The West must respond to the use of chemical weapons in Syria

Alexander Pannett 1.15pm

There are growing reports that the Syrian regime of President Assad has been using chemical weapons against his own people. If true, it would herald the crossing of a “red line” for the US and may lead to military intervention from Western forces.

The use of chemical weapons currently appears to be small-scale, tactical deployments. A few chemical shells targeted at rebel bunkers. The danger is that the use of chemical weapons reveals the growing desperation and determination of the Assad regime to resort to any methods necessary to survive. Now that a precedent has been set, it is no longer unthinkable that Assad’s forces would use chemical weapons against civilians on a larger scale. They have certainly shown no compunction in causing mass civilian casualties with more conventional weaponry.   

Assad has shown his disdain for threatened international reprisals if he uses chemical weapons. He has gambled that there will be no direct Western intervention in retaliation and that as Western intelligence agencies are already indirectly aiding rebel groups, there will not be any major escalation in the rebellion. He is correct that the West is reticent.

Considering the quagmire that Syria has descended into, with its kaleidoscope of factions and interests, the West should be cautious about getting directly involved. Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated the cost and strategic dangers of being drawn into wars in the Middle East. Previous Western intervention has exacerbated regional rivalries and sectarian divisions, raising the threat of terrorism, not diminishing it.

However, the wider issue is that the West must demonstrate to the world that it is serious in its stance against the use of chemical and biological weapons. It must also make it clear to Assad that any escalation in the use of such weapons against civilians would herald direct intervention. Otherwise Assad may believe he can act with impunity, which would have tragic consequences for the Syrian people.

Despite understandable reservations, the West should announce that it is now directly aiding secular rebel groups and it should also impose a no-fly zone. With air assets deployed to enforce the no-fly zone, the West can more easily resort to a direct air war if Assad escalates his use of chemical and biological weapons. If direct intervention is required, use of ground forces should be limited to special forces working in tandem with rebel forces as in Afghanistan in 2001. Their main priority would be to secure all biological and chemical weapon sites to stop such weapons from falling into the hands of extremists.

Obama is right to be cautious and will be loathe to commit American forces to an area of the world that is a distraction from the much more strategically important Pacific. But a leader does not choose the events that he or she faces. For now the West should limit its actions to aid and a no-fly zone. But it must do all it can to dissuade Assad from deploying chemical and biological weapons against the civilian population. Only the imminent threat of force will do this.

Follow Alexander on Twitter @alpannett

What is Britain’s place in the world?

Nik Darlington 12.45pm

The world is a dangerous place and it is only going to become more dangerous still, said William Hague over the weekend.

While sometimes it does not seem it, David Cameron’s tenure in Downing Street has been riven with foreign conflict. The mission in Afghanistan continues, though is winding down. Our resident foreign policy expert Aaron Ellis has blogged on several occasions about the difficult situation there and elsewhere.

The latest contentious involvement is in Mali, which Aaron contrasted with Afghanistan recently for the Spectator (they all grow up so fast these days).

Meanwhile, we witnessed from afar the Arab Spring; and we watch on uncomfortably (yet ultimately powerless?) as Syria plumbs the depths of despair.

Unpicking these and other issues tonight is Rory Stewart, MP for Penrith and the Border and a past contributor to these pages, at the Tory Reform Group’s International Lecture.

Rory Stewart will be speaking about Britain’s role in the world at 7.00pm in Parliament. For more details, please see the event page.

Think twice Mr Cameron before arming Syria’s rebels

Aaron Ellis 11.03am

During a statement to the House of Commons yesterday about last week’s European Council, the Prime Minister warned that the Syrian crisis was “attracting and empowering a new cohort of Al Qaeda-linked extremists.” The only way to check their malign influence is if the West arms those “parts of the Syrian opposition that want a proper transition to a free and democratic Syria.”

“My concern is that if the UK with others is not helping the opposition, and helping to shape and work with it, it is much more difficult to get the transition we all want”, said Mr Cameron.

To paraphrase John Maynard Keynes, practical men are usually the slaves of some bad pundit. In this case, the Prime Minister is the slave of pro-interventionist commentators like Anne-Marie Slaughter, who have been arguing this for months.

“Sooner or later some combination of the opposition groups will indeed control Syria,” she wrote in July.

“The eventual winners…will matter a great deal to the health, wealth and stability of what is still the most geo-strategically important region in the world. Syrians will remember those who remember them, those who cared enough to help save their lives.” Neither history nor recent events substantiate her argument.

As Micah Zenko wrote in response to Slaughter, it assumes a number of things:

First, that the post-Assad political leaders of Syria will be the same individuals who received U.S. weapons…Second, any country not arming the Syrian rebels will be remembered for their lack of enthusiasm, and suffer the wrath of Damascus for some period of time. Third, Syria’s political leaders will closely align their policy preferences with the United States, because the Obama administration armed them – rather than say the preferences of the Qataris or Saudis, who are providing weapons to Syrian rebel groups.

