How Unusual Was the Trump Administration’s Reversal on Syria?

“We need unpredictability,” then-candidate Donald Trump once told The New York Times while discussing his ideal foreign policy. More recently, the president told reporters: “I like to think of myself as a very flexible person. I don’t have to have one specific way, and if the world changes, I go the same way.”

So far, the president seems to be living up to those standards. Trump has a long track record of arguing against U.S. military intervention in Syria. Yet despite that, the president ordered a missile strike targeting a Syrian military airfield on Thursday evening. The United States carried out the strike in retaliation for what officials claim was Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians in a recent attack.

Within the span of a week, the administration also appeared to reverse its Assad’s fate “will be decided by the Syrian people.” But by Thursday afternoon, in the wake of the chemical attack, Tillerson that “steps are under way” to organize an international coalition to remove the Syrian leader. Making it difficult to discern precisely what that meant, however, Tillerson told reporters after Thursday’s missile launch not to “extrapolate” any “change in our policy or position relative to our military activities in Syria.”