Category Archives: Trump administration

White House warns of potential U.S. ‘red line’ over Syria barrel bomb attacks

The Guardian reports: The Trump administration has signalled much broader grounds for future military intervention in Syria, suggesting it might retaliate against the Assad regime for barrel bomb attacks.

On the eve of a critical visit to Moscow at a time of high US-Russian tensions over Syria, the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, appeared to go even further, saying his country would come to the defence of innocent civilians “anywhere in the world”.

The administration had initially stressed strictly limited objectives for a cruise missile strike last week on a Syrian air force base, saying it was intended to deter the repeat of a chemical attack on Tuesday against civilians and that the focus of US efforts in Syria remains combating the Islamic State (Isis).

On Monday, however, the White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, widened the criteria for retaliation. “When you watch babies and children being gassed, and suffer under barrel bombs, you are instantaneously moved to action,” he said. “I think this president’s made it very clear that if those actions were to continue, further action will definitely be considered by the United States.”

On Tuesday diplomats gathered in Italy for a second day of G7 talks dominated by the war in Syria, as officials in Washington, the UK and elsewhere floated the possibility of new sanctions on the Syrian and Russian military.

US intelligence believes Assad carried out last week’s attack with the chemical agent sarin, killing dozens of civilians including children. But Spicer made the first mention of the use of barrel bombs – crude munitions that can cause indiscriminate casualties.

Pressed on whether chemical warfare as opposed to conventional warfare constitutes a red line, he replied: “I think the president’s been very clear that there were a number of lines crossed last week … The answer is if you gas a baby, if you put a barrel bomb into innocent people, I think you will see a response from this president. That is unacceptable.”

The White House said later that Spicer was referring to barrel bombs carrying industrial chemicals like chlorine. But that would still represent a substantial expansion of the US rules of engagement in Syria. The regime is suspected of using chlorine gas in its attacks on dozens of occasions since 2013. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. defense chiefs say they want to deter more chemical attacks, not oust Assad

The Guardian reports: The US defense chiefs have said that Washington’s objectives in Syria are limited to deterring additional chemical weapons attacks by Bashar al-Assad.

After days of contradictory messages from the Trump administration, the US defense secretary, James Mattis, used his first Pentagon press conference on Tuesday to clarify that the US seeks no wider military involvement in a conflict he defined as extraordinarily complex.

Seated aside army Gen Joseph Votel, the US military commander for the Middle East, Mattis repeatedly brushed aside suggestions of ousting Assad, a diplomatic objective that secretary of state Rex Tillerson intends to raise in Moscow on the first visit by a senior US official since Donald Trump took office. He is due to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, but it is not clear whether an expected session with Vladimir Putin would go ahead.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Putin compared the US intervention in Syria to the ill-fated Iraq invasion of 2003. He claimed to know “from different sources” that the US had been duped into carrying out a missile strike by rebels intent on dragging Washington into the conflict. He predicted there would be more poison gas attacks to come, which he said would be false flag operations by rebels in order to justify more US missile strikes.

“Similar provocations – and I can’t call it anything other than that – are being prepared in other parts of Syria,” Putin said.

Russia has claimed that the deaths of more than 80 people by poison gas in the town of Khan Sheikhun on 4 April, were caused by a Syrian regime strike on a chemical weapons facility run by terrorists but has provided no evidence. The Guardian visited Khan Sheikhun after the attack and saw no evidence of any such facility having been bombed. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Why Vladimir Putin may be in too deep in Syria to ditch Assad

Martin Chulov writes: Five years of political capital, over a million tonnes of weapons, tens of billions of dollars, Russia’s role as both dominant regional presence and rising global force – these are all at stake if Vladimir Putin abandons Syria’s leader.

This is the reckoning faced by the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, as he travels to Moscow to try to prise the Russian president away from his support of Bashar al-Assad in the aftermath of last week’s nerve agent attack on Khan Sheikhun.

Ahead of the first high-level summit between Russia and the US since the election of Donald Trump, hopes have been raised that the atrocity could be a catalyst for change in a country destroyed by war and failed by global politics.

