A House of Cards Society

Alphen, Netherlands. 16 September.  Three issues dominated the media during my stay in England last week – the break-up of the United Kingdom, Europe and hyper-immigration.  Today the politics of Britain seems essentially about how long British politicians can deny the English a say on all three vital issues. 

 

The impact of hyper-immigration is what strikes the visitor.  Last Thursday I sat on a London Underground train shuddering, juddering and clattering my way out to Stanmore from London’s Far East. As I cast my eye around me I was the only indigenous English person in the carriage.  In one of those little moments of humanity I love I struck up a conversation with the lady next to me.  She was delightful.  Born in Bangladesh she had moved to England ten years ago and was now working in the City of London as a secretary doing the ‘grind’ every day.   

We talked about immigration.  The first thing I had to say was that I too am an immigrant having made my career for many years in foreign lands and that I have nothing but respect for good people trying to make a better life elsewhere.  Equally, I also admitted to her my deep sense of loss.  It is a sense of loss I told her that politicians tell me I should not have because it is closet racism.  However, I cannot help it – it is loss I deeply feel.  The England that I was born into in 1958 is long gone and I grieve for it.  Indeed, sometimes I feel like a foreigner in a country that had once been my own.  And I freely admitted to anger with the left wing zealots, right wing exploiters and the Euro-fanatics who had taken my country away from me without my permission.

As I left England news was announced that a decent family from Pakistan who had come to England to give their children an Islamic education had been murdered in Leicester in what police believe could be a revenge killing.  A revenge killing in England?  What is happening to my old country I thought as I silently shook my head in angered disbelief like so many millions of perfectly tolerant, decent English people who are open to balanced immigration but simply want England to remain England.

And yet by the end of the week I began to feel something different – a strange smidgeon of hope.  From the professional Eastern European women who served me in my hotel, to a West Indian lady with whom I had a giggle on the tube, to the Sikh gentleman who let me off with a smile because I had inadvertently bought the wrong ticket, to the Muslim police officer who helped me with my bag, what came across was nice people showing unfailing courtesy to each other.  And, I suppose it is that sense of common decency I take away from this trip – for society to work nice people must be nice to each other.

Furthermore, what point is there in nostalgia?  Yes, hyper-immigration has destroyed my England because it has imported not just the best of elsewhere but the very worst.  Moreover, minority-obsessed politicians close their eyes to the dangerous social frictions that hyper-immigration has caused or seek an alibi for the mess they have created by pointing pointlessly to the unproven economic benefits of immigration whilst ignoring the appalling social and cultural cost England is paying.  Even the most casual of observers can see England for what it is; a house of cards, vulnerable, on the edge society the slightest shock to which could bring the whole rickety edifice crashing down.  

And yet out of this kaleidoscope of identities and cultures I hope a new England can emerge.  My generation will not be a part of it as we are the lost generation, alienated strangers in what had once been our own country.  However, I hope something, somehow English will emerge – colour-blind, race-blind but I hope neither values blind nor heritage blind - an England always open to the best and brightest from all over.  However, a new socially-coherent England will be impossible to realise if England continues to import the world’s myriad hatreds and intolerances which has done and is doing so much to destroy the country I once loved.    

A London taxi driver put it most succinctly.  Being a taxi driver he had a view or two about the meaning of life which he thought I needed to know.  “England”, he said “is finished.  There are too many foreigners”.  He was from Poland.

For the record, the Scots alone will decide the fate of the UK; there will be no referendum on Europe; and immigration ‘controls’ are a farce. And of course the English as usual will be denied their say.

How I weep for thee my country; how I hope for thee my country.

Julian Lindley-French

 

Britain's Defence of All the Talents

London: A Small Island to Which No-one Pays Attention. 12 September.  DSEI is the world’s leading defence equipment show.  The hall stretches before me like some latter day modernist, Mondianist cathedral. It is pot-marked with large bits of military equipment laid out in a kind of military feng shui.  This week I have had the honour of chairing various conference sessions and meetings.

