Amidst the day-to-day crises and chaos that characterise the Trump presidency, this week will stand out as the moment Donald Trump came to grips with his responsibility as US commander-in-chief.
Standing alongside King Abdullah of Jordan in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, Trump gave his strongest warning yet that he was considering military action in Syria as he said that "many, many lines" had been crossed by Tuesday's chemical attack in the war-ravaged country.
By Thursday the US position had hardened even more, with secretary of state Rex Tillerson stating that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad must go and the US was weighing military options.
The prospect of US intervention in the conflict has emerged despite Trump's previous opposition to intervention in Syria. "Do NOT attack Syria, fix USA," Trump tweeted in 2013 as the Obama red line controversy was raging. As late as last week the White House said it had accepted the "political reality" that the Syrian president had power, abandoning the long-held US policy that Assad should go.
Is this simply an extraordinary U-turn by the US president?
Centenary
Stranger things have happened. This week marks the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into the first World War, a centenary being marked by exhibitions across the country.
Viewed through the prism of history, there is an inevitability about America's entry into the global conflict, but at the time it was anything but. Save for the brief Spanish-American war in 1898 the declaration of war on Germany on April 6th, 1917 marked the first time America entered an international conflict. With memories of their own bitter civil war 50 years earlier still fresh, there was scant appetite among Americans to become embroiled in a war taking place thousands of miles away.
Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic president who was to lead America into the war, in fact had campaigned on a platform of neutrality during the presidential election of 1916. But months later – and despite calls from the powerful Irish-American lobby in the Democratic party for the country not to fight alongside Britain – the US president asked Congress's permission to go to war. The change of heart was due to Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, and a secret request by Germany that Mexico side with it in exchange for help in reclaiming territory previously lost to America.
Interventionism
America’s entry into the war paved the way for the Allied victory but also marked the emergence of a new 20th-century American foreign policy based on interventionism for the cause of democracy and morality rather than simply strategic interest. The seeds of the “American Century” – for good or for bad – had been sown.
Before this week, Trump had promised a new US foreign policy doctrine, based on retrenchment and isolation. His “America First” policy viewed involvement in foreign conflicts as transactional – necessary only if it helped American interests. This strategic approach to foreign policy appeared to crumble this week when Trump was confronted with the terrible images of death and suffering in Syria.
In many ways this is admirable. The president – always the tough man, always the bully – appeared humbled as he spoke of the impact of the pictures, and how they had changed his mind about Assad. For once the public saw a different side to the US president – proof, as his advisors are keen to stress, that the president has a “big heart”.
Erratic
But Trump is not a regular individual, but the president of the United States. His words matter.
His alarming U-turn on Syria reflects the erratic, impulsive approach to policymaking that has characterised the most inexperienced occupant of the White House in generations. Whatever the failings of Obama’s policy on Syria and reluctance to act when Assad crossed the “red line” of using chemical weapons against his own people in 2013, there are no easy answers to the conflict in Syria, particularly as the system of alliances has grown more complex in the absence of Western intervention.
Main ally
Not least is the role of Russia. As Russia is Assad's main ally, with personnel and weapons on the ground in Syria, top of the US concerns will how any military intervention will impact Russia.
Trump would do well to hark back to the lessons of a century ago. Despite his noble ideals, Woodrow Wilson’s grand idea of global peace after the first World War, embodied by the League of Nations, ended in failure, as the world headed to war 20 years later. As America was to learn to its peril throughout the second half of the 20th century, actions have consequences. The world will be hoping that Trump has thought through the consequences as he mulls military intervention in the six-year-old Syrian conflict.