This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, April 11, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Even if Donald Trump's assault on Syria isn't a part of some larger strategy,

it may still be a harbinger of things to come.

John Glazer, Associate Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute,

discusses how the foreign policy of presidents tends to be shaped and how the Trump administration may or may not come to be fairly

conventional.

One of Donald Trump's sort of signature, I guess, personality traits and he seems to embrace it and revel in it is keeping people on their toes being unpredictable

and some people have suggested oh well the Trump doctrine

such as it may be is avoid doctrine.

So the question remains open about whether or not his underlying goal with his strikes in Syria actually signals something that is

dramatically different from our previous involvement in foreign affairs, dropping lots of bombs in order to affect something.

Right, so first of all Trump describes himself as flexible, right?

And I think that's actually a mask for not really knowing that much about foreign policy

and therefore being easily persuaded by whoever he's spoken to last. Flexibility doesn't to me indicate that, you know. Fast. wise foreign policy hand that can apply different tactics to different situations.

It just implies to me that he doesn't already know that much about foreign policy.

But in any case, he's bombed Syria.

And several days have passed, and so there's this sense in Washington that the promises

of some in the administration that this was going to be a one-off strike and the risk of escalation was minimal,

that's kind of largely believed at this point.

But I still think that there's a very real risk of escalation for a number of reasons.

Okay, so what are some of the reasons you suspect that this was not simply a strike to, people have called it, virtue signaling among other things, but that it is part

...