compromise
06-17-2013, 04:16 PM
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100222116/there-are-no-good-choices-in-syria/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2013/06/Syria.jpg
Are we really sure they're the goodies?
Every other commentator seems clear about whether to intervene in Syria. For one side, it's a case of straightforward ethics: are you prepared to stand by and watch women and children being slaughtered? For the other, it's a case of national interest: are you seriously going to send weapons to a dysfunctional hell-hole where some of them are almost certain to fall into jihadi hands and end up being turned against us?
I wish I could feel the same moral certainty. I wish I could decidely dismiss my opponents as either cowardly appeasers or unhinged neo-cons. But the truth is that most of those involved have respectable motives, and there are people on both sides who know the country better than I do.
The argument for intervention is admirably high-minded. The Assad dictatorship has been terrorising its population in monstrous ways, fearful of majority rule. This terrorism has produced a backlash, sucking in paramilitaries and radicals from around the Muslim world. Atrocities answer atrocities in a Sicilian cycle of revenge attacks. Tortures, mutilations and massacres have escalated to the point where both sides are accused of spraying poisoned gas. The war could destabilise three of our allies in the region: Israel, Turkey and Jordan. Worse, it could lead to Shi'a-Sunni sectarianism throughout the Middle East.
It is easy to say that we should get all sides around the negotiating table. But, as things stand, the Ba'athist thugs are winning, and have little incentive to settle. The case for intervention is thus a practical one: beefing up the democratic opposition will, it is hoped, create the conditions for a ceasefire. If the democratic opposition is eclipsed militarily, runs the argument, it will also be eclipsed politically, and the war will then become a straightforward showdown between Assad's militiamen and the Islamist fanatics. This may be our last chance to rescue Syria's pluralist and secularist opposition which, while it speaks for a decent chunk of the civilian population, risks being extirpated on the battlefield.
The counter-argument is that, in Syria as in Iraq, we delude ourselves when we imagine that there is much of a market for Western-style democracy. Years of dictatorship have eroded civil society and wrecked the middle class. The unrest has moved well past its Arab Spring phase, and become, if not exactly a war betwen Sunnis and Shi'as, at least a confrontation between the Salafi version of Sunnism promoted by the Saudis and the revolutionary version of Shi'ism promoted by the Tehran ayatollahs. There is, in short, no one to back – at least, no one who has any chance of winning. The last thing we should be doing is pouring arms and ordinance into a failed state which will soon, as Lenin used to put it, export its internal contraditions violently.
Both cases are convincing. I travelled in Syria when it was still run by Assad père, and was touched by several small acts of kindness from locals. As in many dictatorships, people could not rely on the institutions of the state, and compensated by being exceptionally generous and hospitable toward each other. I don't like to imagine what it must be like to bring up a family amid the horror. It is also fair to point out that Vladimir Putin seems to share none of our scruples about sending weaponry to Syria, and you can argue that a one-sided arms embargo is a form of intervention: an intervention in favour of Assad.
But I keep coming back to one question. Even if there is a case for intervention, why should it be Britain that intervenes? Why not Bolivia or Bangladesh or Belgium or Botswana? To say 'Because we can' is no answer at all. There are plenty of unpleasant dictatorships in the world. Are we going to liberate Tibet, or stop the slaughter in Chechnya, or overthrow the monstrous Karimov dictatorship in Uzbekistan?
It's true that, unlike most countries, we have the capacity to project military force. But we should surely do so only where we have a particular responsibility or interest. If we're looking for tyrants to topple, I'd have thought Zimbabwe, where we guaranteed the new state at Lancaster House in recent memory, has a greater claim than Syria, where we have next to no historical connection.
I opposed both the Iraq and Libya campaigns. I'm pretty sure I was right on the first, though I'm less sure about the second. In both cases, though, you could argue that Britain had obligations. We had intervened militarily on six previous occasions in Mesopotamia. We were the former colonial power, the sponsors of the Hashemite dynasty and the home of the exiled Iraqi opposition. Saddam had invaded our Kuwaiti allies.
In Libya, too, we were, technically, the former colonial power, having overseen the independence process after ejecting the Italians. Gaddafi had presented the overthrow of the monarchy as an anti-British revolution, and had subsequently committed several acts of aggression against us: the muder of Yvonne Fletcher, the Lockerbie bomb and – an act of war by any normal definition – military sponsorship of the IRA. The United Kingdom, in short, had better reasons than most to rid the world of the demented colonel.
Syria, by contrast, is not our responsibility. Even the most gung-ho supporters of intervention admit the risk of unintended consequences. Why should it be Britain that runs these risks? Why should we make ourselves targets? Perhaps I'm missing something here, or perhaps something has altered the balance of advantage. If so, ministers must make their case to Parliament. It won't do any more to claim that they have intelligence which can't be revealed in public: that option was definitively closed off by the Iraq fiasco. If the case for intervention is as strong as supporters believe, then surely it will be strong enough to carry the Commons.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2013/06/Syria.jpg
Are we really sure they're the goodies?
