John Humphrys asks: should the West intervene militarily in Syria? And, if so, how?
The West appears rapidly to be hardening its position on Syria. Military action against the government of Bashar al-Assad looks possible, even likely, in a matter of days following the deaths of over three hundred Syrian civilians in a suburb of Damascus widely believed to have been caused by a large-scale chemical weapons attack on them by the Assad government. Parliament is being recalled on Thursday to debate the issue. Ought the West to intervene militarily? And, if so, how?
Western governments have largely stood on the sidelines in the last couple of years as an uprising against the Assad regime has turned into a savage civil war that has claimed over a hundred thousand lives and created millions of refugees. The West’s impotence has been in large part because it could not rally international support for any action. In the United Nations Security Council, Syria’s ally, Russia, and also China, have vetoed any proposals to get tough with the regime.
Instead there has been a large element of wishful thinking – the hope that support for Assad would collapse under pressure from rebel forces. But this has not happened. Instead there is an increasingly bloody stand-off as other elements have joined in the conflict. Not only Russia but also Iran and its own ally, Hizbollah in Lebanon, have helped prop up the Assad regime. The rebels have been aided by Sunni governments in the Gulf and by other forces, including al-Qaeda. There is evidence that both sides in this bitter civil war have committed appalling crimes.
While the conflict and the suffering of ordinary Syrian civilians have intensified the British government has been champing at the bit. David Cameron made clear earlier this year that he would not support any extension of the European Union’s embargo on providing arms for the rebels. The embargo has long since lapsed, but there has been strong opposition in Britain to sending arm, including from many within the Prime Minister’s own party.
The main player among western nations is of course the United States. After America’s experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama has been in no rush to get embroiled in yet another conflict in the Middle East. But he made clear last year that if the Assad regime resorted to using chemical weapons against its own civilians it would have crossed a ‘red line’ and that this could not be ignored.
Since then there have been several instances where the Syrian government seems indeed to have used chemical weapons, although Mr Obama has been extremely cautious about accepting evidence of the fact until the events of last week. It now seems indisputable that chemical weapons were used in a suburb of the Syrian capital, Damascus, which has been a vital area of contention between government and rebel forces for the last year. Government forces are known to have been mounting an offensive in the suburb last Wednesday when evidence of the chemical attack took place. John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, said earlier this week that there was now ‘very little doubt’ that the Syrian government was responsible, even though the government blamed the rebels. And Britain’s Foreign Secretary, William Hague, argues that there was no credible case for claiming the rebels could have been responsible.
The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, demanded that UN weapons inspectors be allowed into the suburb to establish the facts but the delay in the Syrian government’s granting of permission for this has led many to suspect the government of wanting to cover up the evidence before the inspectors could arrive. They are still being thwarted in doing their job.
So it now appears that the Assad government has indeed crossed President Obama’s red line and the evidence that the West is preparing to act has duly been mounting. The President has held highly-publicised meetings with his security advisers and conducted a forty-minute phone conversation with the Prime Minister at the weekend. Mr Cameron himself has cut short his holiday to return to London where he will chair a meeting of his National Security Council on Wednesday. Parliament will debate (and vote on) the crisis on Thursday.
A decision to act seems all but taken. Mr Hague said on Monday that ‘the use of chemical weapons in the twenty-first century cannot go unaddressed’. But what action could be taken and would it be legal? And, perhaps most importantly of all, what would be the ultimate objective?
On the issue of legality, the Foreign Secretary says any action taken would be fully in accordance with international law. But would it? Legal sanction for military action by one country against another in circumstances where the intervening country is not itself under threat normally has be sought from the UN Security Council. In this case, however, both Russia and China would veto it. Mr Hague said that any military intervention would be ‘based on great humanitarian need and distress’. No-one disputes that there is such need and distress in Syria at the moment, but it is far from clear that that would provide the West with a watertight legal justification for intervention.
As to what form of military action that intervention might take, it seems the most likely would be a guided missile strike on Syrian military targets using cruise missiles launched from US Navy warships in the Mediterranean. But the obvious question arises: what objective would be being pursued by such action? And what chance would it have of achieving the objective?
The shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander, has criticised the government for failing to be clear about this. He asked: ‘Is it a broad objective of changing the civil war or trying to remove Bashar al-Assad or is it a more limited objective of trying to degrade his capability to use these weapons with impunity?’
The answer sometimes given is that a one-off missile strike would ‘send a message’ to Assad that he could not use chemical weapons with impunity. But what if he then ignored that message and went on using them? Military analysts point out that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, actually to destroy his chemical weapons capacity or that, if that were the aim, much greater military force would need to be used.
In other words, a one-off cruise missile strike would be unlikely to be the end of the matter and much more likely to be the first step in a greater military involvement by the West. The risk would then be a wider military escalation of the conflict, involving other countries including Russia, especially if it appeared that the West was intent on removing the Assad regime, a development that might soon seem essential in order to achieve the chief aim of relieving humanitarian distress. Russia has said that unilateral military action by the West would not only be ‘a grave violation of international law’ but would also have ‘catastrophic’ consequences.
On the other side, however, the argument has been put that not to do anything in the face of such a crime against humanity as the use of chemical weapons by a government on its civilians would be equally catastrophic. That is the case put by the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who has urged people not to let their views of what happened in the Iraq war, over which he presided, colour what they think should happen now. But drawing the parallel may make even enthusiasts for intervention pause for thought.
What’s your view of how the West should respond to last week’s chemical attack in Damascus?
