War

Washington Has Crossed Russia’s Red Line

Paul Craig Roberts

In a statement on Friday morning, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that the US missile strike violated not only international, and added that the attack “was on the brink of military clashes with Russia.”

“Instead of their much-publicized thesis about a joint fight with a common enemy, Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL], the Trump administration has proven that it will fiercely fight against the legal government of Syria,” Medvedev wrote on his Facebook page.

If Trump wanted to provoke the Kremlin - an odd decision considering all the daily "press coverage" that the Kremlin controlled the president - he has achieved just that: Russia said it will reinforce Syria's air defences and, as reported previously, is sending a missile carrying warship to the eastern Mediterranean in response to a US cruise missile strikes on a Syrian government airbase.

Eleven weeks into his administration, Trump's Syrian airstrikes appear to have achieve what until last night appeared impossible: unite much of Congress in support of a Trump decision.

As Bloomberg report, U.S. lawmakers mostly expressed support for Trump’s strike against a Syrian airfield in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack, though some cautioned that Congress needs to be consulted on a comprehensive strategy if the strike is a harbinger of things to come.

Responding to Trump's unexpected military attack on Syria in which 59 cruise missiles were launched (of which only 23 allegedly hit their target), Russian President Vladimir Putin "regards the strikes as aggression against a sovereign nation,” his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, noting that the president believes the strikes were carried out “in violation of international law, and also under an invented pretext.”