Intervention is a powerful tool, it must be used wisely

Aaron Ellis

I opposed intervening in Libya, criticised the Mali campaign, and have repeatedly warned against too deep an involvement in Syria. Considering this track record, it would be easy to conclude that I am against interventions anywhere and everywhere – but you would be wrong.

Like diplomacy, intervention is a tool of foreign policy, and it would be absurd to be against either of them on principle. The problem has been that in Libya, Mali, and Syria, intervention has been used to further bad foreign policy. And I am certainly against bad foreign policy on principle.

Intervention can come in many different forms. As Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus point out, its Latin root roughly translates into ‘to come between’, admitting ‘to nothing more than coming into a new relationship.’ There is much ambiguity about the nature of the relationship and who it is with, how it manifests itself, and how we came into it in the first place. Attempting to offer some clarity, I argued in these pages that we should intervene where it is in our interests to do so and our involvement should be proportionate to those interests. I called this, somewhat pompously, ‘the Ellis Doctrine’.

Yet British involvement in Libya, Mali, and Syria has been disproportionate in my view. Justifying the campaign against Colonel Gaddafi, David Cameron argued that “[j]ust because you can’t do the right thing everywhere doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the right thing somewhere.” But was it necessary for us to participate in the military intervention in order to “do the right thing”? Could we not have focused on the diplomatic side and left the fighting to others? If the Prime Minister had limited our ownership of the war, he might not have been cheered by the crowds in Benghazi, but he would have decreased Britain’s liability to the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you buy it.

Almost two years ago, I warned that Libya bears an eerie resemblance to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.

In 2001/02, we helped a loose coalition topple a brutal regime that we disliked without knowing too much about them or about what we wanted the postwar environment to look like. As a result of our uncoordinated actions, we created the problems that gradually undermined the illusory peace that followed. The postwar environment was shaped on the ground by the many factions and militias that we had empowered long before Western policymakers met to decide the future of the country. Over a decade and billions of pounds later, we are still trying to catch-up.

The same thing has happened in Libya. We helped a loose coalition of militias overthrow the Gaddafi regime without knowing too much about them or about what we wanted to happen afterwards. Postwar planning was deliberately scant because, like with Afghanistan in 2001/02, we were terrified of the prospect of being drawn into nation-building. The postwar environment was thus shaped by those many militias fighting on the ground and they now dominate the country.

Last month, one militia besieged government buildings, demanding that any old regime officials step down. Parliamentarians were pressured to pass a law banning them from ever holding office again. In September last year, a militia attacked the American consulate in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens. Three months before that, the British ambassador was almost killed in an RPG attack on his convoy.

Two years ago, Mr. Cameron warned that unless Gaddafi was toppled then a “rogue state” would develop on Europe’s doorstep, but Libya now risks becoming a so-called ‘failed state’. In January, a militant Islamist group used the country as a base from which to attack the In Amenas gas complex in Algeria. “The south of Libya is what the north of Mali was like” before France intervened, says one Malian official.

Last month, NATO began looking into whether or not it should train Libya’s nascent security forces in order to rein in the militias and improve the security situation in the country. Of course, this should have been planned during the initial campaign. Thus like in Afghanistan, we are trying to catch-up, and it is in these circumstances that I can see Britain being drawn into another long and costly nation-building mission in a country of only marginal interest to us. And after a decade of fruitless endeavour there, whoever is Prime Minister at the time may boast that he will pursue a more “hard-headed” approach unlike his predecessors – as Mr. Cameron boasted about Afghanistan four months before the Libyan intervention.

In his first Guildhall speech, he told the guests at the prestigious annual dinner that his foreign policy would “focus like a laser on defending and advancing Britain’s national interest.” This “hardheaded” approach was now being applied to Afghanistan. “We are not there to build a perfect democracy,” implying that that was what Tony Blair and Gordon Brown tried to do. Yet it is easy for politicians to be dispassionately realist about a quagmire they’ve inherited from their opponents; it’s much harder for them to work out if they are creating one themselves.

