Intervening in Syria is in our national interest

I've blogged earlier about how the Commons vote against intervening in Syria was accidental and blamed that largely on David Cameron (though Ed Miliband didn't exactly cover himself in glory).

For what it's worth, I think there should be some sort of punitive action taken against the Syrian regime and if the UK is not going to be part of it then I hope the Obama administration goes ahead regardless.

Lots of the debate around the merits of intervening have focused on the things like whether there is a detailed plan (and exit strategy) for any intervention and what impact intervention would have on the balance of power in the Syrian civil war. The other phrase trotted out regularly is a variation of "it's none of our business and we should not get involved".

As horrific as the suffering has been, caused by both chemical and conventional weapons, intervening in Syria is not really about Syria at all. It doesn't matter whether intervention overthrows the Assad regime or tips the balance of power in the Syrian civil war. The effect of intervention is that it maintains one of the norms of how states behave, namely the taboo against the use of chemical weapons.




This is important and, in the long run, far more important than the outcome of the Syrian civil war.

To grossly oversimplify (and possibly misrepresent, sorry) the main schools of thought in international relations, you have realists who believe states are rational actors who act only in their own self interest in an anarchic world, and idealists who believe that foreign policy should be an extension of a state's beliefs and philosophy such as the rule of law between nations that can be enforced by international institutions like the United Nations. In between these two is the "international society" which is that states recognise that it is in their interests to abide by generally accepted rules and behavioural norms.

These rules and norms take many forms, both official and unofficial and ranging from issues of war and peace to more mundane economic things like honouring government debts, international contracts and copyrights. Countries like Britain and others in the West, and really any state which isn't regularly forced to fight for its own survival, benefit from these in the same way that individuals benefit from the fact that human societies tend to have behavioural norms that prohibit theft and murder.

One of these rules is against the use of chemical and biological weapons starting with the Geneva Protocol in 1925. Not all countries officially signed up to it (Syria hasn't) but it is effectively seen as a ban on these types of weapons and it's hard to argue that this norm is anything other than a good thing for humanity at large.

Intervening in Syria is not about Syria. People are correctly sceptical of the idea of dropping democracy from a B-52 and this Economist piece is quite clear about the trauma that Iraq has inflicted on an otherwise gung-ho nation. Even the idea of a protective no-fly zone that would then, through a process of blatant mission creep, extend to tipping the balance of power against the regime as it did in Libya is off the table as the more advanced state of the Syrian military would make this a far more costly (and bloody) operation.

But a full on Iraq-style "greeted as liberators" regime change and occupation is not on the table or even being suggested by anyone sensible. Even a Libya-scale intervention is scarcely talked about. The goal here is not to import/impose democracy but inflict punishment on somebody who has violated a behavioural norm and that is in our national interest. The goal is to prevent other dictators from believing that they can use the same sort of weapons and starting the sort of cascading arms race that would wipe away a rule that benefits everyone except dictators and despots.

Because international norms are not hard-and-fast laws with the weight of institutions to enforce them that makes it even more important that when one is violated it is punished. In the debate over whether Britain should be a part of that one thing that was no doubt on many minds (though unspoken) was surely "if the Americans are going to do it then why do they need our help". But that misses the point again, implying that this is a military issue rather than a political one. This intervention needs to be politically legitimate as much as it needs to be militarily successful and although our credibility was badly tainted by Iraq it still holds that an intervention backed by more countries will be seen as more legitimate than if it's just the US.

That's why it's tragic that not only did the House of Commons reject the idea of military action but did so accidentally. Foreign policy by miscalculation has jeopardised the very real contribution Britain could make to this situation which is political rather than military.