As news broke of the 'massacre' by government forces of over 100 people in the Syrian town of Houla last weekend, John Humphrys considers the arguments for and against intervention and asks what Western governments' response, if any, should be
There has been almost unanimous international condemnation of the Syrian regime following the massacre of over a hundred innocent people in the town of Houla last weekend. On Tuesday, in a concerted action, Britain and twelve other countries expelled Syrian diplomats from their capitals.
There have been calls for arms to be provided to the rebels fighting the regime and President Hollande of France has said foreign military intervention should not be ruled out. So should the rest of the world take action, or is it wiser to stay out of the fight?
Calls for intervention
It is not hard to understand what motivates the call for intervention: simple human feeling.
A majority of the one hundred and eight victims at Houla were women and children. Some died as the result of the town being shelled, but many were killed in summary executions. Or, if you prefer, were murdered.
The massacre was only the latest in a long line of atrocities for which most independent observers hold the government of Bashar-al-Assad responsible. For months his regime has been fighting off rebel forces inspired by the ‘Arab Spring’ that has toppled regimes throughout the Middle East in the last eighteen months.
The Syrian rebels are equally determined to overthrow a government they regard as brutally repressive. The government in turn blames the rebels for the atrocities, including the massacre at Houla.
Back in April, Kofi Annan, the former secretary-general of the United Nations, brokered a cease-fire between the two sides on behalf of both the UN and the Arab League.
Troops, tanks and artillery were supposed to be withdrawn to barracks but this has clearly not happened and the consequent escalation of violence, including the slaughter at Houla, has led foreign governments to try to increase pressure on the regime through both diplomatic measures (such as the expulsion of diplomats) and the threat of even stronger measures. The Syrian government has accused them of 'unprecedented hysteria'.
Advocates of stronger foreign intervention argue that the continuing loss of life makes it essential and point to other cases where, they claim, such intervention has proved justified. In Bosnia, for example, many lives could have been saved, they argue, if western governments had got involved earlier than they did. In Kosovo, swifter action did save lives. And last year, the decision of David Cameron and the former French president, Nicholas Sarkozy, to push for the use of NATO forces in Libya both saved the people of Benghazi and led to the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime. If it can be done there, they ask, why not in Syria?
Obstacles to intervention
One answer is that the Syrian Army would be a much more formidable adversary to take on than any of the others proved to be. But even more of an obstacle is international law. Unless foreign military intervention were authorised by the UN Security Council it would (as President Hollande acknowledges) be illegal.
And such authorisation remains impossible to achieve so long as Russia, a permanent member of the Council with veto-wielding power, retains its support for the Assad regime. Russia feels it was tricked into supporting military action in Libya last year (ostensibly on humanitarian grounds, then to discover NATO forces were aiding the overthrow of the Libyan regime) and continues to say it is 'categorically against' foreign intervention in Syria.
So unless western governments are prepared to contemplate action without the say-so of the UN (as many would argue the US and its allies did when they invaded Iraq in 2003), it seems safe to predict that no military intervention will take place and the Assad regime will be given a free hand to go on persecuting its people.
Some would argue that notwithstanding the obvious horrors being suffered by many Syrians, it is actually wiser for foreign countries to keep out irrespective of the legal position. It is false, they argue, to imagine the conflict in Syria as simply that between an evil regime on the one hand and a united population seeking liberation on the other. That’s the stuff of heroic fantasy, they claim.
'Nasty characters on both sides'
The reality is that there is a struggle for power going on with some pretty nasty characters on both sides. Just because the regime that is being challenged is palpably brutal and ruthless in trying to maintain power, it does not follow that those who are trying to overthrow it are any less vicious in their means of doing so ‒ or would be any more humane in their exercise of power should they gain it.
Some experts on the Middle East, such as the British journalist, John R Bradley, argue that phrases like the ‘Arab Spring’ mislead us by implying that any new dawn is bound to be brighter than the old one. He fears that some of the Islamist regimes likely to emerge in these countries once the dust settles could well turn out to be worse than those they have replaced.
Others go even further. They argue that many countries in the Middle East, the result of arbitrary boundary-drawing in the past by colonial powers including Britain, are inherently extremely difficult to govern because they are populated by groups of people with deep-seated ethnic and religious differences. Statecraft in such countries often requires tough and ruthless leaders simply for order to prevail and for people to be able to go about living their lives in reasonable peace. Political oppression may look intolerable to western democracies but the alternative, they claim, is not western democracy but anarchy or civil war.
Those that take this view sometimes pose the question: can we really say that the people of Iraq were better served by the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein (which led to hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis being killed) than they would have been if we had left Saddam in place and sought to temper his oppressiveness by doing deals with him?
On this argument, the correct response to what’s going on in Syria is certainly not to intervene militarily or even to arm the rebels. It is to let the Assad regime restore order and then try to help him make life better for his people. From this perspective, calls for intervention achieve nothing except to pander to our moral vanity in wishing to ‘do something’ to make the world a better place.
Supporters of intervention, however, regard this as a counsel of despair and a cynical one, at that. If we even half-believe in the brotherhood of man, they retort, we cannot simply turn a blind eye to what is going on in places like Houla. Intervention, they say, is our moral obligation and that’s all there is to it.
What’s your view?
- How do you think Britain should be responding to escalating violence in Syria?
- Do you think the measures taken this week by Britain and other countries to expel Syrian diplomats are effective or merely token?
- Should we be selling arms to the rebels?
- Should we be prepared to intervene militarily, possibly even without the authorisation of the Security Council?
- Do you think Russia’s position on Syria is sensible and justified or cynical and self-serving?
- More broadly, do you think we should welcome the Arab Spring or be wary of it?
- And in general do you think considerations of simple humanity should make us ready to intervene where we see suffering, or do you think realpolitik should always drive policy?
Let us know your views below.
