While White House officials initially telegraphed that the strike had nothing to do with regime change, United States ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley soon suggested that ousting Assad was, in fact, a possibility, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that “there’s not any sort of option where political solution is going to happen with Assad at the head of the regime.” White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster also said that the U.S. would support a regime change in the war-torn country during an interview with Fox News Sunday, though he offered, cryptically, “We’re not the ones who are going to effect that change.” Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stressed that while Russia deserved criticism for backing the Assad regime, the fight against the Islamic State remained the top priority for the U.S., and that Assad’s cooperation would be key to its success. “We're hopeful that we can prevent a continuation of the civil war and that we can bring the parties to the table to begin the process of political discussion,” Tillerson said on CBS’s Face the Nation.

The Trump administration’s apparent inability to get its talking points straight reflects how quickly the decision to launch a missile strike actually came together. For years, Trump had railed against any military intervention in Syria. But the president was reportedly so moved by pictures he saw on cable news of children killed in the chemical attack, allegedly directed by the Assad regime on Tuesday, that he changed course entirely in the span of 72 hours, leaving his isolationist supporters spinning. “There is no emerging doctrine for Trump foreign policy in a classical sense,” Kathleen Hicks, a former Pentagon official who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The New York Times. “There are, however, clear emerging characteristics consistent with the attributes of the man himself: unpredictable, instinctual and undisciplined.”

American allies and war hawks on Capitol Hill applauded last week’s targeted airstrike and the administration’s dwindling deference for Russia as evidence that Trump is abandoning some of the more controversial positions he took on the campaign trail. “He’s moving toward a more traditional foreign policy, and that’s a very encouraging thing,” Anja Manuel, a former special assistant in the State Department under President Barack Obama, told Politico. Jeremy Bash, who served as chief of staff under Leon Panetta at the Defense Department and then at the C.I.A., echoed the sentiment. “For a president who came in with a more isolationist approach, he’s learning quickly that that approach will not work in an era in which American leadership is indispensable,” Bash said.

Many have credited Trump’s more establishment-friendly approach to international affairs to the recent shake-up of his national-security team, which included the appointment of McMaster to national security adviser and Dina Powell as his deputy after Mike Flynn’s tumultuous ouster. But as Thomas Wright, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, noted to Politico, “The personality of the commander in chief will always impose itself on the administration . . . There is still systematic risk there with Trump.” And while it is one thing to argue that Trump’s uncharacteristically unpredictable approach to foreign policy will keep U.S. adversaries guessing, the fact that his own White House is also unsure of what will come next poses an inherent risk to national security. “President Trump seems not to have thought through any of this, or have any kind of broader strategy, but rather to have launched a military strike based on a sudden, emotional decision,” Connecticut senator Chris Murphy wrote in an op-ed for the Huffington Post.