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Many senior U.S. politicians, including Sen. John McCain, strongly supported Friday’s attacks and are pressing their demand that Assad be overthrown. This fits with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s declaration this week that Assad had “no role” in the future of the country.

The fear, of course, is that if this attack is followed by a counter-attack of some kind by Russia, the situation could quickly spin out of control.

In a statement Friday morning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada fully supports what he described as the “limited and focused action” in Syria. The prime minister also denounced Assad’s use of chemical weapons, saying “these gruesome attacks cannot be permitted to continue operating with impunity.”

Peace-loving Canadians may think Ottawa can remain a sleepy hollow and avoid being drawn in if things worsen. They would be wrong about this.

Canada is intimately tied to the U.S. through NORAD and NATO and is part of the U.S.-led coalition deeply involved in the Middle East. Trudeau’s government has just extended its military advisers’ mission in Iraq, where they are now assisting Iraqi as well as Kurdish troops, and Trump has said he is looking for western allies to join the fight in Syria. RCAF jets are being used to identify targets there for bombing target specialists from Canada, the U.S. and several other nations.

The Royal Canadian Navy has a warship permanently operating in or near the Russian-dominated Black Sea or in the Middle East. It is also sending combat forces to within a few kilometres of the Russian border in Latvia, as Russia is about to hold its largest military exercise (as many as 130,000 troops) nearby.

Ottawa’s strained relationship with Moscow has been seriously aggravated by its deployment of troops to the Baltics and its again vociferous support for Ukraine. And Canada could end up playing enough of a peripheral role in the western Pacific, too, earning the enmity of China.

It is a small, inter-related, dangerous world where crises can erupt suddenly. Trump has already asked partners to step up in Syria, too. Ottawa will almost certainly resist playing a bigger military role in that region and elsewhere, but events early Friday morning in the Syrian desert could soon touch Canadians.