The situation in Syria is appalling, but it truly isn’t in Britain’s interests to intervene

Aaron Ellis 10.38am

Britain should help topple brutal regimes only where it is in our interests to help and our help ought to be proportionate to those interests.

I thought up the ‘Ellis Doctrine’ for humanitarian intervention in response to David Cameron’s justification for intervening in Libya, oft repeated by the war’s supporters.

“Just because you can’t do the right thing everywhere doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the right thing somewhere”, argued the Prime Minister.

But by what criteria had he judged Libya to be “somewhere”? Why was intervention the “right thing” for us to do, as opposed to other forms of help? For years, the Conservatives had said that British foreign policy under them would be “strategic”, yet Mr Cameron’s justification for the Libyan campaign was extraordinarily non-strategic. The Ellis Doctrine offered a framework with which to think about a future crisis.

Given the crisis in Syria is far more complex than the one that confronted us in Libya, British policy needs to be appropriately nuanced. There are many reasons why Britain should help the Syrian people topple Bashar al-Assad, but we ought to limit our involvement as much as possible. The risks of too big an investment outweigh the rewards. We must limit ourselves to containing the spillover from the conflict into neighbouring countries.

Yet our policy is trending in the other direction. The Prime Minister has suggested arming the rebels. The Chief of the Defence Staff warned recently that troops may intervene if the humanitarian crisis worsened. And the ‘National Coalition of the Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces’ (NCSROF) has been prematurely recognised as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Syrian people.

If Britain is to surmount the challenges of the twenty-first century and re-climb the greasy pole of international affairs, we need a prudent foreign policy. The country must sort out its finances, build up its resources, and think carefully about where in the world it gets involved in and how.

David Cameron used to recognise this, and, in recent months, seems to have rediscovered his ‘grand strategic’ ambitions. At the Conservative party conference, he declared that “[e]very battle we fight, every plan we make, every decision we take” was designed to help the United Kingdom “rise” amidst the decline and fall of other Great Powers. “I am not going to stand here as Prime Minister and allow [us] to join the slide.”

As welcome as his rediscovery of ‘the vision thing’ is, he has also consistently fallen short of realising it whenever put to the test. Unless Mr Cameron wants Britain to become a hegemonic power in the eastern Mediterranean, then our deepening involvement in Syria is part of this disappointing trend. Involving us in a fourth conflict in a decade – with little at stake and with no coherent political-military strategy – will hasten our fall, not reverse it.

British policy must focus on stopping the civil war from spreading into the lands of close allies like Jordan. There are nearly 200,000 refugees there. Speaking in August, when the number was around 140,000, King Abdullah said: “We can’t afford anymore Syrians coming through because of the load it is on the system here.”

In October, the New York Times reported that the United States had sent military personnel to the country to help the Jordanians handle the crisis. Given our long history with the Hashemite dynasty, this is what we ought to be doing.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

Syrian rebels must accommodate Russia to end the civil war

Alexander Pannett 12.30pm 

The civil war in Syria has entered a new chapter of vicious proportions. In the past week a government plane and helicopter have been shot down and suicide bombs have erupted through the capital, Damascus. The rebels have now acquired heavy weaponry and surface-to-air missiles, underlining their growing proficiency and power.

Worryingly for the West, foreign Jihadists have been reported amongst the rebel ranks, including such al-Qaeda linked groups as the Al Nusrah Front. Fourteen of these groups based in the city of Aleppo recently rejected the newly formed National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Oppositional forces, instead calling for an Islamic State. In a country with vast stores of biological and chemical weaponry, the threat of Islamists gaining control of such dangerous reservoirs is particularly chilling.

These developments re-affirm the importance of the recent establishment of the National Coalition as the political leadership of the rebellion. It offers hope that a national government can be formed after Assad’s fall that will represent all the disparate elements of the rebellion and prevent Syria fracturing into chaos.

However, the Assad regime’s demise is far from certain. As each day goes by, Syria falls more and more apart as mounting atrocities splinter societies and allow extremist elements to gain support. Now that there is an established opposition government, the West must send arms and funds to secular rebel groups that support the National Coalition. But it must and can do more to speed the downfall of Assad. The quickest way to achieve this goal is to use old-fashioned realpolitik to both cut away Assad’s international support and to offer him a personal exit and sanctuary.

The major supporter of Assad that is preventing any action by the UN Security Council is Russia. I have written before about why Russia supports Assad and it is one reason above all others, Tartus. The Russian naval base at Tartus on the Syrian coast grants the Russian navy access to the Mediterranean and influence over the vital water-ways that lead to the strategically important Middle East. The West must press the National Coalition to assure Russia that it will retain its naval base after the fall of the Assad regime. This will encourage Russia to allow a UN mandate to impose no-fly zones in Syria.

For their part, the Russians are worried about direct military intervention in Syria, citing the sovereignty of nation states to resolve domestic disputes. This is a smoke-screen dilemma that hides Russia’s anxiety about losing influence in the Middle East to the US. These fears can be allayed by the West’s encouragement of the National Coalition to announce that palatable representatives of the Assad regime will have a place in the future of Syria. The National Coalition must also emphasise that minorities will be protected and could even gain autonomy.