 

The message I take away from the week is that Britain is to pioneer a radical approach to defence. Indeed, it will be national defence driven by all the talents - official and non-official, national and international. Given that ambition the best and the worst of official Britain was on show here. 

 

Britain’s armed forces were the best of it.  The centre-piece of the week was the RUSI Maritime Operations Conference at which the Head of the Royal Navy, the impressive Admiral Sir George Zambellas, laid out what he called “Britain’s Maritime Renaissance”.  Zambellas might have well called his statement “Britain’s Strategic Renaissance”.  In many ways the Royal Navy is the litmus test of Britain’s strategic ambition and the re-forging of a truly national strategic force.  One does not build large bits of floating national defence infrastructure (why are bridges counted and funded as infrastructure and not warships?) if one lacks strategic ambition.

 

Divided into three ‘epochs’ the Navy’s renaissance will stretch out to 2040.  Right now two large aircraft carriers are being built with a new class of frigates about to be built.  A class of new destroyers has just been completed with a new class of nuclear-attack submarines rolling off the stocks.  A decision will soon be made to purchase a like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent and a host of support ships are also being procured. 

This year Britain took delivery of its first Lightning 2 Joint Strike Fighter a version of which will operate off the carriers and the Navy is beginning to replace its entire stock of helicopters.  Britain’s Secretary-of-State for Defence Philip Hammond also announced here a further £250m investment in a new weapons system for the Navy and a radical new approach to defence-industrial partnerships.  

And then there was the worst of official Britain.  It is not the scale of the reinvestment in the Royal Navy that matters but the radicalism implicit in it.  From the Secretary of State down through his staff the message was the same – Britain’s defence is open to new business and new ideas.  And yet the body language from the Secretary-of-State down could not be more different.  Those of us who may have a tad of a reputation for thinking ‘outside of the box’ are still too often treated as though we are a bad smell.  For all the talk of new beginnings the new Ministry of Defence (MoD) looks just like the old MoD – open to new ideas as long as they come from within. 

It is not the people that are the problem but the culture and the climate of fear all too evident in the MoD.  The MoD has been under intense pressure these past few years but ‘openness’ must not simply mean another tired reincarnation of the closed and self-serving iron triangle of defence, industry and politics.  Indeed, if the ambition and enthusiasm evinced by Admiral Zambellas is to be realised (and it must be) the political and civilian side of the house needs to stop so obviously holding their noses when the supportive awkward squad make a challenging point.

New thinking requires risk and yes a few bad journalists will write a few unfair headlines because they are fully paid up members of the Little Britain mafia which is so pervasive in this town.  However, leadership is not telling people they cannot take questions at sessions I chair for fear they might be misinterpreted.  Leadership and effective defence engagement is about trusting people and maintaining the commitment to the exciting defence strategic vision Britain is pioneering whatever the headlines.  Once again bad politics in London is in danger of confounding good national strategy.

If Britain’s radical defence strategy is to be realised orthodoxy will need to be challenged because Britain’s strategic business will never go back to ‘usual’. London’s Excel Centre from where I write this blog is but a broken banker’s bonus distant from the City where four years ago this week Lehman Brothers collapsed sparking Britain’s worst financial crisis for a century because government got it so wrong. 

There is a really good news story to talk about Britain’s strategic defence renaissance. However, I fear it could well fail because of narrowness of mind and spirit in the Ministry of Defence.  If the MoD simply talks the talk of culture change but refuses to walk the walk it will be the same old, same old – big talk, poor delivery.  Culture change starts at the very top, Mr Hammond.

Julian Lindley-French

Europe, Syria and the Crisis of Global Governance

Riga, Latvia. The Riga Conference is a highlight in my annual calendar and an antidote to the eternal self-obsessed ‘westerneuropeanitis’ which passes for strategy in Europe these days.  Sharing a platform with the Belgian, British and Latvian defence ministers I fulfilled my now traditional role as Europe’s strategic hooligan.  Dangerously I also sent my first tweet – Yorkshire finally enters the twenty-first century!  My plea was simple and heartfelt - do not confuse the defence of Europe with the deepening of the EU.  If the former has to wait for the latter it will die of political old age.

