More questions than answers

The National Interest published my piece on the White House warning on chemical weapons  only yesterday under a headline I didn’t like. Here are the first few paragraphs:

Monday night [June 26] the White House issued a warning to President Assad that if “Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.” U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley added that the White House message was also intended for Assad’s Russian and Iranian allies. The warning raises more questions than it answers.

There was initially some question about the intelligence suggesting a new chemical attack was under preparation, and it has not been made public. The Pentagon and White House have, however, confirmed its existence and claimed proper interagency assessments were done, albeit in haste due the apparent imminence of an attack. Those who remember the Tonkin Gulf incident (an alleged attack on a U.S. warships that precipitated enhanced intervention in Vietnam in 1964) may still have doubts.

Why issue a public warning? Diplomatic statements of this sort are more often issued privately, in part to avoid the kind of problem Obama faced after his “red line” chemical weapons statement against Syria in 2012, when a year later it became clear that Congress might not approve military action. In 1992 for example, President George H. W. Bush issued a secret and personal Christmas Day warning to Slobodan Milosevic not to attack Kosovo, one reissued later by President Clinton. Those statements are often credited with holding the Serbian autocrat off for several years.

A public warning may have more weight, if only because it brings into the equation the Obama example and the issue of U.S. credibility. But the Trump administration warning to Assad was not issued by the president himself but rather by the press secretary, which detracts from what otherwise might have been its diplomatic weight. It was also issued only a few days after a Central Command spokesperson suggested that cooperation with Assad and his allied forces in attacking the Islamic State in eastern Syria would be welcome. Was that a purposeful “carrot” followed by a “stick,” or was it just lack of coordination and consequent confusion?

Precisely what the statement means is open to question. [Please go to How to Play Diplomatic Dodgeball with Bashar al-Assad | The National Interest for the rest.]