Striking at Syria without a strategy

For the past ten days the US, Britain and France have pressed ahead with plans for military action against the Assad regime in Syria. They are right to respond with concern at evidence of a major chemical weapons attack on civilians in Damascus last week. Use of these weapons is abhorrent. The attack risks normalising chemical warfare in future. A response from the world is urgently needed.

That said, it has always been incumbent on the US and the UK – especially after the debacle over their invasion of Iraq ten years ago – to address three concerns ahead of any military action. They need to make every effort to establish evidence of last week’s attack and the Assad regime’s culpability. They must spell out the legal basis for military action. And they must explain what the strategic goal of a missile strike on Syria would be.

UK intelligence chiefs believe it is “highly likely” that the Assad regime conducted last week’s attack. But this judgment still leaves room for questioning. Ed Miliband, Britain’s Labour leader, was therefore right to insist there could be no parliamentary vote to back military action until UN inspectors have completed their work in Damascus at the weekend. How Mr Miliband will emerge from this frenzied saga at Westminster is unclear. But after Iraq, it would have been a gross spectacle for British politicians to rush into conflict before UN inspectors had finished their work.

On the legal issue, Britain’s arguments still lack detail. The UK says it can act outside the UN, citing the “doctrine of humanitarian intervention”. The UK should have cited the conventions on which it is invoking this contested doctrine of foreign policy.

However, it is the strategic rationale for the impending strike that is most alarming. The west plans a 48-hour “short, sharp” bombardment. Military chiefs in the US and UK wonder what this is designed to achieve. The history of quick US strikes in the Middle East, from Lebanon to Libya and Iraq, is hardly reassuring. It might be futile against a battle-hardened regime. Conversely, it may trigger a wider war if Syria retaliates or the wrong targets are struck.

The west is still casting around for a strategy on Syria. It would be more convincing if the impending missile strikes were designed to tip the Syrian battlefield towards the rebels, forcing the Assad regime into peace talks. Instead, we may be about to witness a “feel-good operation” that flirts with what military planners call the law of unintended consequences.

 

– Financial Times

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