Those hopes, however, are almost certain to be dashed. Throughout the conflict, and especially since the Kremlin doubled down on its support for Assad in September 2015, Russia has pursued a win-at-all-costs strategy, which has regularly defied the bounds of modern warfare and edged Assad’s regime towards a winning position on the battlefield. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Why the Russians aren’t likely to break with Assad

Vali Nasr writes: By punishing Syria for its use of chemical weapons, President Donald Trump effectively broke with Barack Obama’s foreign policy toward the Middle East. In a bit of irony for a committed anti-interventionist, Trump enforced Obama’s red line in Syria against the use of chemical weapons, ending the U.S. prohibition on military strikes targeting the regime of Bashar al-Assad. This is not necessarily the start of a larger American war in Syria, but it could be the beginning of the end of the Syrian conflict.

For opponents of Assad who hope Washington will seek regime change in Damascus, news of the strikes on a Syrian airbase was welcome. The Trump administration may not escalate much further, but some expect it to push Russian President Vladimir Putin to break with Assad. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Secretary of State of Rex Tillerson have, in turn, called Moscow either complicit in Assad’s chemical attack, as at least one U.S. official has alleged, or incompetent in fulfilling the promise of preventing it. Either way, Tillerson is expected to use his visit to Moscow this week to demand Russia break with Assad.

But the promise of a break is wishful thinking. The chemical attack and the retaliatory U.S. strike may have embarrassed and angered Russia—even if it was given heads up, as reporting suggests—but they’ve given Putin no reason to turn on Assad. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Why food insecurity ‘over there’ matters right here

Ivo Daalder writes: Earlier this year, one of the world’s leading authorities on famine declared that 70 million people across 45 countries would need food assistance this year. Already 20 million in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen face famine, an unprecedented situation that prompted the United Nations in March to declare the worst humanitarian crisis the world has faced since World War II.

This global calamity needs our immediate and full attention. Yet saving millions from starvation is not only a moral obligation, it is also a national security necessity. We know from past food-related crises that lack of adequate food tends to create cycles of instability. A decade ago, protests over food prices toppled governments in Haiti and Madagascar. Popular grievances over food policy and prices also were a major driver of the Arab Spring and helped catalyze the instability and migration we see today across the Middle East and North Africa.

As the United States debates the appropriate balance of military, diplomatic, and economic levers at its disposal, the link between global food security and global stability has never been more clear, nor more urgent the need for U.S. leadership to confront and mitigate the risk of food insecurity. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump’s strike against Syria doesn’t change the narrative

Anne Applebaum writes: I’m not sure if neophilia is a real disease or a literary invention, but having a love for novelty certainly describes a large part of the American and indeed the international press corps. My neophiliac colleagues and I love news, particularly news that changes the paradigm, news that lets you describe the world in a different way, news that means you can abandon the previous, stale conversation and turn with relief to something fresh.

President Trump’s decision to bomb an air base in Syria seems like exactly that kind of news. It changes the paradigm because it apparently contradicts everything Trump has ever said about Syria, either as president, as a candidate or even before that. For as long as he has been in public life, Trump has opposed humanitarian military intervention, which he has always interpreted in the most cynical fashion possible. On Oct. 9, 2012, he tweeted, for example:


On Aug. 29, 2013, he tweeted again:


And Sept. 5, 2013, he tweeted — in all caps:


Now it seems that Trump has had an abrupt change of heart, thanks, he says, to the (truly horrific) photographs of children dying of chemical poisoning in Idlib province. Relieved to see this American use of military power, pundits and journalists have filled the airwaves with a thousand different speculations. A BBC producer called me to ask whether I thought that this means “a new departure.” A CNN pundit and Post columnist declared that Trump, with this bombing raid, “became president of the United States.”

Really? Look again at what just happened: A president who has told us he believes military intervention happens when “poll numbers are in tailspin” has just intervened while his poll numbers are in a tailspin. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

On Trump’s Syria strategy, one voice is missing: Trump’s

The New York Times reports: In the days since President Trump ordered a cruise missile strike against Syria in retaliation for a chemical attack on civilians, his administration has spoken with multiple voices as it seeks to explain its evolving policy. But one voice has not been heard from: that of Mr. Trump himself.

As various officials have described it, the United States will intervene only when chemical weapons are used — or any time innocents are killed. It will push for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria — or pursue that only after defeating the Islamic State. America’s national interest in Syria is to fight terrorism. Or to ease the humanitarian crisis there. Or to restore stability.

