PALM BEACH, Fla. — In the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s surprise strikes on Syria, his allies and adversaries have searched for some broader meaning in his decision.
Is Trump now a humanitarian interventionist, willing to wield American military power when foreign governments threaten their own citizens? Is he a commander in chief who once warned against intervention in Syria but is now prepared to plunge the United States deeper into the conflict? Is he turning on Russia, one of Syria’s most important patrons, after months of flirting with closer U.S. ties with Moscow?
Trump would say he’s simply flexible, an emerging foreign policy doctrine that leaves room for evolution and uncertainty.
“I don’t have to have one specific way, and if the world changes, I go the same way, I don’t change,” Trump said Wednesday, a day after the chemical weapons attack in Syria that compelled him to order airstrikes against a government air base. “Well, I do change and I am flexible, and I’m proud of that flexibility.”
Allies in the Middle East and Europe who panned Trump’s efforts to ban Syrian refugees from the United States cheered his decision to strike against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s military after viewing images of young children killed in the chemical attacks. Yet they did so without any clear guidance from Washington on the next steps in Syria.
Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said the United States was willing to take more action against Assad, while White House officials cautioned that the strikes did not signal a broader shift in U.S. policy.
Mark Feierstein, who served in the National Security Council under President Barack Obama, said it’s difficult to glean a direction for U.S. policy from Trump’s actions in Syria because Trump “is not moored to any coherent ideology or set of ideas.”
But for some of Trump’s supporters, ideological elasticity is a virtue for a president who took office with no practical foreign policy experience. They say it gives the former real estate mogul breathing room to learn on the job and accept advice from seasoned advisers.
“I think as time goes on, every day that has passed, he more and more has understood the gravity of U.S. leadership,” said GOP Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Trump ran for office as a Republican but has few ties to the party’s traditionally conservative philosophy. He often has relied on his flexibility as a way to reassure Americans that some of his more unconventional and controversial proposals were merely suggestions.
Yet on some issues, he has shown a willingness to follow through. He has ordered construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and signed executive orders banning entry to the U.S. for people from some majority Muslim countries.
