WASHINGTON—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Moscow this week will be an early test of whether the Trump administration can use any momentum generated by striking a Syrian air base to craft and execute a strategy to end the Syrian war.
Even before Trump ordered last week’s strike on the air base in retaliation for a nerve gas attack, Tillerson’s visit was certain to be dominated by thorny issues, including alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, an apparent violation of an important arms control treaty, and seeing what cooperation, if any, is possible in the fight against the ISIS terrorist group.
Now, Tillerson, a former oil executive with no official diplomatic experience, is charged with avoiding a major U.S. confrontation with Russia while exacting some concessions from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Those include getting rid of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s remaining chemical weapons stocks and pressing Assad to negotiate Syria’s future.
Russia, along with Iran, is Assad’s primary backer, and its intervention in Syria’s war has been crucial to ensuring his grip on power, although no longer over the entire country.
Tillerson said he had not seen hard evidence that Russia knew ahead of time about the chemical weapons attack but he planned to urge Moscow to rethink its support for Assad in the April 12 talks.
