Donald Trump repeatedly moaned about the way in which President Obama let slip that US-supported forces were planning to attack the ISIS-held city of Mosul. That the attack involved coordination with not just the Iraqi government and army, but multiple militia factions, and that it required putting tens of thousands of forces in place along with their supplies and equipment, in a area that doesn’t exactly lend itself to sneak attacks, never seemed to dim Trump’s enthusiasm for being “unpredictable.”
And Donald Trump apparently still loves to be unpredictable … so unpredictable, he’s leaving his own government guessing what he wants to do.
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.
Rex Tillerson says one thing. Nikki Haley says another. Sean Spicer delivers a third version of “truth.” But then, Spicer has also said that he doesn’t want a “monolithical kind of thought process.” He seems to be getting his wish.
All of which seems to boil down to the same thing: No one knows what Trump might do next. If unpredictability is the goal, he’s certainly achieved it. Like a creepy clown at a kid’s birthday party, no one is sure if he’s about to break out the balloon animals or an axe.
The resulting vacuum has left world leaders and American lawmakers scratching their heads over how the United States will proceed now that it has taken direct action against Mr. Assad’s government for the first time in Syria’s six-year-old civil war.
No one seems to think that Trump is engaged in an internal game of 11-dimensional chess. Because the swings in policy Trump is making are so wild, they don’t reveal any doctrine, strategy, or internal consistency.
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.
Note that barrel bombs are not chemical weapons, but cheap, unguided explosives often dropped from helicopters. Where each of the Tomahawk missiles the US sent into the Syrian air base cost $1.4 million to replace, a barrel bomb costs in the neighborhood of $200—the IED of the air. Syrian government forces dropped almost 13,000 barrel bombs in 2016. If the United States is going to respond to the use of that kind of weapon, involvement is Syria will ramp up quickly and exponentially.
But Spicer’s declaration shouldn’t be taken as an indication of policy. Neither should Tillerson’s.
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.
For that matter, the things that Trump says should also not be taken as policy. Because there is no policy.
Surprise.