Category Archives: Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Politics, Syria, United Nations, United States

Comparing Syria today with Iraq in 2003…

ANALYSIS

Many commentators use Iraq as a benchmark when judging American foreign policy in the Middle East. Whilst no one will want ‘another Iraq’, and placing rhetoric aside, how does Syria today actually compare to Iraq in 2003?

Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s President, and Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi despot, were both Ba’athist dictators presiding over countries that are an unstable balance of varying sectarian, political and ethnic groups. Long before any suggestion of U.S. military involvement, both regimes committed grave atrocities against their civilian populations. In 1988 Saddam Hussein dropped chemical bombs on citizens in the Kurdish town of Halabja, killing around 5,000 and injuring thousands more. Prior to that, and in 1982, Hafez al-Assad, Syria’s former leader, crushed an uprising in the Syrian city of Hama, killing more than 20,000 people.

Iraq was plagued with sectarian violence (which continues today) following the political vacuum created by the US-led invasion. The bloody civil war in Syria is already dividing along sectarian lines at a time when these divides are deepening across the entire Middle East region.

Making the case for war is the second comparative. The US-led invasion of Iraq primarily centred on Hussein’s failure to co-operate with U.N. weapons inspections and the since-discredited evidence and intelligence on the country’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. When it comes to Syria, President Obama has signalled that Assad’s use of chemical weapons on unarmed civilians is a ‘red line’ and that the U.S. will want to disrupt and degrade the regime’s military capabilities against civilians.

The United Nations have said that around 100,000 have been killed in Syria so far. If the U.S. doesn’t intervene, we know that many more will perish before a political solution is found. We won’t know, however, how many will be killed if the U.S. carries out military strikes, irrespective of how accurate the missiles are deemed to be. As many as 125,380 civilians were killed following the U.S. invasion of Iraq; it’s difficult to argue that this many would have died if Iraq had not been invaded in 2003.

The cost of intervention must also be considered. An estimate of the overall cost of the Iraq war is said to run as high as $2 trillion. Whilst Washington has said that military action in Syria will be far more limited, and there will be ‘no boots on the ground’, the Cato institute suggests that the cost of a Syrian intervention would need to include $500 million for training rebels, a further $500 million for establishing an initial Syrian no-fly zone, and then as much as a billion dollars a month in military operational costs. Expect costs to inflate beyond official figures, as they invariably do.

The issue of outside involvement is also important to note. Unlike Iraq pre-2003, there is already a high level of external involvement on the ground in Syria. The Gulf States, along with Turkey, as well as the U.S. and Europe, are offering varying degrees of financial and military support to a broad range of anti-Assad factions. Assad himself can still count on backing from Iran and Russia. The Arab Spring has meant that politics across the region is now far more volatile and unpredictable than it was ten years ago; there can be no doubt that Syria’s interventions will have far-reaching ramifications across the Middle East and post-Arab Spring.

Appetite for war is the final consideration. America’s experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan have dampened public appetite for war. A ‘war weary’ nation will have reduced expectations that any U.S. military involvement in another Middle Eastern country will be neat or quick. If Mr Obama does win support in Congress, the U.S. will have a clear mandate to go to war in Syria with France as its chief European partner. The U.S. can also expect support from the Arab League, too. In an unusual intervention it has urged the international community to ‘take the deterrent and necessary measures against the culprits of this crime that the Syrian regime bears responsibility for’. Just as in Iraq, the U.S. cannot hope for UN backing for its actions because of veto wielding Russia and China. Arguably, though, this was seen as more important in 2003 because today we have lower expectations of the UN’s divided and indifferent Security Council.

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Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Politics, Syria, United States

Britain’s global standing could be diminished…

NOT THE VOTE THE GOVERNMENT SOUGHT SAYS THE BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY

The British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has warned that Britain’s standing in the world could be ‘diminished’ following Parliament’s rejection of military action against Syria.

Mr Hague said he and the prime minister were working to ensure that Britain does not ‘matter less’ in the wake of the unprecedented vote, which effectively ruled out British involvement in any attack on the Syrian regime.

The Foreign Secretary said that it wasn’t the outcome the Government had sought and added: ‘We have to make sure that Britain isn’t diminished’. Mr Hague, who today held talks with U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, in London, insisted ministers were not ‘gung ho’ about military action.

But he said he remained convinced that the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons should be met with a military response – and it would be ‘alarming’ if the U.S. Congress also voted against retaliatory strikes.

