How to Play Diplomatic Dodgeball with Bashar al-Assad

Daniel Serwer

Security, Middle East

A public red-line warning to Assad has more weight because it brings into the equation the issue of U.S. credibility.

Monday night the White House issued a warning to President Assad that if “Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.” U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley added that the White House message was also intended for Assad’s Russian and Iranian allies. The warning raises more questions than it answers.

There was initially some question about the intelligence suggesting a new chemical attack was under preparation, and it has not been made public. The Pentagon and White House have, however, confirmed its existence and claimed proper interagency assessments were done, albeit in haste due the apparent imminence of an attack. Those who remember the Tonkin Gulf incident (an alleged attack on a U.S. warships that precipitated enhanced intervention in Vietnam in 1964) may still have doubts.

Why issue a public warning? Diplomatic statements of this sort are more often issued privately, in part to avoid the kind of problem Obama faced after his “red line” chemical weapons statement against Syria in 2012, when a year later it became clear that Congress might not approve military action. In 1992 for example, President George H. W. Bush issued a secret and personal Christmas Day warning to Slobodan Milosevic not to attack Kosovo, one reissued later by President Clinton. Those statements are often credited with holding the Serbian autocrat off for several years.

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