Even the outdated Tomahawk missiles did the job yesterday: the airfield from which chemical weapons had been launched on 4 April is no more.
But then we already knew the US had the technical capability to do that sort of thing. No surprise there.
The surprise came from elsewhere: first, from those 49 cruise missiles having been launched in the first place; second, from President Trump’s comments.
Trump ended his televised statement with the de rigueur slogan “God bless America!” I’m still waiting for a British prime minister to match that rhetorical device by shouting “God bless Britain!”. Until that happens, I’ll continue to regard that customary tagline as slightly infra dig and theologically unsound.
For the implication is that America isn’t just blessed, but uniquely blessed. This assumption of divine exclusivity goes back to 1630, when the first batch of English settlers colonised Massachusetts Bay.
Their leader, the Puritan lawyer John Winthrop, delivered an oration in which he alluded to Matthew 5: 14 by describing the new community as a “city upon a hill”, contextually making its inhabitants “the light of this world”.
In the secular context this allusion can be interpreted in various ways. For example, that America’s unique virtue sets a shining example for the world to follow. Or else that, if some parts of the world are slow on the uptake, they may be urged to follow the example by the use of military chastisement.
An allusion to the “city upon a hill” could justify isolationism or interventionism or any combination thereof. Yet every pronouncement hitherto made by President Trump has suggested that he understands America’s God-given exclusivity in isolationist terms.
Various variations on this theme have been ever-present in his speeches, and his “God bless America!” has always implied that the rest of the world can go bless itself.
But this speech was different. For the obligatory ending turned out not to be the end. Trump made a slight pause and added “And God bless the whole world!”
This wasn’t just rhetoric. It was a complete about-face in US foreign policy over the last decade. Combined with the attack on the offensive airfield, it also means that Trump has abandoned his pragmatic focus on America’s self-interest (simplistically understood) in favour of her more traditional moral proselytism.
He’s now prepared to use American muscle to enforce certain moral standards internationally. One such standard is that there exists a valid moral difference between killing people with explosives and doing so with chemical weapons.
I’m not sure what to make of this. Let’s just say that my enthusiasm about this use of cruise missiles as a disciplining rod is less unequivocal than that of, say, Benjamin Netanyahu.
To begin with, it’s largely America’s neocon-inspired proselytism that got us in trouble to begin with. Had George W. Bush with Blair in tow not launched the 2003 attempt to bring democracy to the Middle East, local tyrants like Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad and Mubarak might have kept a lid on the bubbling Islamic passions.
The blood-soaked mess we’re seeing today and will see more of tomorrow mainly springs from the Americans’ unshakeable belief that their way is the best and only way. Even now, when the calamitous consequences of their proselytism are there for all to see, one hears the neocons insisting that the 2003 foray was unimpeachable in principle, if poorly executed.
I’m not trying to suggest that, having assumed the geopolitical and moral duties of world leadership, America should now abandon them. Nor is she able to do so, for such a turn-around would mean reversing not just some policy but America’s entire mentality guiding her dealings with “the whole world”.
Ever since the first decades of the nineteenth century, America has pursued a policy aimed at supplanting, and ideally destroying, the British Empire as the world’s dominant force. In that undertaking the US has succeeded so thoroughly that the attendant mentality has penetrated the nation’s genome. And this is one area in which genetic modification would be lethal.
There’s a fine balance to be struck, but I’m not sure that Trump can strike it (we already know that the neocons can’t). At his press conference he was too emotional for my taste, too impressed by the footage of chemically poisoned babies.
Don’t get me wrong: such footage should make any normal person respond emotionally. But a president of the United States isn’t any old normal person. What he does or even says may well determine whether the whole world will be blessed by God or, temporarily at least, damned by Satan.
One would like to see a more rational response, especially since this action puts the US on a collision course with a criminal nuclear power, Putin’s Russia. Trump has pushed his chips to the middle of the table. Is he bluffing or is he ready to confront Putin in the Middle East? Is he even aware that a huge potential for confrontation exists?
What if the Russians assume there’s merely a bluff under way and call it? Make no mistake about it: if Trump isn’t prepared to go all out, America will lose her world status overnight – with disastrous ramifications.
When Trump made it known that he was considering the military option, the two sides exchanged warnings.
Vladimir Safronkov, deputy Russian ambassador to the UN, had said: “We are receiving… direct signals that such a military action is being prepared. Moreover, we’re surprised that no one has posed a question about the possible consequences.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson set the stage for his 12 April visit to Moscow by issuing a veiled warning of his own: “It is very important that the Russian Government consider carefully their continued support for the Assad regime.”
Meanwhile the Russians have suffered a major embarrassment. Their much-vaunted S-400 AA missiles were installed in Syria last October to much fanfare. Their specific role was to “close the skies above Syrian airfields”. Well, they haven’t, have they?
Will Putin swallow his pride? Or will he respond in kind? The world may well be on the brink, and ideally one would wish that the two key players weren’t a foreign-policy virgin capable of neither subtlety nor depth and a fascist dictator with global ambitions.
Oh well, to continue the gambling metaphor, we play the cards we’re dealt.