said. “I’m the president of the United States, and from now on it’s going to be America first.”

Yet a behind-the-scenes reshuffle last week indicates a shift in thinking. Steve Bannon, the president’s chief strategist and populist scourge of the Washington establishment, lost his position on the National Security Council, reducing his influence on White House foreign policy.

At the same time, a globalist faction led by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, has been gaining power over the president’s thinking particularly on the Middle East. Gen HR McMaster, the national security adviser who made reining in Mr Bannon one of his first priorities according to friends, has also been making his presence felt, taking on a more public role in explaining policy.

The result may be a more conventional international stance.

Ian Bremmer, president of the global risk consulting firm Eurasia Group, said Mr Trump’s decision to take muscular action against Syria stood at odds with a campaign that suggested he would be reluctant to play the world’s policeman.

But he doubted that Mr Trump had thought through all the consequences and agonised over the decision in the way that Barack Obama had done when he decided not to intervene after a gas attack in 2013.

“Bombing is a manly thing to do and when he sees his Russian relationship is already kind of in the tank and he’s about to meet the Chinese leader and he wants to show some strength, why not take a limited whack at what the Syrians have done?” Mr Bremmer said.

For its part, the White House says America First remains the guiding strategy.

Sean Spicer, Mr Trump’s spokesman, said the president had acted in line with his constitutional obligation to defend US security.

“There’s very important national security interests in the region, stability and obviously there’s a huge humanitarian component to this,” he said on Friday.