The latest mixed messages were sent on Monday in both Washington and Europe. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson — during a stop in Italy on his way to Moscow for a potentially tense visit, given Russian anger at last week’s missile strike — outlined a dramatically interventionist approach. “We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world,” he said.

Hours later, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said at his daily briefing that Mr. Trump would act against Syria not just if it resorted to chemical weapons, like the sarin nerve agent reportedly used last week, but also when it used conventional munitions. “If you gas a baby, if you put a barrel bomb into innocent people, I think you will see a response from this president,” Mr. Spicer said.

For Mr. Trump, who came to office espousing an “America first” policy that stayed out of the affairs of other countries where the United States had no interest of its own, responding to barrel bombs in Syria or to “any and all” humanitarian abuses “anywhere” would be a far more sweeping standard for American leadership. If anything, it sounds more like the activist advisers around President Barack Obama, such as Samantha Power, his ambassador to the United Nations, who pushed for more intervention to protect civilians in various conflict zones, often to no avail.

Just as likely, analysts said, neither Mr. Tillerson nor Mr. Spicer really meant it or, possibly, fully understood the potentially far-reaching consequences of what they were saying. Unlike chemical weapons, barrel bombs — typically oil drums filled with explosives — are used with vicious regularity in the Syrian civil war. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the government dropped 495 barrel bombs in March alone, and 12,958 in 2016.

By the end of the day Monday, fearing that a new “red line” had been drawn, the White House sought to unwind Mr. Spicer’s comment. “Nothing has changed in our posture,” officials said in a statement emailed to reporters. “The president retains the option to act in Syria against the Assad regime whenever it is in the national interest, as was determined following that government’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump’s action in Syria proves he is not in league with Putin, says his son Eric

The Telegraph reports: Donald Trump’s decision to launch a cruise missile attack on Syria proved he is not in league with Russia and will not be “pushed around” by Vladimir Putin, the US President’s son has told The Daily Telegraph.

Eric Trump said his father was not intimidated by President Putin’s talk of war, and there would be “no-one harder” than President Trump if they “cross us”.

He also confirmed that President Trump’s decision to bomb a Syrian airbase to punish President Bashar al-Assad for a nerve gas attack last week was influenced by the reaction of his sister Ivanka, who said she was “heartbroken and outraged” by the atrocity. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

North Korea ‘ready for war’ after U.S. redeploys navy strike team

The Guardian reports: North Korea has warned of “catastrophic consequences” in response to any further provocations by the US, days after a US navy battle group was sent to waters off the Korean peninsula.

The decision to divert the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and other battleships from a planned visit to Australia to the western Pacific came after tensions increased over ongoing military drills involving American and South Korean forces that Pyongyang regards as a dress rehearsal for an invasion.

“We will hold the US wholly accountable for the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by its outrageous actions,” North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying. “(North Korea) is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the US.”

The spokesman cited Washington’s refusal to rule out a pre-emptive strike against North Korean missile sites as justification for its nuclear programme.

“The prevailing grave situation proves once again that (North Korea) was entirely just when it increased in every way its military capabilities for self-defence and pre-emptive attack with a nuclear force as a pivot,” the spokesman said, according to KCNA.

“We will take the toughest counteraction against the provocateurs in order to defend ourselves by powerful force of arms.”

Last week’s US strike against a Syrian base is also being seen as a warning to North Korea, after Donald Trump said Washington was prepared to act alone if China failed to exert more pressure on its neighbour to halt its missile and nuclear weapons programmes. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. official: Russia knew Syrian chemical attack was coming

The Associated Press reports: The United States has concluded Russia knew in advance of Syria’s chemical weapons attack last week, a senior U.S. official said Monday.

The official said a drone operated by Russians was flying over a hospital as victims of the attack were rushing to get treatment. Hours after the drone left, a Russian-made fighter jet bombed the hospital in what American officials believe was an attempt to cover up the usage of chemical weapons.

The senior official said the U.S. has no proof of Russian involvement in the actual chemical attack in northern Syria.

But the official said the presence of the surveillance drone over the hospital couldn’t have been a coincidence, and that Russia must have known the chemical weapons attack was coming and that victims were seeking treatment.