Why should Britain be drawn back into Libya, some may ask. Remember, we went in to get rid of Mad Dog and we got the job done. End of story. This is where we return to the importance of the form and extent of an intervention.

The more involved we are in an intervention, the more implicit responsibility we incur. Colin Powell warned George W. Bush that if he invaded Iraq, then he would “own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You’ll own it all.” Apart from the moral obligations this ownership imposes on us, trying to shirk the responsibilities can undermine whatever gains we made initially.

For example, some pundits argue that by arming the Syrian rebels, the West would gain their eternal gratitude after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Would this gratitude continue, however, if they felt we had abandoned them in the much harder postwar phase? Given how quickly the Libyan rebels accused us of abandoning them even before the intervention started, why would they continue to feel gratitude for our help if we ignored their current problems? The job was only half-done two years ago and we have tried to shirk the responsibilities we incurred ever since.

In a couple of weeks, The Spectator will be hosting a debate about whether or not Britain should intervene in Syria. The question is misleading – we already have intervened in the civil war there. A more relevant debate for us to have is to what extent should we intervene, in what form, and does it actually further our foreign policy? Unfortunately, as my friend and blogeague Adam Elkus has pointed out, ‘tools’ are sexy to talk about, but ‘how they actually advance’ our interests ‘most surely isn’t.’

Follow Aaron on Twitter.

Lynton Crosby is not the electoral White Knight many Tories believe him to be

Giles Marshall 12.48pm

The Tories have had a dreadful week, and on some of the thinnest stories, that the search for who to blame and, more importantly, who their white knight in shining armour might be, are on apace.

Don’t imagine that this is a search among elected representatives. They are now so poorly perceived that they are but mere stooges. The search is about rooting out those favourite villains of the political piece across the ages - the advisers!  And that just happens to be where the white knight lies too.

The history of punishing the adviser for doing the will of the master has had some prominent victims over the years.

Thomas Cromwell was Henry VIII’s most effective minister, enforcing his master’s will and authority with talent and success. Yet he made enemies, and went to the block in 1540 while the bloated king carried on with his capricious reign.

No-one is suggesting current villainous advisers will head to the block, but they are certainly the recipients of similar invectives as dogged the late Thomas Cromwell.  The Sun has helpfully identified the masters of menace behind the Tories’ succession of disasters as communication strategists Craig Oliver and Andrew Cooper, with a particularly sinister walk-on part for Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, who received more than just a mention in a recent piece for the Telegraph by James Kirkup that sported the headline, “The evil counsel of Sir Jeremy Heywood”.

And where is this White Knight? He emerges in the shape of the man many Tories are begging to run the next election campaign: feisty Australian Lynton Crosby.  The Spectator’s James Forsyth is his principal cheerleader, but there are plenty who agree that in Mr Crosby lies electoral salvation.

Why? Because he was Boris Johnson’s mayoral campaign manager and used to do pretty well for the Australian Liberal Party (don’t worry - they’re the rightists Down Under).

Mr Crosby’s services apparently come at a hefty price - would he really be worth it? Almost certainly not. He was fine marketing an amusing political buffoon against a tired, disliked old has-been. However, his record in getting Tories returned to government in the UK is rather less secure.

He was, after all, the man who famously made Michael Howard’s campaign one of the nastiest in recent memory, but signally failed to get Howard himself anywhere near Number 10. One of his pitches was: “It’s not racist to impose limits on immigration”. Perhaps not for some, but when the BNP use the issue to whip up support it pretty well as good as is.  All this in an election year that was Tony Blair’s weakest, following the disaster of the Iraq war.

Many Tories like Mr Crosby because he plays as negative as you want, and he swings heftily rightwards. He’d certainly bring focus to any election campaign, but whether it is the right sort of focus, and whether it leads to any sort of national electoral success - those are two serious questions that his career leaves hanging.

