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Troubled waters afoot
Despite a total mess surrounding us on all sides, a new opportunity presents itself in the Syrian quagmire.
What disordered times we are living though now. What a total mess surrounds us on all sides. You have Islamic terrorism stalking our cities; the European Union buckling under the weight of a tide of ‘refugees’ while at the same time grappling with bankrupt states on its periphery; our own referendum to decide whether we’re going to cut and run; an Opposition in total disarray; an America which refuses anymore to act as the world’s policeman; and failed states lapping Europe’s boundaries which have collapsed into anarchy. As if this all wasn’t enough, the world is still not through the consequences of the biggest financial crash in living memory. What are we to make of it all?
Not so long ago, we faced a foe on the other side of the Iron Curtain. He was an implacable one who had the means to destroy us all. But he didn’t. There were ground rules which we both observed, since he knew that we had the power to destroy him, too. He wore a uniform and he had client states – a great many of them – which he kept in check, as we did ours. There would be stand-offs from time to time and localised bushfire wars, but they were handled within well understood rules which worked. All that is now history and no one knows any longer where they are.
I cannot help but think that a great mistake was made when Communism collapsed. The former enemy was prostrate and needed help, but he didn’t get it. He went through ten years of hell with robber barons (oligarchs) stripping the state of assets and operating a mafia-style regime. To curb it all, but without success, authoritarianism returned to Russia in the form of Vladimir Putin. But he did not see himself to be at odds with the European Union. Indeed, he sought to reach out to it and gain acceptance as a valued partner. He even wanted an accommodation with NATO on joint exercises.
But all these overtures fell on deaf ears and now you have a troublesome bear rampaging through the undergrowth, which has had to be put into the school-equivalent of ‘special measures’ with sanctions applied.
A new opportunity, however, presents itself in the Syrian quagmire to put right some of this damage. Russia is as anxious as we are to bring that murderous conflict to an end. It is equally understanding of the need to play its part in destroying Isis, the most malignant evil since the days of Pol Pot.
Just as important, it accepts that the Syrian dictator, Assad, cannot be part of any long-term solution and that, as long as a face-saving interim arrangement can be made, Putin will go along with it. Assad has, hitherto, always enjoyed their backing; this is because Assad, and before him his father, had allowed Russia to maintain a naval base on the Syrian coast and pretend to a Mediterranean presence.
Provided its interests are protected in any eventual settlement, Russia can be expected to cooperate and play its part in ending the civil war. In so doing and acting in concert with the West, the West can begin the process of undoing the damage which its former cold-shouldering of Russia brought about. The European Union, for its part, can begin to lock Russia into its embrace and give Putin the respectability and acceptance which he originally craved.
Turning to Uncle Sam, we are going to have to accept that he will never again be prepared to shoulder the burden of world peace alone. He made a terrible mistake in withdrawing the last ten thousand troops from Iraq. Had they stayed as an emergency, fire-fighting backup, Isis would never have been able to establish itself.
What is needed now is for the European Union to step up to the plate, militarily, for the purpose of burden-sharing. Were it to do so, Uncle Sam would happily abandon any thoughts of retreating back into isolationism which was a major contributor to World War Two.
It is morally and dangerously wrong for Europe to expect any longer a free ride where security is concerned. It has the wealth and it must use it, along with others, to bolster America. I am sure the United Nations, in the interests of world peace, would welcome such a development. Of course, the European powers would have to make it clear that they seek no territorial advantage and that this is not a fresh round of empire building by the back door. Even Iran must be allowed to play its part, along with neighbouring powers.
I doubt that even if peace, by such a combination of power, can be restored to Syria that in the short term a viable government can be made to work when there is such bitterness on all sides. In that event, a United Nations mandate should be imposed on the country for It has to be accepted that, just occasionally, only the application of overwhelming force can settle the argument. This, I believe, is just such a case
Better the devil you know
Bombings continue in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and commercial hub, which has become a key battleground in the country’s protracted civil war.
It begins to look as if the dreadful Assad may yet go on to win the Syrian civil war. Why is this? The quagmire which is Syria is about as complicated as ever it gets in politics and religion, and with the latter playing the dominant part I will not attempt to explain – even if I were up to it – all the competing factors at work in that benighted area. Suffice it to say that it was and is a devil’s brew which we were wise not to get drawn into, even though our prime minister was up for it. Parliament said no and that was the end of it.
It was this vote, I believe, which saved an always-cagey Obama from being swept into the affair and commencing air strikes. Incautiously (if he never meant what he said) he spoke of ‘Red Lines’. Luckily the Commons vote caused Congress to take stock. It values its British ally’s diplomatic cover around the world as it demonstrates that it is not a bully acting alone in the world; there are two of us. This cover it considers more important than its military contribution, welcome as that nevertheless is. They are not anxious to stand alone nowadays and feel much more comfortable when their old mate is there to take its share (if needs be) of the flak. Although France indicated that it would join them – perhaps anxious to lay President George W. Bush’s “Surrender Monkeys” insult from the Iraq war to rest – it was not the same as having reliable old Blighty. You could at least go into a huddle with him and talk to him in your own lingo.
Would that intervention have changed things on the ground and stopped Assad gaining the upper hand as he has now? I believe not. So long as Hezbollah – the bain of Israel – was willing to throw its considerable military weight behind Assad and as long as Iran kept training its operatives and providing them with hardware and the Russians replacing Assad’s equipment losses there was never going to be an easy or quick solution. And even if the West – assuming it had begun bombing – then proceeded to up the ante to the point where Assad could take no more, what then?
Were we going to allow a fragmented, at-each-other’s-throats band of brothers with no clear agenda of what to do with their newly liberated country take control? I think not. Especially when their ranks had been hugely swollen by fanatical Jihadists, many of them affiliated to Al Qaeda.
All of this now brings us to the most cynical piece of realpolitik since America armed Saddam Hussein to help him stave off defeat by Iran during the Iraq-Iran war during the early ’80s. Have you noticed that government pronouncements, and even media reporting on the Syrian civil war, have gone strangely quiet compared with what it was – and this despite the horrendous losses now put at over 150,000 dead?
It is my belief that, so worried is the West as to who would take over in the event of the fall of Assad, it has decided that the ‘man of blood’ who gassed hundreds of his own people is now preferable to those who would take over and plunge Syria – the cockpit of the Arab world – into even an even greater mess than that which the former London dentist, Assad, has plunged it into.
The nightmare which the West’s security forces face in a pivotal land – one which hates and shares a common border with Israel – is a country that becomes a hotbed of fanatical Jihadists with perhaps Al Qaeda taking the lead. Because of these terrible concerns I fear we are now willing – even preferring – Assad to consolidate his recent considerable gains and go on to win the civil war.
It seems almost inconceivable that a man we have so recently labeled a war criminal and threatened to send to the International Criminal Court at The Haguemay now be let off the hook. ‘Better the devil you know’ now seems to go the thinking. An ordered Syria – even one soaked in innocent blood – is now held to be a better solution than one defying a solution.
So get ready, all of us! Assad may yet triumph against a divided opposition and a befuddled, humiliated West may feel its only course is to settle down to a business as usual arrangement. Given the passage of time, and bearing in mind his own and his wife’s former London connections, the Syrian despot might even be asked, like the executed Romanian dictator, to pay a state visit to London and sup with her Maj.
So here, in a nutshell, is the world we are compelled to live in: a complicated, compromised, infinitely bewildering world in which there are few easy answers nor many quick fixes and certainly no ethical foreign policy such as the late, naïve foreign secretary, Robin Cook, thought he could operate.
The Last Foundling 