Lessons From the 'Red Line' Crisis

For many of us who were in the United States government in 2013, when the images of women and children writhing in pain in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta first brought the United States to the brink of airstrikes against the Syrian government, watching as 59 Tomahawk missiles were fired into a regime airbase in Homs was at once cathartic and not entirely satisfying.

I’m glad it happened. I’m supportive. But where do we go from here?

The aftermath of the strikes underscores what we knew in 2013 would be true even if Congress had acted quickly to give President Obama the authorization he’d asked for: No single military act could ever solve Syria. The brushback pitch of missile strikes may deter Assad from using chemical weapons again anytime soon, but the rapidity with which the airfield in Homs was reused to kill innocent people by conventional means was a real-time reminder of something the Obama administration both conceded and argued at the time: just how ephemeral the results of kinetic action can be.  

None of this is surprising to those of us who wrestled with the same issues four years ago. At the time, I was chief of staff at the State Department, with a front row seat to deliberations on both policy—calibrating a response, considering its impact on military and diplomatic strategy—and practical matters, from consulting Congress to finding the right words to communicate the