Whatever happens, he’ll always have Paris. President-elect Trump may remember his weekend trip to the French capital to attend the glittering reopening of Notre Dame cathedral as a moment of calm, as the swift end of Assad’s rule in Syria and increasing pressure to end the war in Ukraine signal fresh challenges for a world of conflict.

Seldom one to keep strong opinions to himself, the president-elect is already trying to direct traffic, as it were, before taking up residence at the White House for the second time next month. On December 7, a day that in Syria will live in infamy if your last name is Assad, the soon-to-be 47th president weighed in on the dramatic events unfolding in the crumbling Middle Eastern country. 

Writing on X, before rebel fighters had seized Damascus unopposed and as reports emerged that Assad had already fled to Moscow, Trump stated that “Russia, because they are so tied up in Ukraine, and with the loss there of over 600,000 soldiers, seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they have protected for years. This is where former President Obama refused to honor his commitment of protecting the red line in the sand, and all hell broke out, with Russia stepping in.”

“There was never much of a benefit in Syria for Russia, other than to make Obama look really stupid,” he added. “In any event, Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, and the United States should have nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved!”

The red line to which the president-elect refers was the one that President Obama announced in August 2012. That’s when American intelligence indicated that Assad was preparing to use chemical weapons against his own population in a fiendish bid to crack the rebel forces and win the civil war. Mr. Obama declared that the use of weapons of mass destruction was a red line not to be crossed, with the implicit threat of American military intervention. Assad ignored that warning, though and paid no price.

Mr. Obama changed his mind, in part because polls showed that American public opinion was against another military intervention in the Middle East, but his credibility — and that of America — took a hit. Worse, President Putin appeared as a more solid and reliable actor: his military support, along with that of Iran and Hezbollah, helped prop up Assad’s dictatorship for another twelve years.

President Trump has often used two precedents to differentiate his foreign policy from that of the Democrats: Mr. Obama’s erasable red line in Syria in 2012 and President Biden’s disastrous retreat from Kabul in 2021. In his estimation, the Democrats have over time put a dent  in America’s deterrent capacity.

Aside from the obvious dig at the foreign policy of his pre-2017 predecessor, President-elect Trump’s words were also an admonishment of Vladimir Putin to the effect that Russia’s imperial misadventures serve mainly to weaken it. 

There is a rhetorical question to the Kremlin: Who made you get bogged down in Syria, and what benefits have you gained from it?

Trump is implicitly egging on Mr. Putin with regard to his mainstage of international folly, his war on Ukraine. What good has it done for you, he appears to be asking, aside from weakening your own army?

Like other world leaders Trump is observing events in Syria as they unfold. In Ukraine the terrain is still tricky, but at this point also more familiar. When asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday if he is actively working to end Russia’s nearly three-year-old war on Ukraine, he said, “I am.”

On social media the president-elect wrote that “Zelenskyy and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness.”

How Mr. Trump’s push to get President Putin to come to an immediate ceasefire agreement in Ukraine pans out, if it does at all, remains to be seen. He is still weeks away from taking office.

On “Meet the Press,” Mr. Trump would not be drawn as to whether or not he had spoken to Mr. Putin since his election win in November. He only said “I don’t want to say anything about that, because I don’t want to do anything that could impede the negotiation.”