On April 4, a gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, Syria killed at least seventy people, including twenty-seven children. Decisive proof of what happened is not yet available but it’s certainly possible that the Syrian government is responsible for the action.

In response, the United States launched fifty-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian Shayrat Air Base that they say was home to the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks. Though American officials describe the attack on Shayrat as a “one-off,” just yesterday US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said steps are “underway” to remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power. Considering that the Trump administration is now saying and doing such things when just a week earlier it said it accepts the “political reality” of Assad being in power and that their “priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out,” it’s impossible to say with any certainty what Washington will do next in Syria.

We are living in an incredibly dangerous moment. Russia denounced the American airstrikes and suspended communication with US forces designed to stop planes colliding over Syria. The possibility of a US-Russian confrontation in the near future cannot be dismissed, particularly because they are not only in conflict over Syria but also over Ukraine and provocative actions such as a March 8–31 NATO exercise in Germany and a four thousand person NATO force that is going to be dispersed in Latvia, Poland, Estonia, and Lithuania allegedly to deter Russian intervention in those countries.