 

The final panel of the conference did what the European elite loves most – talked about itself.  President Ilves of Estonia was joined by Europe’s two most impressive foreign ministers – Sweden’s Carl Bildt and Poland’s Radek Sikorski to consider the strategic outlook of the EU. A more oxymoronic session for a conference one could not imagine as Europe these days rarely looks out and does not do strategy.  And yet it must!

The brilliant Celeste Wallander the token American on the panel tried valiantly to intrude on Europe’s private grief but she was far too optimistic.  And to be fair to her fellow luminaries they are the most real world of all European leaders these days.  Indeed, the idea that ‘new Europe’ should hold ‘old Europe’ to account was refreshing, depressing and ironic (when will 'new' Europe simply become Europe).  I say ironic because in a few days the brand new HMS Daring will visit Riga, Britain’s and one of the world’s most advanced warships.  This is 'old' Europe investing in new military kit.

Syria was the elephant in the room demonstrating yet again Europe’s disconnect from the world and from each other.  In St Petersburg the Germans had just failed to sign the declaration of the several western powers present at the G20 meeting condemning Assad’s use of chemical weapons.  Now, Berlin could be forgiven for making a mistake given the thousand diplomatic shocks to which political flesh is heir to during an election campaign.  However, the Germans had demurred because Europe’s ‘President’ Herman Van Rompuy had prevailed on Berlin to wait until an EU meeting in Vilnius so as not to upset ‘les petits’.  Talk about tail wagging the elephant!

Overcoming my natural and habitual reticence I ploughed into the debate by suggesting that the Syria crisis is in fact far more than an issue of to intervene or not to intervene.  It is an essential struggle over the very nature of global governance with profound implications for those who believe in values and functioning international institutions.  Indeed, Syria reveals the most strategic of fights over the future of global governance between the ‘sovereignty at any cost’ lobby led by Russia and the ‘humanity at lowest cost’ lobby led by the Americans.

Now, there are a whole host of reasons why the strike the Obama administration is proposing will not work.  However, the crisis also reveals the extent to which whilst the Americans, Chinese, Russians and Indians et al play power poker Europeans continue to play integration chess.  What Europe refuses to understand is that the truly strong do not need strategy; it is the weak that need strategy.  However, the politics of European integration today makes Europe unique in international politics; weakness without strategy.  The whole process is making Europe's big powers behave like little ones. Someone even proffered the idea that the Eurozone crisis is deepening European integration,  If so it is the integration of despair. 

The bottom line is that Europe could do far more in the world. However, Europe lacks the shared vision, will, both soft and hard power and the willingness to share risk at the point of contact with danger upon which strategy is made. 

This brings me back full circle to my panel of defence ministers (plus little old me).  Philip Hammond the British Defence Minister rightly said there will be no new money for European defence but Europeans must do more together.  However, there also needs to be strategic investment in twenty-first century military capabilities such as HMS Daring if Europe's soft power is to have a vital hard edge.  Sure that will involve some cost.  However, a world that drifts back to the politics of grand cynicism will prove far more costly. 

There is a crisis of global governance today and European weakness is partly responsible.  Riga and its history attest to the consequences when European democracies choose to be weak.
  
Julian Lindley-French

 

Is the Special Relationship Dead?

Alphen, Netherlands.  5 September.  Is the Anglo-American special relationship dead?  In the wake of Parliament’s 29 August decision to block the use of British forces in any US-led strike on Syria British officers were ejected from planning meetings at US Central Command (CENTCOM).  At this week’s G20 meeting in St Petersberg President Obama will pointedly have a private meeting with France’s President Hollande, but not with David Cameron.

 

To understand the special relationship it is necessary to go back to its origins.  Not surprisingly it was the product of Winston Churchill’s fertile and febrile strategic imagination.  In a famous March 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri entitled “Sinews of Peace” Churchill said, “Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples ...a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States”.  At the time Churchill was set on re-casting the victorious Anglo-American alliance of World War Two to confront Soviet expansionism.

