The Atlantic

The U.S. Teeters on the Edge of Another Catastrophic War

As editorial boards cheer him on, Trump is weighing action against the regime in Syria.
Source: Omar Sanadiki / Reuters

Donald Trump repeatedly called his predecessor dumb for intervening in Syria. Congress has declined to vote to authorize a war in Syria. And the U.S. Armed Forces are now led by a commander in chief who lacks the experience, wisdom, steadfastness, and popular support to prosecute a complex war in a faraway country where a misstep could lead to regional conflagration or even nuclear world war.

Yet even as on the ground in Syria, a growing chorus is urging President Trump to intensify America’s lawfully dubious presence there—to move on from the fight against ISIS to one against Syria’s regime—not because they believe that the symbolic, that Trump launched last April actually stopped Bashar al-Assad from gassing his own people, or that further American intervention will end or even shorten Syria’s civil

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic3 min read
They Rode the Rails, Made Friends, and Fell Out of Love With America
The open road is the great American literary device. Whether the example is Jack Kerouac or Tracy Chapman, the national canon is full of travel tales that observe America’s idiosyncrasies and inequalities, its dark corners and lost wanderers, but ult
The Atlantic8 min readAmerican Government
The Most Consequential Recent First Lady
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. The most consequential first lady of modern times was Melania Trump. I know, I know. We are supposed to believe it was Hillary Clinton, with her unbaked cookies
The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was

Related Books & Audiobooks