In a Lawfare essay, Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations challenges the long-held belief that Barack Obama's failure to enforce his 2013 "red line" in Syria destroyed American credibility. Shapiro argues that this narrative has become a "samurai myth" — the idea that a threatened military force must be used or the nation loses honor. He contends that this misreading of history has crippled U.S. diplomacy and helped push Washington into pointless conflicts.
Shapiro points to what actually happened after the sarin attack that killed more than 1,400 people: Assad surrendered nearly his entire chemical arsenal, with inspectors hauling out 1,308 tons of agent and precursor from an active war zone. He calls this an extraordinary diplomatic achievement, noting that the regime gave up a deterrent it had spent decades building. By contrast, he writes, Trump's later strikes on Syria after another chemical attack did nothing. Shapiro also raises a counterfactual: a desperate Assad with chemical weapons in 2015 or 2024 might have used them far more destructively.
The essay argues that the "red line" lesson is still weaponized today, citing a Foundation for Defense of Democracies piece urging Trump to enforce an Iran "red line" by threatening war. Shapiro says the consensus that Obama's decision damaged U.S. credibility is simply wrong, and that even many officials involved in the 2013 decision have accepted a false narrative. The real lesson, he suggests, is that diplomacy backed by a credible threat can succeed without firing a shot.