WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is suddenly warning would-be foes and touting its leader as a no-nonsense commander in chief, after focusing exclusively on domestic policy for its first 77 days.
Last week, the White House was still very much concentrated on health care, a tax overhaul and other domestic agenda items. It held special advance briefings on Trump’s summit with his Chinese counterpart, addressing trade and his use of the Congressional Review Act. It centered on U.S. jobs and on rolling back Obama-era regulations to give a boost — as the administration contends — to the American economy. Trump’s aides were very much in a mode to enact his “America First” agenda, pushing his efforts to “rebuild our country,” as the president himself often puts it.
Then, with a single order on Thursday evening, the White House was transformed.
The inward-focused administration with the isolationist president had broken with key allies by signaling that Syrian President Bashar Assad did not necessarily have to relinquish power. But over 72 hours, after Trump viewed images of babies killed by what the U.S. said was an Assad-ordered gas attack in Syria, the domestic-focused White House began flexing its muscles. It launched a salvo of Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase.
By Monday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was talking tough during his press briefing. “When you watch babies and children being gassed and suffer under barrel bombs, you are instantaneously moved to action,” Trump’s chief spokesman said. “I think this president has made it very clear that if those actions were to continue, further action will definitely be considered by the United States.”
Policy experts have their own take on the new tack. “Talking tough, be it on domestic matters or on foreign policy, only succeeds if you have results to show from it,” said Christine Wormuth, a former Pentagon policy chief, now at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies. “If you talk tough and fail to back it up, the credibility of the United States is diminished. If you act and things don’t go well, it can have tremendous consequences.”
Senior aides say Trump is prepared, if provoked, to act militarily again in Syria. They are also talking tough with a message for other would-be foes such as Iran, Russia and North Korea: If you test this new president, he is prepared to strike.
“So what the president chooses to do — I hope that what Iran sees, and Syria sees, and Russia sees is that this is a president that’s not afraid to act,” said Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
To that end, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had a message for the North’s defiant leader, Kim Jong Un. “I think the message that any nation can take is if you violate international norms, if you violate international agreements, if you fail to live up to commitments, if you become a threat to others, at some point a response is likely to be undertaken,” Tillerson said Sunday. “And I think in terms of North Korea, we have been very clear that our objective is a denuclearized Korean peninsula.”