When 59 Tomahawk missiles struck Syria before dawn on Friday, they did more than destroy a Syrian air base. They also exploded Russian President Vladimir Putin’s image across the Middle East.

Osama bin Laden once explained that, in the Middle East, “everyone likes the strong horse.” For the past eight years, that horse on the world stage was Putin: He dictated, assassinated, invaded and annexed without consequence. In contrast, President Barack Obama and his team tweeted, apologized and talked, but when push came to shove, they stood down. Red lines were rhetorical, not real. Russian diplomats traversed the region, pointing out to friend and foe alike how Putin stood by his friends as the United States turned on its allies in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain.

The airstrike on the Ash- Shayrat represents a sea change. Russian officials warned President Trump not to act, but he ignored them. Putin had no choice but to stand aside.

Trump’s unilateral action, combined with his care to avoid Russian casualties and key Russian interests, leaves the door open to new diplomacy, however. Diplomacy succeeds when every side understands its opponent’s limits. Obama’s mistake was believing that the announcement of a position mattered more than the willingness to enforce it. Russia promised a deal to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons, but then acted is as if no deal existed.

Trump showed the United States would not settle for empty, unfulfilled agreements, and would calibrate action to reality instead of rhetoric.

As new talks begin — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will head to Moscow in the coming week — the Kremlin for the first time recognizes that the White House will settle for nothing less than a commitment to its interests: an end to Syria’s WMD programs and Assad’s facilitation of Iranian-backed terror groups like Hezbollah.

Other regional states will also stand up and take notice. Turkey has for too long become like Pakistan on the Mediterranean, declaring its desire to defeat terrorism even as its intelligence services surreptitiously support it. Trump’s willingness to act unilaterally is a sign to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Turkey cannot blackmail the United States with unrelated demands and that Turkey is more a bit player on the world stage than the pivot of the universe.

Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates will also take notice. Their leaders and diplomats complained bitterly about their treatment at the hands of Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry who threw them under the bus in order to achieve a weak and flawed nuclear agreement with Tehran. Trump assured them a new beginning, and his willing to act against Assad proved it.

The same holds true farther afield. Syria is to Russia what North Korea is to China: a client state whose existence depends on its larger ally’s willingness to support it, supply it, and turn the other way. The fact that Trump acted as Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at his Mar-a-Lago estate for their first summit signals to both China and North Korea that what happened in Syria could just as easily occur in Northeast Asia: Trump is not one for idle threats.

North Korean leaders — and, for that matter, Iran’s leadership, as well — now understands that should they gamble with defiance of the United States, the odds are not in their favor and that the diplomatic support of their friends will not be enough to save them.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute