We should pay heed to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons finding on Wednesday that Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons against three civilian targets in 2017.
This is a wake-up call. Assad continues to retain chemical weapons stocks, delivery systems, and the strategic rationale for using them. He will use them again if allowed to believe, as he does now, that he can do so without significant cost.
The OPCW’s report is clear, outlining both the units responsible for these attacks and the means of their action. And it clarifies that “attacks of such a strategic nature would have only taken place on the basis of orders from the higher authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic military command,” which is to say, Assad. Although the OPCW does not, I would add here that Russia also bears direct culpability for these attacks. That’s because Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government controls Assad’s conduct in operations such as chemical weapons strikes where the risk of significant international blowback is real. Russia must have given Assad a wink of approval for these attacks to have occurred.
We mustn’t look at this report as a simple documenting of history.
The U.S. government knows that Assad, again, used chemical weapons against his civilian population in May 2019. But where President Trump has twice formerly, in 2017, and 2018, held Assad to account for these explicit breaches of his red lines against chemical weapons usage, last May’s attack was met with American silence.
That’s a big problem for three reasons.
First, because chemical weapons attacks are one area of Assad and Russia’s war on the Syrian people where America can continue to make a real difference. The Assad-Iranian-Russian war alliance is shaped by a discriminate war against civilians and the infrastructure they rely on to survive. So, where America can help save lives without significant cost or risk to our own interests, we should do so.
But this failure to act also undermines America’s word in the very same way as President Barack Obama’s 2013 red-line collapse against Assad did. In the absence of our adversaries understanding that we will hold them accountable for the things we say we will hold them accountable for, we endanger our broader security interests globally. This takes on a particular importance in the coronavirus context. After all, the chaos that the coronavirus has inflicted on elements of our national power such as with the USS Theodore Roosevelt risks our enemies believing we lack the means of and resolve for their continuing restraint.
Trump’s new silence in the face of Assad’s atrocities sends a message to China and Russia that he is, perhaps, not as resolute as they might previously have thought. Trump’s silence also sits incompatible with his more resolute rejection of Russian aggression in other areas of Syria.
This new weakness is an issue for another reason: It misses a critical opportunity to exert leverage on Assad. His economy in a free fall and his access to foreign capital severely restricted, the dictator isn’t exactly in a strong position to resist new pressure, even if it comes in a primarily nonmilitary form. This is a time to put pressure on Assad, not take it off.
Ultimately, Trump is the one who any action depends upon. Assad is protected at the U.N. Security Council by Putin’s veto power. And Britain and France aside, the Europeans are good only for hot air. But Trump can and should act here. And the OPCW has given him a new reason to do so.