The official, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on intelligence matters and demanded anonymity, didn’t give precise timing for when the drone was in the area, where more than 80 people were killed. The official also didn’t provide details for the military and intelligence information that form the basis of what the Pentagon now believes.

Another U.S. official cautioned that no final American determination has been made that Russia knew ahead of time that chemical weapons would be used. That official wasn’t authorized to speak about internal administration deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The allegation of Russian foreknowledge is grave, even by the standards of the currently dismal U.S.-Russian relations.

Although Russia has steadfastly supported Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, and they’ve coordinated military attacks together, Washington has never previously accused Moscow of complicity in any attack that involved the gassing of innocent civilians, including children. The former Cold War foes even worked together in 2013 to remove and destroy more than 1,300 tons of Syrian chemical weapons and agents.

Until Monday, U.S. officials had said they weren’t sure whether Russia or Syria operated the drone. The official said the U.S. is now convinced Russia controlled the drone. The official said it still isn’t clear who was flying the jet that bombed the hospital, because the Syrians also fly Russian-made aircraft. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Obama’s Syria mistake is now Trump’s problem

Nader Hashemi writes: Two positive developments can be discerned from the Tomahawk missile attack on Syria.

First, Bashar Al-Assad will have to think twice about using chemical weapons again. Donald Trump has drawn his own red line in Syria, and there is now a price to be paid — assuming Trump keeps his word — for dropping sarin gas on civilians.

Secondly, we are now all talking about Syria. Before the missile strike, the general assumption was that Syria no longer mattered. The fall of Aleppo meant that Assad, and his Iranian/Russian allies, had won the war as a fait accompli.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said last week that a new “political reality” had emerged in Syria “that we have to accept.” But do we?

The conflict in Syria is a global problem, back at the top of the international agenda, while another American president grapples with its complexity.

President Obama’s gross miscalculation in 2013 was to wager that the conflict could be contained within Syria’s borders. Reflecting a widely held realpolitik view at the time, political scientist John Mearsheimer argued that Syria did not affect the core strategic interests of the West and was of “little importance for American security.”

Looking back, we can see how misguided this assessment was. It was arguably the biggest foreign policy miscalculation of the Obama presidency. Not only has the Syrian conflict deeply destabilized the Middle East, but its ripple effects have dramatically re-shaped politics around the world, including the domestic politics of the United States. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Russia and Assad regime escalate bombing — U.S. offers no response

Scott Lucas reports: Russia and the Assad regime have escalated already-intense bombing of northwest Syria, using incendiary munitions, two days after the US struck a regime airbase for the first time in the six-year conflict.

Russian and regime warplanes bombed at least 10 towns and villages across Idlib Province and northern Hama Province. Videos testified to the use of the incendiary material, such as thermite, to start large fires.

Khan Sheikhoun — the town in Idlib Province which was attacked by the regime with chemical weapons last Tuesday, killing more than 100 people and prompting Friday’s US response — was struck again. Contact was lost with residents in Saraqeb amid heavy attacks. Latamneh, bombed twice with chlorine in recent weeks, was targeted.

Sunday’s attacks continued the defiance of Washington after the US fired 59 Tomahawk missiles on the Shayrat airbase, from which the warplane carrying the chemical weapons — a hybrid of a nerve agent and chlorine — took off. On Saturday, the regime renewed strikes across Idlib Province, killing 19 people in the town of Urum al-Jouz alone and hitting Khan Sheikhoun. It also proclaimed loudly that flights from Shayrat had resumed.

A resident of Urum al-Jouz, noting that there are no military targets in the area, summarized, “There has been an undeniable escalation in this area and the Idlib countryside as a whole since the US airstrikes. If anything, they’ve made matters worse and have led Russia and the regime to increase their airstrikes.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Kremlin, angry at Syria missile strike, says Putin won’t meet Tillerson

Reuters reports: The Kremlin said on Monday that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will not meet President Vladimir Putin when he visits Moscow on Wednesday, a move that could point to tensions over a U.S. missile attack on a Syrian air base last week.

John Kerry, Tillerson’s predecessor, often met Putin as well as the Russian foreign minister when he visited Moscow, and Putin granted several audiences to the Texan when he ran oil major Exxon Mobil before taking his current job.