That was then this is now.  Britain is no longer an imperial power but still retains one of the world’s leading economies and one of the world’s most capable armed forces, albeit one in which the link between capability and capacity is now dangerously tenuous. The relationship also tends to vary depending upon who is in charge in London and Washington and the extent to which British leaders determine they must align the British interest with the American. 

Equally, there are indeed areas of co-operation between the countries that can be said to be ‘special’ by international standards.  The co-operation between American and British Intelligence is certainly ‘special’ as Edward Snowden has revealed.  Moreover British Intelligence has been particularly effective in Syria which may explain Obama’s muted response to Parliament’s nay say.   

However, the true foundation of the special relationship is first and foremost the relationship between the armed forces of the two countries.  As retired US Army Four Star General Jack Keane said this week of the proposed Syria operation, "We operate side by side with the UK and we know who our closest ally is. We certainly would much rather do this with the UK side by side, that's how the military feels,[and] I really think the leaders of the country feel”.

Giving evidence before the Senate over the summer the new US Ambassador to the Court of St James said, "We are committed to working with that strong relationship [with Britain] to ensure that they [the British armed forces] remain full-spectrum capable, that they remain operable with us and also that they are able to continue to lead missions on behalf of NATO.  It is an area of critical concern."

My own conversations with American leaders underline the damage that was done to Britain’s influence in Washington by London’s 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR).  The damage was not simply a question of the cuts per se but the way London failed to manage American expectations.  Some of that damage has since been offset by the large equipment programme announced for the British armed forces.  Sensible people in DC also understand that the British Government had to close a £38bn ($59bn) funding gap in Britain’s defence budget at a time when failing banks had brought Britain’s economy to its knees.

However, Washington does not do sentimentality.  A close friend of mine who is a very senior American said to me recently that the relationship works so long as Britain does not test it.  Critically, there are no blocks of hyphenated British-Americans with a US vote, in the same way there are Jewish-Americans and Polish-Americans.  Therefore as Churchill fades into the far-past it is British power that will define the scope and extent of British influence in Washington and the Americans will measure that power as being first and foremost military. 

Therefore London has some ground to catch-up which will not have been helped by this week’s Parliamentary vote.  Moreover, the Anglo-American relationship has been diluted in the American political mind over the years by a rather sordid and sorry mix of over-needy British politicians desperate for American presidential blessing, London’s retreat from big thinking about strategy and massive cuts to Britain’s armed forces.  For all that America and Britain still enjoy the closest strategic relationship of any two sovereign states on the planet. And, the relationship is not a beauty contest.  If America operates with others from time to time as it will London needs to be mature about it.   

However, if SDSR 2015 does not re-set the British armed forces back onto a path towards an ability to lead coalitions then not only will the special relationship wane further in the American mind but the value of NATO with it.  Indeed, British military capability is a key factor in keeping NATO relevant in Washington.  Therefore, SDSR 2015 must be strategically substantive and sold well in Washington.  One of the big mistakes the British made in 2010 was to under-estimate the influence of DC think-tanks over both White House and Pentagon thinking. 

The special relationship is not dead but if SDSR 2015 fails in the American political mind Britain will simply become yet another of those pesky European allies forever demanding, offering little by way of return and all too willing to fight to the last American.  There is nothing special about that.

Julian Lindley-French

Syria, Obama and the Value-Interest

Alphen, Netherlands. 2 September. President Obama’s 31 August decision to authorise but delay a military strike against Syria’s Bashir al-Assad’s regime in the wake of the alleged use of chemical weapons is an important moment.  Taken together with the 29 August decision of Britain’s Parliament to deny Prime Minister Cameron permission to use force two changes are apparent.  First, an evolution is taking place in both America and Britain over the use, utility and place of force in strategy.  Indeed, what is striking about Obama-Cameron is how far they are from Bush-Blair, even if their respective peoples fear otherwise.  Second, the now traditional confusion between values and interests is morphing in the presidential mind into a new Obama doctrine - the value interest. This is a place where Justus Lipsius meets Machiavelli (not to mention Talleyrand).  