Follow Giles on Twitter @gilsemarshall

We cannot intervene in Syria

Giles Marshall 9.16am

I hate to say it, but Vladimir Putin has something of a point about Syria. We could do worse than simply wring our hands and leave things to the once and future Russian President.

Our problem is our outraged liberal values. Yet if we were able to take a step back from moral emotionalism, we would also have to acknowledge that not a single western intervention in the Middle East has resulted in a safer and more stable regime. Usually the reverse - utter chaos, anarchy and extremism, where innocents still die in large numbers.

Peter Oborne has a revealing account from ‘free’ Libya in this week’s Spectator (not yet online). In it he offers a vision of street fighting as a spectator sport, the kidnapping of hotel managers, and the descent of society into a murderous, corrupt abyss. There may not have been sweetness nor light under Colonel Gadaffi, no more than Iraq was a blissful democracy under Saddam Hussein, but what the West has orchestrated in its place is arguably much worse.

There are few things more damaging to a society, or more inimical to the pursuit of worldly peace, than countries without functioning governments. We might rail in our foolishness against governments and politicians here in the liberal West, but that is because we have them.

Governments are absolute prerequisites for stable, functioning and prosperous societies. That is why in 1787 the American Founding Fathers decided it was so important to have strong central government rather than merely a loose confederation of states. And that is why western nations today should err on the side of caution before conniving to overthrow yet another ghastly regime.

It could be that President Assad will fall in time as a result of internal revolt. On the other hand, it could be that we have greatly underestimated the support he still receives in much of Syria, and the fear that Syrians have of being overrun by Islamic militia of the type now ruling the roost in Iraq and Libya.

Whatever the true state of affairs, it would be madness now to propose action on the basis of emotional news reportage, regardless of how imperative and moral such an intervention might seem to us.

In this instance, it is the morally neutral President Putin who could in fact understand the value of realpolitik more than we do. We do not have to like Putin or the Syrian regime to realise that there is far more to Syria than we could ever hope to comprehend. That of course was the case in both Iraq and Libya, but this time, perhaps, we should resist the temptations of our better nature in favour of realism, however unpleasant it may seem to us. It is profoundly conservative, and reflects that clear understanding of man’s flawed nature.

It is not heroic, but international affairs rarely are.

Follow Giles on Twitter @gilesmarshall

The West’s half-hearted efforts will not end Syria’s civil war

Dan Trombly 10.23am

The pressure has increased for more forceful intervention in Syria. Despite the presence of international observers, the Assad regime refuses to adhere to a ceasefire demanded by the UN.

Whether it involves arming the rebels or a repeat of the NATO intervention in Bosnia in 1995, the ongoing strife in the country calls for further action, and US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry recently urged consideration of both options. Yet despite the frustration of diplomatic efforts, military options seem bleak.

Those who argue that past success in Bosnia could be replicated in Syria both ignore the history of the Bosnian war and its differences with the current conflict. The UN’s attempts to create “safe zones” resulted in the horrific massacres of Srebrenica and elsewhere. The Bosnian war was ultimately won when the numerically superior combined force of Croatian and Bosnian troops launched ground offensives, not when NATO began air strikes.

Similar attempts to implement “safe zones” in Iraq following the first Gulf War required the threat of ground assault in the south of the country, and the tactic failed frequently in the north, such as at Irbil in 1996. Even after the Desert Fox bombing campaign, forces withdrew once a Baghdad supporting faction secured that area. Notably, Saddam Hussein’s rule was not ended until troops fought their way to the capital in 2003, despite “safe zones” having been declared alongside frequent US air patrols and strikes.

In Syria, as in Bosnia and Iraq, neither protection of civilians nor regime change can be assured without superiority on the ground. Even air strikes would require a bombing campaign larger than in Iraq in 2003.

And enormous obstacles stand in the way of arming the Syrian rebels. In Bosnia, for instance, it was Croatia’s invasion that brought about a Serb defeat, not Bosnian forces. In Syria, without a ground invasion of tens (or hundreds) of thousands of troops - from Turkey, the Arab states, or the West - Syria’s rebels will remain woefully outmatched in conventional capabilities. Indeed, Turkey rarely conducts cross-border raids against PKK terrorists without several thousand soldiers.