Warning that the violent fallout from the Arab Spring could last for years, the Foreign Secretary said that if it is decided in the various parliaments of the world that no-one will stand up to the use of chemical weapons and take any action about that, that would amount to a very alarming moment in the affairs of the world.

Mr Hague said:

… The real fear is of these processes going on a long time, of revolutions that take decades – throwing up a lot of turbulence, civil wars along the way, sometimes bringing intervention.

But he added:

… We mustn’t be put off by that from keeping faith with millions of people in the Arab world who want the dignity and freedom that we have in our own country. We have to keep faith with them and not think that they’re all evil or they’re all fanatics because actually, yes, sometimes these countries have those people … but the great majority of people are not like that.

Mr Hague acknowledged that atrocities carried out by the Syrian opposition had made it harder for the public and MPs to support intervention. But he said Britain had a duty to ensure more moderate elements in the opposition were not ‘eliminated’.

Mr Hague insisted that the Government had no plans for a second Commons Vote on Syria, but added: ‘If circumstances change dramatically, then of course everybody would be looking at things in a different light.’

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Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Politics, Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

G20 and America’s defining moment…

WATERSHED MOMENT

The G20 summit that ended in St Petersburg yesterday failed to produce any kind of agreement on the Syrian crisis. The chasm and bridge separating the United States and Russia on Syria is as wide as it has ever been. Yet, few such gatherings in recent years have offered a truer picture of how and where the real balance of global power lies. A genuine watershed in international affairs may at last have arrived; replacing a vestige of what has been referred to of late as the ‘Arab Spring’ – a term synonymous with upheaval and chaos spreading through many Islamic states.

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The two-day gathering in St Petersburg have confirmed many things. It underscored, for example, just how determined Vladimir Putin is in reasserting Russia on the world stage. It displayed quite clearly, too, that a mercantilist China will do nothing to unsettle its economic interests, and in the process laid bare Europe’s total inability to act on its own.

A senior Kremlin official was reported to have said that no one pays any attention to Britain, a ‘small island’. But could the same not be said of the rest of the EU? Germany, for instance, Europe’s economic powerhouse, is notable only for its deafening silence. France, eager to push a military agenda in punishing the Assad regime for its alleged use of chemical weapons, is unwilling to do so without America’s lead. Other G20 participants wring their hands in aghast and disbelief at what is happening in Syria, but most are keen to shriek away from any involvement. At a moment of high international drama, it leads us back – as it invariably does – to the United States and its role in the world.

It shouldn’t have required a Kremlin official to point out Britain’s diminished influence in the world; the empire ended more than half-a-century ago. But, like it or not, with the United Nations no more than a fractious and divided talking shop, the U.S. is the closest thing we have to a global policeman. No country, it has been argued, has the right to behave as such, and America’s actual ability to change history, for all its military might and superpower status, is sometimes exaggerated – not least by itself. We need to look no further than the sorry state of Iraq, a decade after George W Bush’s invasion, to provide clarity to the argument. In any major crisis, however, all eyes turn to Washington, as they are now in Syria as the regime is accused of violating a ban on the use of chemical weapons. Syria is a signatory against the banned use of such weapons, and yet here we have a paralysed UN Security Council that is powerless to enforce an international binding treaty.

With a vote in Congress on the use of U.S. military force in Syria to be held on the 9th September, the next few days will be decisive. Britain’s role on the world stage has been diminished given the veto in the House of Commons last week, but for President Obama the stakes are vastly higher. On Syria, Mr Obama’s approach has been feckless. First, he declared that Assad must go without saying how, and then laid down his ‘red lines’ over the use of chemical weapons. Later, he announced his decision to use force, and more recently has passed the buck to Congress on Capitol Hill. Deep down, many will suspect that he would prefer to stay well out of Syria given what has happened in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Syria is ablaze and arguably much more contentious than anything the United States has dealt with in the past 30-years. Mr Obama’s uncertainty in how to proceed in Syria is resonating in all corners of the world.

If present indications are anything to go on, the House of Representatives could well follow the House of Commons in opposing military action. If so, a definitive moment will have arrived. Unlike David Cameron, Obama will either defy his legislature and go ahead with strikes, or he will acquiesce, and there will be no military response. If military action is taken off the table, not only would Barack Obama’s presidency be gravely weakened at home, but in the eyes of the world so too would the credibility of America as a global policeman. Either way, a watershed is at hand.

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