Russia is also concerned about the advent of Jihadist elements amongst the rebels. The West also shares these security concerns. It should therefore share intelligence with Russia in order to isolate these extremist elements. It is in Russia’s interests as much as the West to ensure that the post-Assad regime is secular and not extremist. Russia must be encouraged to see that the National Coalition is an answer to its concerns, not an enemy to its interests.

Finally, the West should allow Assad a sanctuary to encourage him to end the fighting. Despite being a betrayal of the rights of the victims of his atrocities, if he is denied escape he will resist until the last and will likely resort to chemical and biological weapons as he becomes more desperate. For this Russia could be approached to facilitate Assad’s safety. He will be more likely to respond to assurances from such a powerful protector. Allowing Assad to avoid immediate punishment may be a distasteful solution but it will save many lives and Syria from further ruin if it brings the war to a swifter end. It should also be added that sanctuary offers only temporary safety, and as Mladic and other war criminals have discovered, justice not politics is a friend of time.

Civil wars erode the fabric of society that forms the basis of any functioning state. They run in negative correlation to the abstract legitimacy of a national identity. Now that the National Coalition has formed, Western support must crystallize around its secular aims. However, to achieve a quicker end, Russian interests must be consulted and accommodated. The National Coalition can isolate the Assad regime from international support if its guarantees Russian influence in post-Assad Syria. It can also end the war before extremists become too strong by granting Assad sanctuary to Russia.

Realpolitik may be an ugly solution but, at times, it saves lives.

Follow Alexander on Twitter @alpannett

The West, Russia & Syria: Foreign policy is rarely a zero-sum game

Aaron Ellis 6.12am

It is perfectly possible for one country to argue with another over a controversial issue at the same time as co-operating with them on several others - as long as they both get their priorities right and are diplomatic in explaining their differences publicly.

Unfortunately, both Britain and the United States have failed to do this with regard to Russia: they have given more attention to Syria, where they disagree with the latter, than to the many more important issues on which they share common interests. The way British and American officials have explained their differences with their Russian counterparts has also been appallingly undiplomatic and, unsurprisingly, counterproductive.

If London and Washington want to withdraw from Afghanistan, negotiate an end to the Iran crisis, reduce nuclear weapons, and expand NATO, they must give less ‘airtime’ to Syria when dealing with Moscow. If they want to stop the violence there, they must be more respectful of Russia’s views, no matter how heartless they believe them to be. Otherwise, the Kremlin will take a zero-sum approach to the issues listed above, making the world a considerably more dangerous place.

Anyone familiar with the history of Anglo-American relations with Russia knows how difficult it can be to get them on your side, no matter how obvious it is that your approach to an issue will benefit them as much as it would benefit yourself. Russian foreign policy is characterised by interplaying contradictions. Its practitioners can be refreshingly honest one minute, deceptive the next; they can play the aggrieved party in a dispute when they are actually the aggressor; and can alternate between undermining the international order and being one of its key pillars

Yet there are best practice principles that can be teased out of our difficult history with the Russians.

One, respect their interests and treat them the way a great power ought to be treated, even if it is obvious they’re not one. Two, be honest about your own interests and don’t try to trick them, though they may be trying to trick you. Three, don’t be a hypocrite, no matter how hypocritical you think they are behaving. Essentially, keep in mind Ronald Reagan’s dictum: trust, but verify.

If this is “best practice”, both the United Kingdom and the United States have badly mishandled the Russians during the Syria crisis. They have not tried to safeguard their interests in the country should Bashar al-Assad fall, nor have they taken seriously their view of the crisis, as Giles Marshall argued they should in these pages last month. Rather than be diplomatic about their differences, some Western officials have publicly attacked Russia, as the US Ambassador to the UN did in February.

Some of the British and Americans’ actions have just been tin-eared: for example, leaking that David Cameron thought about using Special Forces to stop a Russian ship from allegedly taking weapons to Syria.

For months now, the conflict has preoccupied Anglo-American diplomacy, yet there are many other issues that are much more important to us than Syria and which require Russian support – or at least acquiescence. If we continue to bungle things with the Kremlin, it will become less cooperative on Iran and Afghanistan, even taking a zero-sum approach. One official said as much yesterday, warning that “if Russia doesn’t like the outcome” in Syria, it will start selling long-range surface-to-air missiles to Iran.

Given that Russia is part of one of the two routes via which NATO supplies troops in Afghanistan, its support will be vital over the next two years as we withdraw, as the only other route out of the country is through Pakistan…

British and American officials are understandably exasperated with Russia’s Syria policy, for it is cold, self-interested, and hypocritical. Vladimir Putin attacked humanitarian interventionism a few months ago, yet he justified the war with Georgia on the same as grounds as those calling for military action in Syria. Unfortunately, the terrible things happening there simply aren’t important enough to us to risk an open breach with the Kremlin and losing its cooperation on much more vital issues.

Much of what Otto von Bismarck said over a hundred years ago holds true today, not least his belief that the secret of foreign policy is to make a good treaty with Russia…

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

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.