The Syrian rebels need artillery batteries, armour and air support, not just man-portable anti-tank or anti-aircraft weaponry.

Even with Western air support, the rebels would likely continue to use the guerilla tactics befitting the outmatched force that they are, avoiding pitched battles and ceding territory to draw out hostile forces. While these might be effective tactics in a long-term insurgency, they are unlikely to result in regime change or effective protection of civilians in the short-term. Even the maintenance of a safe haven for rebel forces would need to be done outside Syrian territory, rather than in “safe zones”.

Simply arming rebel forces is more likely to cause a protracted civil war than a quick victory. The United States and others learned this is Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan during the Cold War. But in those cases, there was thought to be some value in attrition, and supporters of proxy groups were relatively indifferent to civilian casualties and the collateral damage of prolonged conflict. In Syria, such outcomes are unjustifiable on humanitarian grounds, nor on strategic aims (seeing Assad depart quickly).

Moreover, an influx of arms leaves lasting consequences. The behaviour of Libyan militias is a case in point.

An authoritarian regime such as Assad’s can hold on until hostile armoured columns roll on Damascus. Therefore the only strategically feasible option for a quick victory in Syria is a full-scale invasion. Yet no Western state is willing to undertake such a mission and a Turkish or Arab effort seems very unlikely.

Ultimately, Syria’s civil war will drag on. In the meantime, Western powers must work with Syria’s neighbours to prevent WMDs and other arms from leaving the country; they must provide aid to refugees that manage to escape Syria; and continue to exercise diplomatic options to the best of their ability.

Unless Western policymakers can convince their own populations and their Middle Eastern allies that an invasion is justifiable, providing military aid or half-hearted intervention can only worsen the consequences of Syria’s conflict - for both that country’s neighbours, and the interests of the West.

Dan Trombly is a student of International Affairs at George Washington University. He blogs at Slouching Towards Columbia.

The most sensational result in British by-election history?

Nik Darlington 10.22am

George Galloway has completed an astonishing return to Parliament with a runaway win in the Bradford West by-election.

With typical understatement, Mr Galloway described it as a “Bradford Spring” and “the most sensational victory in British political history”. Here he is, in his inimitable - and it would be churlish not to say captivating - style.

Comparing this win with the Arab Spring - a passionate mass movement that swept the breadth of an entire continent and has claimed thousands of lives in the name of giving the unvoiced a voice - is the type of unbounded arrogance few can rival, and a hallmark of Mr Galloway’s political career.

Yet in pushing Labour into second place by ten thousand votes, in a seat that Ed Miliband and his party fully expected to win, Mr Galloway has provided a bitter bookend to a week in which the Labour leader’s star had begun to shine so brightly.

It is a frightful result for the Tories too, considering how well the party performed here in 2010 (though we should be thankful the rumours of falling behind Ukip did not materialise). And the Lib Dems lost their deposit, though these days that is hardly surprising.

But David Cameron et al will surely be smiling this morning after a torrid ten days. This was never a seat the party truly expected to win, and Mr Galloway’s stunning triumph poses more questions for his former colleagues in the Labour party than the Tories upon which he wished nothing but “perdition”.

All things considered, this is potentially a great moment for Bradford West. Few fates are more dispiriting than being one of those desperately safe urban Labour seats, taken for granted by the party’s machine. The constituencies that vote in Labour candidates with a resigned shrug year after year after year, candidates who pledge social justice, urban renewal, progressive politics and fair chances, yet deliver little.

If Mr Galloway can change the habit of a lifetime and put Bradford West before his own vanity, he could be precisely what the people there need. Someone to stand up for them as a community, not a fiefdom. Someone to shout stirringly on their behalf, instead of condemning them to suffer under a failed party line.

If Mr Galloway can manage to do this, and few have the charisma to manage it better, then he deserves our (very much qualified) support.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington