Iron grip: Syria's late President al-Assad with his sons Bassel and Bashar
Thursday was, above all, a momentous day for British democracy. The era of
presidential rule is over. Parliament has reclaimed the powers chipped away
by successive prime ministers, most notably Tony Blair.
It has even snatched some it never had, beyond control of the purse. There can
now be no going to war on executive authority alone, or by royal
prerogative. Britain’s living constitution was re-fashioned before our eyes,
in eight hours of exhilarating debate. Much of the world’s political class
watched events unfold, riveted by the clash of moral argument. Has anything
quite like it been seen since the Bulgarian Atrocities of 1876, when
Gladstone turned the slaughter of civilians in a faraway country into the
central issue of British politics?
Whether David Cameron is down, or Ed Miliband is up, is essentially trivial.
The Government handled the crisis badly, of course – no doubt pressured into
premature action by Washington for reasons of military imperative. Yes,
Assad is dispersing his targets. Every day counts. But this is the
Schlieffen Plan reflex: you cannot let railway timetables dictate
great-power diplomacy.
In retrospect, it was foolish even to think of pre-empting the UN weapons
inspectors, given what happened in the “poisoned well” of Iraq. They will
determine exactly what chemicals were used. That is part of building a case:
given that a senior UN official, Carla Del Ponte, suggested in March that
the rebels might well have used sarin gas, one might reasonably hesitate
until we know a great deal more than we know now.
Many of us had been through this before. Personally, I was assured by Jack
Straw, then Foreign Secretary, at a Nato summit in Brussels just before the
invasion of Iraq that the Government had the intelligence on Saddam
Hussein’s WMD. “Just trust me, we have the proof but can’t reveal sources,”
he said to four of us, all British journalists. We did indeed trust him, and
bitter we are too, snake-bitten for ever.
Yet the reality remains that somebody killed at least 1,429 people in Damascus
with chemical weapons, including at least 426 children. And the
preponderance of evidence points one way. Will we let this stand?
The Joint Intelligence Committee almost certainly “sexed down” the dossier
this time, bending over backwards to be as banal as possible – but also
because almost nobody in the upper echelons of the British security services
and Armed Forces thinks that a fusillade of Tomahawk missiles makes much
sense, if any. It is jejune to send “messages” in such a fashion. As one
Labour MP put it, in warfare you are either “in or out”.
I have been following this debate with a keen interest because my father, E E
Evans-Pritchard – an Arabic speaker, and captain in the Eighth Army – wrote
the original intelligence report on the Alawite region of Syria in 1942,
while planning for a post-war settlement. I am told that this included a
classified profile of the Assad family, already seen as future leaders.
There were very good reasons why the French and the British chose to rebuild
Syria the way they did, searching for a formula that could hold together a
mosaic of Orthodox Christians, Assyrian Chaldean Christians, Melkite
Catholics, Alawites, Jews, Sunnis, Shiites and Druze. Mess with that at your
peril.
In terms of the broader context, it is now said that Britain’s “Special
Relationship” with the US is in ruins. Such claims are overly melodramatic.
Much the same divisions exist internally within Congress, and within US
public opinion. There will be a great many Americans who sympathise with the
House of Commons, and who want their own restraining debate. Indeed, many
Congressmen have called for such a hearing.
Ultimately, President Barack Obama is rushing into half-baked action for the
wrong reason, because he offered a hostage to fortune a year ago by
declaring the use of chemical weapons against civilians to be his red line.
He is now preparing to go to war – for war it is – to uphold his own
credibility. This is not a proper foundation for great power policy.
Palmerston got away with it, but he chose his incidents more shrewdly. In
the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US National Security Advisor,
if Mr Obama has coherent policy on Syria, “it is a well-kept secret”.
The result is a colossal mess, which can only end badly whatever happens. If
the US acts, it will stir up a hornets’ nest without solving anything. And
what happens if Assad survives the missile strike unscathed and then uses
chemical weapons a second time? Retreat at this late stage would be seen as
abdication, risking a free-for-all across the region. Yet I think this is
the lesser danger.
What Washington and London should have done was to build a moral and strategic
case methodically, brick by brick. They should have exhausted the UN
channels before uttering a single word about missiles, pushing first for a
vote that placed Vladimir Putin on the record as the defender of
chemical-weapons atrocities.
America should have used its diplomatic power to put China on the spot, forced
to choose whether it wished to be in the same camp as the pariah Putin, or
one step safely removed. Mr Obama should have held Russia’s feet ever closer
to the fire, refusing to attend the G20 in St Petersburg, flicking the
“reset button” back off again, tightening a cordon sanitaire of Cold War
isolation.
Let us not forget which is the superpower, and which is the basket case. For
all the talk of American decline, the reality is that the US is storming
back – soon to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest oil producer,
and likely to retain its economic dominance over China for at least another
half-century – while Russia faces demographic collapse, a victim of gross
misgovernment, hobbled by the resource curse of oil wealth.
It may seem cynical to say that treating this crisis as a management task,
conducted by calibrated diplomacy and soft power, will do more for Syrian
civilians in the end than spasms of media-friendly emotion. Unfortunately,
the cynics are often right.
My hope is that David Cameron will come out of this episode less damaged than
is currently assumed. His behaviour has been civilised – even altruistic to
a fault. He bent over backwards to secure consent. He gave Parliament the
last say. There is no shame in honourable defeat, for an honourable cause.
As for Ed Miliband, the Labour Party was right to demand delay – but we are
left with the deep suspicion that he played party politics, luring the Prime
Minister into a snare. You do not do that in the great power league, or in
the face of atrocities.
For Parliament, it has been a week of triumph. The House of Commons has
prevented a historic blunder. It is asserting almost Cromwellian ascendancy;
let us hope it keeps hold of this power in the face of Europe’s
encroachments. In the end, the will of the people has prevailed. Now we must
deliver on our duty of care to the Syrian people as best we can.
SoRo:
It’s absolutely true that neither the US nor Britain needs the
other’s permission to do anything, but it was Muffin’s humiliating
defeat that halted Obama, caused him to second guess himself (which is
something he rarely, if ever, does), and, finally, behave as the
Constitution demands.
Personally, I am quite grateful that the voices of the British people
from across the political spectrum won the day and, with only 9% of
Americans supporting a strike on Syria per Pew, I hope that America
follows suit.
Both Obama and Muffin should heed the nursery rhyme, The Grand Old Duke of York:
Oh, The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.
And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.
Without public support, a duke can easily find himself isolated in
his military adventurism…and, since America is not a monarchy, the
public should have a say in foreign policy.
See Also:
http://tinyurl.com/mhgp888
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