Every other commentator seems clear about whether to intervene in Syria. For one side, it's a case of straightforward ethics: are you prepared to stand by and watch women and children being slaughtered? For the other, it's a case of national interest: are you seriously going to send weapons to a dysfunctional hell-hole where some of them are almost certain to fall into jihadi hands and end up being turned against us?
I wish I could feel the same moral certainty. I wish I could decidely dismiss my opponents as either cowardly appeasers or unhinged neo-cons. But the truth is that most of those involved have respectable motives, and there are people on both sides who know the country better than I do.
The argument for intervention is admirably high-minded. The Assad dictatorship has been terrorising its population in monstrous ways, fearful of majority rule. This terrorism has produced a backlash, sucking in paramilitaries and radicals from around the Muslim world. Atrocities answer atrocities in a Sicilian cycle of revenge attacks. Tortures, mutilations and massacres have escalated to the point where both sides are accused of spraying poisoned gas. The war could destabilise three of our allies in the region: Israel, Turkey and Jordan. Worse, it could lead to Shi'a-Sunni sectarianism throughout the Middle East.
It is easy to say that we should get all sides around the negotiating table. But, as things stand, the Ba'athist thugs are winning, and have little incentive to settle. The case for intervention is thus a practical one: beefing up the democratic opposition will, it is hoped, create the conditions for a ceasefire. If the democratic opposition is eclipsed militarily, runs the argument, it will also be eclipsed politically, and the war will then become a straightforward showdown between Assad's militiamen and the Islamist fanatics. This may be our last chance to rescue Syria's pluralist and secularist opposition which, while it speaks for a decent chunk of the civilian population, risks being extirpated on the battlefield.
The counter-argument is that, in Syria as in Iraq, we delude ourselves when we imagine that there is much of a market for Western-style democracy. Years of dictatorship have eroded civil society and wrecked the middle class. The unrest has moved well past its Arab Spring phase, and become, if not exactly a war betwen Sunnis and Shi'as, at least a confrontation between the Salafi version of Sunnism promoted by the Saudis and the revolutionary version of Shi'ism promoted by the Tehran ayatollahs. There is, in short, no one to back – at least, no one who has any chance of winning. The last thing we should be doing is pouring arms and ordinance into a failed state which will soon, as Lenin used to put it, export its internal contraditions violently.
Both cases are convincing. I travelled in Syria when it was still run by Assad père, and was touched by several small acts of kindness from locals. As in many dictatorships, people could not rely on the institutions of the state, and compensated by being exceptionally generous and hospitable toward each other. I don't like to imagine what it must be like to bring up a family amid the horror. It is also fair to point out that Vladimir Putin seems to share none of our scruples about sending weaponry to Syria, and you can argue that a one-sided arms embargo is a form of intervention: an intervention in favour of Assad.
But I keep coming back to one question. Even if there is a case for intervention, why should it be Britain that intervenes? Why not Bolivia or Bangladesh or Belgium or Botswana? To say 'Because we can' is no answer at all. There are plenty of unpleasant dictatorships in the world. Are we going to liberate Tibet, or stop the slaughter in Chechnya, or overthrow the monstrous Karimov dictatorship in Uzbekistan?
It's true that, unlike most countries, we have the capacity to project military force. But we should surely do so only where we have a particular responsibility or interest. If we're looking for tyrants to topple, I'd have thought Zimbabwe, where we guaranteed the new state at Lancaster House in recent memory, has a greater claim than Syria, where we have next to no historical connection.
I opposed both the Iraq and Libya campaigns. I'm pretty sure I was right on the first, though I'm less sure about the second. In both cases, though, you could argue that Britain had obligations. We had intervened militarily on six previous occasions in Mesopotamia. We were the former colonial power, the sponsors of the Hashemite dynasty and the home of the exiled Iraqi opposition. Saddam had invaded our Kuwaiti allies.
In Libya, too, we were, technically, the former colonial power, having overseen the independence process after ejecting the Italians. Gaddafi had presented the overthrow of the monarchy as an anti-British revolution, and had subsequently committed several acts of aggression against us: the muder of Yvonne Fletcher, the Lockerbie bomb and – an act of war by any normal definition – military sponsorship of the IRA. The United Kingdom, in short, had better reasons than most to rid the world of the demented colonel.
Syria, by contrast, is not our responsibility. Even the most gung-ho supporters of intervention admit the risk of unintended consequences. Why should it be Britain that runs these risks? Why should we make ourselves targets? Perhaps I'm missing something here, or perhaps something has altered the balance of advantage. If so, ministers must make their case to Parliament. It won't do any more to claim that they have intelligence which can't be revealed in public: that option was definitively closed off by the Iraq fiasco. If the case for intervention is as strong as supporters believe, then surely it will be strong enough to carry the Commons.