Putin even personally awarded Tillerson a top Russian state award — the Order of Friendship — in 2013, and it was widely expected that the former oilman would meet Putin on what is his first trip to Russia as secretary of state.

But Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Monday that no such meeting was planned, suggesting Tillerson will follow strict diplomatic protocol and only meet his direct counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

McMaster: U.S. eager for regime change in Syria

Politico reports: White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster says that while the U.S. would push for regime change in Syria, “We’re not the ones who are going to effect that change.”

“What we’re saying is, other countries have to ask themselves some hard questions,” McMaster said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “Russia should ask themselves, ‘What are we doing here?’ Why are we supporting this murderous regime that is committing mass murder of its own population and using the most heinous weapons available?’”

McMaster characterized Thursday’s U.S. airstrike on a Syrian airfield as an opportunity for Russia to reevaluate its continued support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, adding that addressing both Assad’s actions and routing ISIS could be done simultaneously.

“I think, as you saw with the strike, that there has to be a degree of simultaneous activity as well as sequencing of the defeat of ISIS first,” McMaster said. “What you have in Syria is a very destructive cycle of violence, perpetuated by ISIS, obviously, but also by this regime and their Iranian and Russian sponsors.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Spicer adds ‘barrel bombs’ to the list of reasons the U.S. could again attack Syria

The Washington Post reports: The United States is prepared to again take action against the Syrian government if it continues to use chemical weapons and barrel bombs, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday. The use of barrel bombs — crude munitions often forbidden by international law — has become a near daily occurrence in war-torn Syria, so taking action each time one is dropped would mark a dramatic shift in strategy and would quickly escalate U.S. involvement in Syria.

Although Spicer lumped barrel bombs in the same category as chemical weapons on three separate occasions during a Monday briefing with reporters, he later insisted that his comments should not be interpreted as a change in U.S. policy.

“Nothing has changed in our posture,” Spicer said in a statement late Monday afternoon. “The president retains the option to act in Syria against the Assad regime whenever it is in the national interest, as was determined following that government’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens. And as the president has repeatedly made clear, he will not be telegraphing his military responses.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump aide drew plan on napkin to partition Libya into three

The Guardian reports: A senior White House foreign policy official has pushed a plan to partition Libya, and once drew a picture of how the country could be divided into three areas on a napkin in a meeting with a senior European diplomat, the Guardian has learned.

Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Donald Trump under pressure over his past ties with Hungarian far-right groups, suggested the idea of partition in the weeks leading up to the US president’s inauguration, according to an official with knowledge of the matter. The European diplomat responded that this would be “the worst solution” for Libya.

Gorka is vying for the job of presidential special envoy to Libya in a White House that has so far spent little time thinking about the country and has yet to decide whether to create such a post. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Tillerson, on eve of Russia trip, takes hard line on Syria

The New York Times reports: Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson is taking a hard line against Russia on the eve of his first diplomatic trip to Moscow, calling the country “incompetent” for allowing Syria to hold on to chemical weapons and accusing Russia of trying to influence elections in Europe using the same methods it employed in the United States.

Mr. Tillerson’s comments, made in interviews aired on Sunday, were far more critical of the Russian government than any public statements by President Trump, who has been an increasingly lonely voice for better ties with Russia. They seemed to reflect Mr. Tillerson’s expectation, which he has expressed privately to aides and members of Congress, that the American relationship with Russia is already reverting to the norm: one of friction, distrust and mutual efforts to undermine each other’s reach.

“This was inevitable,” said Philip H. Gordon, a former Middle East coordinator at the National Security Council who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Trump’s early let’s-be-friends initiative was incompatible with our interests, and you knew it would end with tears.” The Russians’ behavior has not changed, Mr. Gordon added, and they “are using every means they can — cyber, economic arrangements, intimidation — to reinsert themselves around the Middle East and Europe.”

Mr. Tillerson made it clear he agreed with that view, sweeping past Mr. Trump’s repeated insistence, despite the conclusion of American intelligence agencies, that there was no evidence of Russian interference in last year’s election. The meddling “undermines any hope of improving relations,” Mr. Tillerson said on ABC’s “This Week,” “not just with the United States, but it’s pretty evident that they’re taking similar tactics into electoral processes throughout Europe.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail