credibility as he can muster. let me ask you about deterrence because on april 6th, the cruise missile strikes, if that did not deter assad from using chemical weapons again, what will? great yes, andrea. a lot of speculation. part of it is they re trying to make a push to the east, trying to take territory back as well in the north and near the idlib province. there is perhaps a desire to try to take more territory with limited resources and, frankly, assad, despite the reaction from the united states in april, has done a pretty good job in the past of confusing an obfuscating by claiming there isn t proof of these kinds of attacks. there may be an attempt to try to use tactically. they have done it before. but i think the trump administration is trying to demonstrate, look, we re going to use force if need be. the april incident was an important one.
we can work with the host government but there are limits. some we can t work with the host government, like sir aia syria. you have to work with the locals. then under the trump priorities, we have to rely heavily on allies in the region, and we need more support from nato as well. occasionally we will have to take unilateral steps, the way the cruise missile strikes, hit the chemical weapons targets in syria. you have to take this multi facetted approach. but it won t work if our allies and security partners don t trust that we re in it to win and that we ll protect them as we go. likes potentially take their lives away if isis and supporters find out who is working with us. sandra: when it comes to protecting us a the home, rebecca, president trump and the travel ban, the fourth circuit batted it down, where does that go? well, again, there s many of these, several of these muslim majority countries are war-torn, essentially no government there, to speak of, to actually have r
is some civilian casualties associated with them. it s not a difficult thing for a president to decide. very little risk involved. the broader issue in syria is well beyond cruise missile strikes. in fact, all of the problems with the middle east converge in syria, and we re not doing well there overall. let me just run through two or three things that i think we have to work through if the administration decides to develop a broader approach to syria. first, we have to work against some of the facts on the ground that russia and iran have established. russia has 4,000 troops there approximately. they have dozens of combat aircraft. the iranians have 7,000 of their own troops there and control a coalition of about 20,000 more. we have at present about a thousand troops and news reports which i think are accurate say
strike was popular, but they always are popular, unless there is some civilian casualties associated with them. it s not a difficult thing for a president to decide. very little risk involved. the broader issue in syria is well beyond cruise missile strikes. in fact, all of the problems with the middle east converge in syria, and we re not doing well there overall. let me just run through two or three things that i think we have to work through if the administration decides to develop a broader approach to syria. first, we have to work against some of the facts on the ground that russia and iran have established. russia has 4,000 troops there approximately. they have dozens of combat aircraft. the iranians have 7,000 of their own troops there and control a coalition of about 20,000 more. we have at present about a thousand troops and news reports which i think are accurate say another thousandr so are
he ordered the cruise missile strikes, 59 cruise sis missiles in syria, sending a carrier strike force to north korea, question, what message do you think he s send to go allies sending to allies and enemies? let s step back to context, the obama years saw decrease, not following it up, and cuts to the defense budget of more than 20% since 2010. and during that time, we saw invasion of crimea, the chinese building islands in the south china sea, et cetera, president trump is taking a different approach, thank goodness. he is sending a message that now the united states is going to stand up for our interests and make sure we have the military capability to prevail if we choose to use force. it s a different message than has been given before.