 

The problem for Obama is that the subjectivity implicit in the value-interest and the law of unintended consequences to which it is heir makes it hard to discern any relationship between ends, ways and means.  Would an Assad regime with the blood of tens of thousands of its people on its hands feel a slap on the wrist?  Would cruise missiles slamming into empty command and control bunkers and arsenals degrade the regime?  Would the action in and of itself send a message to other tyrants not use chemical weapons?  Would such a strike open up new avenues towards a regional political settlement? 

It is precisely the cracks in the American (and British) strategic mind between punishing Assad and sending a broader message into which ends, ways and means are falling.  The punitive strike Obama has on offer is neither intervention nor punishment, something Senator John McCain has rather pointedly alluded to by suggesting there is neither plan nor strategy.

The value-interest is the strategic sibling of democratic legitimacy in that it beautifies the national interest.  This is particularly important now that international law is in crisis and the UN Security Council has once again been reduced to the theatre of big power cynicism.  

A Washington power struggle is now taking place between values and interests with the President casting himself as arbiter rather than leader.  Whilst the slaughter of innocents should indeed cause deep moral indignation it is not enough of and in its own right to act as the basis for American grand strategy.  The language of US Secretary of State John Kerry has at times come close to being a statement of values masquerading as interests.  This is precisely what made the Bush 2 years so unpredictable.  Getting the balance right between values and interests is absolutely essential at such moments and thus a pause for reflection is no bad thing.

Equally, the very hybridity of the value-interest makes it an uncomfortable partner for strategy given that it occupies an indeterminate and ill-determined space between Western liberalism and Realpolitik.  At one end of the spectrum the value-interest leads many on the left to call for Western intervention in all the world’s conflicts under the UN’s tattered and sovereignty-flouting Responsibility to Protect.  This is Tony Blair’s view.  However, given the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq and cuts to Western armed forces the value-interest simply makes a mockery of ends, ways and means. 

At the other end of the spectrum the Chinese and Russians uphold the utterly cynical view that the national state interest is the only test of intervention and sovereignty the sovereign coin of the realm.  Indeed, 'sovereignty' is the new fault-line in international politics.  This does not suggest a rosy international future should China ever dominate.     

The value-interest has also masks a deep fault-line between Americans and Europeans over the ends, ways and means of geopolitics.  Americans believe in the value-interest because it is part of American ‘moral exceptionalism’ whereas Britain and France still retain just a smidgeon of global reflex, albeit one that it is fast-eroding.  However, for many other Europeans national sovereignty is simply an empty shell in which the remains of the national interest occasionally twitches but is now by and large dead.  For them the dystopian uplands of legalism offer a false refuge against the imperatives of the age.  With the UN Security Council stymied that means utter inaction.

The only way for Obama to some restore balance between ends, ways and means and the value-interest would be a return to American statecraft.  This is clearly what President Obama was referring to when he said “...this mission is not time-sensitive; it will be effective tomorrow, or next week, or one month from now”.

Statecraft demands a balanced package of co-option and coercion in pursuit of ends that are both desirable and achievable.  It requires strategic judgement, sound intelligence, the patient building of coalitions but above all a political strategy supported by credible national means – political, economic, diplomatic and finally military - applied consistently over time and distance. 

In Syria and the wider Middle East it is the absence of statecraft that has done so much damage and the confusion of values with interests could be about to make the situation a whole lot worse. 

Julian Lindley-French

"I Have a Dream"

Washington, USA. August 1963 

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. 

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

 

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  I have a dream...

 

I have a dream that one day in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

"I have a dream even today...I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low.  The rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight.  And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.  This is our hope.  This is the faith that I go back to the South with.  With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. 

 

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.  With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning.  “My country, ‘tis of thee sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.  Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountain side, let freedom ring”.  And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. 

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.  Let freedom ring from the mountains of New York.  Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.  Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.  Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that.  Let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia.  Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.  Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountain side.  Let freedom ring...

When we allow freedom to ring – when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, We are free at last”. 

