In a major speech on Jan. 12, 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson outlined the areas inside Southeast Asia where, under the administration of President Harry Truman, the U.S. would adopt a strategy of containment. Among those areas excluded from the policy was South Korea. A loyal American ally, Acheson did not commit to defending South Korea because it was not seen as a vital strategic asset to the U.S.
This announcement gave then-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin the impression he had been given a green light to encourage fellow communist state North Korea to initiate an attack on the south, which would ultimately take place in late June. But it soon became clear they were under the wrong impression. The north's invasion of South Korea served to make the Truman administration increasingly aware of the political and psychological ramifications of the stated U.S. policy on the standing of the American superpower and would lead to its massive intervention in the war on the Korean Peninsula, with the approval of the U.N.
Now, 68 years after the break out of the Korean War, Russian President Vladmir Putin appears to have fallen victim to a similar thought process, although this time in a different region of the world. Indeed, the totality of signals coming out of Washington on U.S. President Donald Trump's intentions of pulling out of Syria, seem to have convinced Putin that the U.S. is determined to pull out of Syria and advance its isolationist agenda. Assuming Russia does have full control over the actions of the Syrian Army, one can conclude that Moscow interpreted American passivity and apathy as tacit approval of the repeated crossing of red lines in Syria and as a result, allowed his protégé in Damascus to carry out a murderous chemical weapons attack on helpless civilians.
But just as North Korea's conventional attack, encouraged by the Soviet Union, on the South in 1950 lead to a change in U.S. policy, U.S. President Donald Trump now also appears to be on the verge of authorizing the use of military force against the Kremlin's Syrian henchmen, albeit on a wider scale than the U.S. military strike on the Syrian air base used to launch a deadly chemical attack one year ago.
One must remember that along with Trump's original willingness to accept an Assad victory in the Syrian civil war and Russian dominance in the region, U.S. ties with Moscow are rapidly deteriorating. The administration has joined other Western countries in taking punitive steps against Moscow in response to the poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England and has also imposed new sanctions on a number of Russian oligarchs.
When Moscow decided to allow Assad to act with impunity, it provided the U.S. administration with a window of opportunity with which to complete the reassessment of its ties with the Putin regime and send a strong message to other rogue players like Iran and North Korea.
And just as the Truman administration was able to consolidate a broad coalition of forces in Korea in June 1960, current conditions would provide legitimacy to military action in Syria. Calls in London, Paris, Riyadh and, of course, Jerusalem for something to be done reflect a longing for decisive American leadership. Together with the appointment of new National Security Adviser John Bolton, who is known for his hawkish views on Moscow, the conditions seem to be ripe for the creation of a new American global strategy to meet the challenges that lie ahead.
