Even though the House of Commons seems to have halted the UK’s movement towards intervention in Syria, we cannot yet be sure that other Western countries will not choose differently. Even if the UN will not support it, and even seeing as the UK government is hamstrung by a rebellious Parliament, it looks as if the US is gearing up for some sort of substantial effort. However, quite what sort of form this action would take or what it would aim to achieve is still up for debate.
[I admit that I’m not sure that there will be an intervention. It seems that way to me, but I’m quite prepared to be proved wrong by the events of the next few days.]
It is clear that the main justification for an intervention would be humanitarian. Before Parliament voted to block the principle of intervention, the UK Government outlined its legal position – “the legal basis for military action would be humanitarian intervention; the aim is to relieve humanitarian suffering by deterring or disrupting the further use of chemical weapons.” This is a view presumably shared by the US and its potential allies. However, it does not present a clear scope for intervention. Quite what is needed to deter or disrupt the use of chemical weapons is left up to the imagination of the foreign policy official.
It seems unlikely that such action will be minimal. If the US decides that it must remove the Syrian government’s capability to use such weapons, it will have to engage in serious bombing of strategic targets. It is however, the deterrence issue that is most likely to commit the US to a serious intervention. It is unlikely that the US will do anything less than fully throw their weight behind opposition forces on this front, or else they risk looking like they’ve done nothing to stop the slaughter of civilians by their government. The only deterrent factor that would really stop that would be serious US military backing for the rebel forces.
There should also be another objective. The Weapons of Mass Destruction that Assad possesses (the very certainty that the regime at least possesses these puts the lie to those drawing parallels with the Iraq War) must be seized or destroyed. This is not just in order to protect Syrian citizens – it involves a level of enlightened self-interest. Syria is by far the most unstable state out of the family that constituted the “Arab Spring”. We cannot be sure which faction will come to rule the country, or, indeed if the country will be governable at all, come the end of the current battle of attrition. In this context, it is deeply troubling that there should be chemical weapons facilities within the country, as we cannot be sure that these will not fall into the hands of militants who may use them against whatever target takes their fancy, whether it be the new regime in Cairo, the West’s most prominent ally, Israel, or perhaps even mainland Europe. It is a matter of pure pragmatism to prevent these weapons from belonging to a failed state, and one that should not be overlooked in the rush to prevent human suffering.
It is, however, far too easy to get involved in the world of the hypothetical and neglect the facts on the ground. Whilst the majority of the debate in the press has been well-argued, (bar a couple of lefty-types muttering about imperialism and some right-wingers moaning about it not being our problem), politicians have reverted to a simple narrative whereby there are two teams, one of which is the Bad Guys, headed by Assad (who is presumed guilty of a chemical weapons attack on his own people) and the other of which is the Rebels, who are presented as a homogenous group. This narrative leads to many assumptions, some of which are plainly false.
The most important of these is that there is one group that can be called “the rebels” in some meaningful sense. Whilst there is still an amount of support for the sort of liberal secularists who allegedly characterised the beginning of the Arab Spring, the majority of the rebels now belong to a patchwork quilt of Islamic fundamentalist militias, bankrolled by questionable states in the Middle East and including notable Al-Qa’ida franchises Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS. These forces are fighting a Sunni sectarian war against Shi’ites and Alawites, rather than a war of emancipation from tyranny. Their actions during the last two years of fighting have included suicide bombings, the imposition of violent misogynist laws on conquered territory and the mass shootings of secular protestors. To lump these militants in with the secularist rebels is madness, yet politicians continue to pledge unconditional support for “the rebels”.
There are no quick and easy answers here, and no good guys either. To support either side against the other is to get into bed with some really disgusting partners. If America really wants the rebels (the democratic, secularist subset thereof) to win the war, they will need to do some really tough work – a no-fly zone will not stop the country falling to Al-Qa’ida in the event of a rebel victory, and other, more limited forms of intervention may not even result in victory at all. The problem that the US faces now is that there is very little appetite for the full-scale, boots on the ground, nation-building exercise that would be necessary. However, anything less seems to leave Syria to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea, which may be equally unpalatable to the American public in a few years’ time.
(It is perhaps just as well that the House of Commons voted to block the government’s proposed principle of “limited intervention” – it is likely that that is not what they would have ended up with.)
Every dalliance that Western powers have had in the Arab world has been marked by a total lack of curiosity, nuance, or sophistication. We can only hope that leaders take these few days to reflect on a strategy that recognises the tensions and problems on the ground and throughout the region, rather than blundering into another unfamiliar country. It should be clear by now that this doesn’t preclude intervention, although it serves to complicate it. However, if a potential intervention is to serve the needs of the Syrian people, it must be effective, as well as well-meaning. It is important that US leaders are clear about what it is to which they are committing their country should there be an intervention.
