On the hundredth anniversary of the United States declaring war on Germany, the United States tonight declared a de facto war on Syria. In retaliation to reports that the Assad regime had, again, launched a chemical attack on its own people, the United States launched cruise missiles at the military base that the chemical attacks had allegedly been launched from. The target was reportedly the facility itself, not at people in particular. Still though, in launching this attack, the United States by default declared itself at war with the Assad regime, even if President Trump did not go to Congress for a declaration of war as stipulated by the Constitution.
I am not going to waste words grousing about the lack of a declaration of war from Congress. The United States has not officially declared war on anyone since 1941. What I am concerned about are the international ramifications that such an act could wrought.
The United States has been in and out of the Middle East for decades now. The region has been a hotbed of unrest since the end of World War II, with many nations in the region at times either openly hostile to the United States, mainly for supporting Israel, or at best enjoyed a cool relationship as Western nations lined the pockets of Arabs sitting on vast reserves of oil. There is a stark difference between past actions in the area and now, however.
In 1991 when the United States sent its military into Kuwait to liberate the nation from an Iraqi invasion, it did so with broad international support and the knowledge that Saddam Hussein did not have any friends. In 2003, when the United States overthrew Hussein for good, it did so again safe in the knowledge that there would be no broad international retaliation. In the nearly fifteen years since, though, things have changed in the Middle East. Assad is not like Saddam Hussein. Assad has friends in Tehran and even more worrisome, in Moscow.
When revolts exploded across the Arab world in 2011, they did so without much more than tacit help from Washington. The Obama administration was content to let events occur as they would after having promised to pull out of the region following the second Iraq conflict. With war rampaging across the region and without American influence to steer the conflicts one way or the other, the region, Syria in particular, fragmented.
The Syrian Civil War has been going since 2011 and involves four main groups in Syria and Iraq. There is the Assad regime, the rebels, the Kurds, and the Islamic State. In the power vacuum left in the region by the pullout of American troops from Iraq in that same year, other nations saw an opportunity to advance their own national interests by getting involved in the conflict.
Towards the end of the Obama administration, Russia and Iran began to take an active hand propping up the Assad regime. As a result, Assad has grown more emboldened and has turned the tide against the rebels, even using chemical weapons against them. Assad committed these atrocities despite a warning from President Obama in 2012 that such barbarism would bring certain retaliation from the United States in his "red line" speech. When the United States did nothing even after the Assad regime went ahead and used chemical weapons on the rebels repeatedly during President Obama's second term, it is not hard to imagine that Assad thought he could act with impunity. Being backed by Moscow would have certainly helped.
In a way, President Trump is just fulfilling a threat that President Obama made but never carried out. It would have been much easier to accomplish this in 2013 when the chemical attacks first started though. Since then, Russia has gotten entangled in the region and allied itself to the Assad regime. In attacking the military base, the United States directly attacked a Russian ally.
It is hard to know exactly what happens next. But if history is a lesson, then there could be grim consequences for this attack.
The situation is similar to the Balkan crisis in 1914. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary was assassinated, Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and gave them an ultimatum. When Serbia did not comply, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Serbia, however, was an ally of Russia, who felt the need to protect its Slavic brothers and sisters from the Germanic nations. Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary in retaliation. Germany declared war on Russia for declaring war on Austria-Hungary. For good measure, Germany also declared war on France preemptively and drew the United Kingdom into the fray by invading Belgium.
All it takes is one diplomatic crisis in a volatile region to plunge the world into the depths of war. Syria might not be a Slavic cousin of Russia, but Vladimir Putin is not a person who would let an attack on one of his allies go unnoticed. In the past three years, Russia has grown emboldened too, annexing parts of the Ukraine, threatening the Baltic states, and asserting its power in the Middle East. Putin has spent the last seventeen years finding ways to expand Russian influence in ways not seen since the Soviet Union collapsed. It is unlikely that he would be willing to give up on that so easily just because the United States is more belligerent now under President Trump than it had been under President Obama.
Drawing the United States into a larger conflict with Russia is a risk that this administration ran when it attacked the Assad regime. It needs to be prepared for the consequences if Vladimir Putin decides he has too much at stake in growing Russia's prestige globally to allow him to back down against the United States.
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