Let's be clear about one thing first: last
night's remarkable scenes at Westminster will make precious little difference
to the people of Syria. Cruise missiles will still fall on some carefully
selected military sites in the coming days -- the only difference will be that
none of them will be British.
The key question remains what it was before
David Cameron's dramatic defeat in the House of Commons: what is the best
policy to adopt in the light of the ever-increasing horror of the war in Syria?
Last April, after well-sourced reports of a
chemical weapons attack by Syrian forces, I wrote: "There may well come a
time when the sheer horror of what is happening [in Syria] is too much for
Western (and some Arab) governments to stomach. For now, though, it looks to me
as if the assessment in Washington, London and Paris is that we have not yet
reached that moment. Callous though it may sound, the needle on the
horror-meter has not yet gone high enough."
This weekend, however, the needle on the
horror-meter has gone off the scale. MPs may have their doubts about the wisdom
of reacting with military force, but the assessment of governments in many
Western capitals has shifted significantly. Enough is enough. Something must be
done.
So here are some of the questions we still need
to ask -- and a few, tentative, answers.
First, is doing nothing really an option?
(By "nothing", I mean nothing military.) Clearly, yes, it is, but
then another question immediately follows: Is there any point, any further
escalation in horror, at which doing nothing is no longer an option? What if
there's another chemical weapons attack, in which 5,000 people are killed?
10,000 killed? Is there anywhere you would draw a red line? Might MPs have
cause to regret last night's vote in the weeks and months to come?
Second, how likely is it that limited
military strikes against defined military targets will prevent any further use
of chemical weapons? In Kosovo in 1999, it took 78 days and 38,000 combat
sorties by NATO warplanes -- oh yes, and an estimated 1,200 civilian deaths --
before Serb forces withdrew. And Kosovo was a walk in the park compared to
Syria.
Third, what's so uniquely terrible about
deaths caused by chemical weapons? Why the outrage over a few hundred deaths in
Ghouta but no effective response to the 100,000 deaths by "ordinary"
weapons over the past 30 months? Answer: ever since the First World War, which
of course no one now remembers, the use of gas in war has been regarded as
uniquely ghastly. There are international conventions and treaties against it,
and if they are blithely disregarded, then what's to stop any other tyrants
using similar weapons, or worse, against their own people?
Fourth, if there are risks involved in
going for the military option -- which obviously there are -- are they greater,
or lesser, than the risks of doing nothing? David Cameron spoke in the Commons yesterday
of the need "to make a judgement". His own was that the risks of
doing nothing clearly outweigh the risks of military action. The majority of
MPs disagreed.
Fifth, does the government have the right
to go to war even when all the evidence suggests that a clear majority of
voters are against military intervention? Answer: what about 1938, when most
British voters were deeply sceptical about going to war over what the then
prime minister called "a quarrel in a far away country between people of
whom we know nothing"? Who was right then?
Sixth, what does history tell us? Look at
Bosnia, for example, in 1995, or Kosovo in 1999, or Sierra Leone in 2000, or
East Timor in 2006 -- where foreign interventions did stop the slaughter of
civilians. On the other hand, you could look at US military action in Lebanon
in 1983, or Libya in 1986, or Iraq and Sudan in 1998, where the only
consequences were bad ones. Often very bad ones. The lesson from history?
Inconclusive, to put it mildly.
Seventh, what are the best-case and
worst-case scenarios after even a limited military intervention?
Best-case: the Syrian military rise up
against Assad, whom they accuse of destroying the country, topple him and
immediately offer unconditional political transition negotiations with all
opposition groups, who accept with joy in their hearts.
Worst-case: a US missile strike hits an
Iranian revolutionary guard facility, killing dozens of Iranians. Hizbollah
launch an all-out assault on northern Israel, which responds with devastating
attacks in both Lebanon and Syria. Turkey sends tens of thousands of troops to
the Syrian border, where masses of terrified civilians are trying to flee.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar pour weapons into the rebels' hands, while pro-Assad
fighters swarm across the border from Iraq to bolster the Shia cause. Shall I
stop?
Just a couple of quick points about the
political fall-out. First, the enduring effect of the Iraq trauma: MPs were
determined not to take at face value, as they did a decade ago, the assurances
of a prime minister about what intelligence assessments reveal. Will they ever
believe such assessments again?
And second, yes, clearly David Cameron's
authority has been deeply dented -- but so has the UK's reputation as one of
the few Western nations always in the forefront of attempts to impose their
will on far-away conflicts. Whether that makes the world a safer or less safe
place is a discussion for another day.