The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

Syria: A Shot in the Dark

Alphen, Netherlands.  27 August.  There are times when a punitive military strike can be justified, legitimate, proportionate and effective.  US Secretary of State John Kerry has described last week’s use of chemical weapons against the population of a Damascus suburb as a “moral obscenity”.  He is of course right – the use of such weapons against civilians is a disgusting act and illegal under the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).  In response US, as well as allied aircraft and ships, are now being moved to the Eastern Mediterranean in preparation for a strike with a British air-base on Cyprus likely to be at the centre of operations. 

 

Would a punitive strike be justified?  If clear evidence can be established that the Assad regime was responsible for the attack then there would be some grounds for a punitive strike.  However, the UN Chemical Weapons Inspectors have as yet to conclude their investigation and British Foreign Secretary William Hague has suggested that the ‘crime scene’ will have been tampered with.  US officials suggest that there is “little doubt” the Assad regime is behind the attack.  Is that the case?

 

A friend of mine commanded a group charged with countering nuclear, biological and chemical attack.  He told me, “There are worrying anomalies, though it’s difficult to assess the occurrences from the limited amount of data that is coming through. There are some Sarin-like symptoms but survivors talking about burning eyes and feelings of suffocation do not square with Sarin. The classic symptoms of Sarin (GB) and other nerve agents are, at low doses, the mother of all headaches”.  He goes on, “The argument for this is reinforced by the evidence as far as I can see it that there wasn’t a lot of chemical released. Professionals would have achieved tighter concentrations and a higher death rate”.   In other words the jury is still out as to just who is responsible.

 

Would a strike be legitimate?  There is a difference in international law between legal and legitimate.  However, given Russian and Chinese opposition it is clear that such a strike would not receive a UN mandate and in that event could therefore be deemed an illegal act under international law even if its proponents claimed it was legitimate given a breach of the CWC.  The consequences would be profound.  First, it would reinforce the belief in Beijing and Moscow that the West is a law unto itself.  The UN would be further weakened making any co-ordinated action in future virtually impossible when the time comes (as it eventually will) to negotiate a settlement.  Critically, it would allow the Assad regime to present itself as the victim.

 

Would such a strike be proportionate?  If one assumes that a strike would use cruise missiles then the targets are likely to be the defence ministry, air defence command centres and other military facilities, including the three sites close to Damascus at which Syria's chemical weapons are now concentrated.  The Assad regime will know this and quite possibly start using human shields to protect such sites.  If a Western punitive strike ended up killing Syrian civilians then it could not be said to be proportionate.  Such a strike may soften Syria’s air defences up in preparation for a ‘no fly zone’ but almost certainly the Russians would move to offset Assad’s losses.

 

Would such a strike be effective?  To be effective such a strike would need to change the balance of power in the Syrian struggle.  Even if Assad is responsible for the chemical weapons attacks the limited use of a few cruise missiles is unlikely to deter a clearly desperate regime.  Indeed, it may make it harder to establish contact with those in the regime open to a possible dialogue.  In other words making the rubble bounce – which would in effect be the consequence of such an action – would take Syria no closer to peace. 

In such a conflict clarity of objective and method is vital.  Tony Blair has called for "intervention" which is very different to a punitive strike and would require a sustained air campaign and boots on the ground.  After Iraq and Afghanistan that is not going to happen.

 

Respected former US diplomat Ryan Crocker has said the US and its allies should instead “contain the fire”.  He is right.  It is not punitive strikes that are needed but the re-establishment of credible US and allied influence in both the conflict and the wider Middle East region.  Only then can the US and its allies hope to bring together those on both sides that a) might offer a possible political way forward; and b) ensure extremists do not gain power.  That means support for the states that border Syria, particularly Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey to both prevent spill-over and to alleviate the humanitarian suffering of Syrian refugees.  Above all a new political strategy is needed.

 

Therefore, it is hard to see analytically how a punitive strike right now could be demonstrably justifiable, proportionate, legitimate but above all effective.  Indeed, there is little evidence that a punitive strike now would further policy, strategy or the well-being of the Syrian people. 

 

Sadly, Washington is fast backing itself into a corner with any retreat from action a humiliating climb-down which could further undermine America’s already brittle Middle East strategy.  However, venting political frustration would be little more than a shot in the dark and that does not constitute sound leadership.

 

Julian Lindley-French