An airstrike during a key summit could embarrass the Chinese — or leave them wondering if it is a message to them.
BEIJING — The Donald Trump-Xi Jinping summit was off to a good start: Xi nailed the handshake. Trump cracked a self-deprecating joke. And they dined on pan-seared Dover sole with champagne sauce and dry aged New York strip steak, not the Big Mac that Trump once vowed to serve.
But as Presidents Trump and Xi scooped sorbet and sipped wine ahead of high-stakes talks on North Korea, trade and other issues, the U. S. military fired 59 missiles at a Syrian airfield in retaliation for a recent chemical attack that killed scores of civilians. It was the first direct American assault on the government of President Bashar al-Assad since the outbreak of the war — an assault that could shape the future of the conflict and will certainly shape the summit.
China does not want the U. S. military taking unilateral action in Syria. Beijing has long said it prefers a multilateral approach, though, over the course of six brutal years of war it has repeatedly used its veto power to vote with Russia against United Nation Security Council resolutions on Syria, including a December 2016 plans for a 7-day ceasefire in Aleppo and more, recently, a call for sanctions over the use of chemical weapons.
At a daily press briefing on Friday, Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry reiterated China’s support for a “political settlement” and said it was urgent to prevent any further deterioration of the situation in Syria.
The timing of the U. S. strike is remarkable. The Trump-Xi summit comes at a time of tremendous uncertainty in East Asia. The Chinese and U. S. presidents already had a rather long list of things to discuss: thwarting North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, negotiating the future of U. S.-China trade, not to mention the South China Sea and Taiwan.
