Defence`s Feeds

Should the UK bomb IS/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh in Syria? That is, go above and beyond killing our own citizens in “self defence”. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, says yes, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party and the opposition, says no. The fact that the lethal component to any aerial campaigns in Syria will border on insignificance is, from the looks of things, inconsequential. I think I’m in the “containment” camp (e.g. something like: prevent ISIS from taking more territory, propping up the Iraqi government, but otherwise not committing to extensive military operations in Iraq and Syria) and here’s why.

Problem One: “Defeat ISIS” is an aspiration, not a strategy

On the whole, I think Corbyn (alongside dissident Conservatives) is right: the articulated plan to “degrade and defeat” ISIS is both woolly and ill-conceived. What, if anything, will an increased tempo of airstrikes achieve? How will the UK’s minimal contribution to this effort change the overall character or pace of the campaign? The problem here is that I don’t think anyone has quite worked out what IS is, and how it relates to the UK. In the words of Eli Berman and Jacob Shapiro: “Is it [IS] a tremendously well-resourced terrorist group that controls substantial territory, which it uses to plan attacks, vet operatives and manage a complex financial network? Or is it a fledgling nation-state that sponsors terrorist attacks?” If IS is a fledgling nation-state, then containment works (sortof, in the long run, with the likelihood of international terrorist plots in the meantime), since IS is very bad at actually being a state so there’s good reason to believe it will collapse at some future point in time. Until states can agree on a set of political aims beyond “beat the bad guys” it’s probably best not to tilt headlong into a situation that is already bad, and likely to get worse before it gets better.

More to the point, “defeating” ISIS would require urban warfare, either through proxies (the vaunted 70k non-extreme militia) or through the commitment of western forces (Uh, not gonna happen). We have all the precision-guided munitions in the world, but while that might disrupt and degrade ISIS’s ability to act, that is quite different from defeating or destroying the organisation. The west lacks the political will to commit large scale forces to the defeat of ISIS (for some reason, the public got fed up after Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) and it’s probable that ground forces would fan the flames of the Syrian conflict, if anything. One doesn’t have to read far into academic literature on strategy to figure that a divisive conflict, far away, with lofty goals but an unclear aim (and decisive means foreclosed), is unsustainable.

Problem Two: There is no neutral option

I am signed up to the Colin Powell school of thought: you broke it, you own it. I’m also fully signed up to the fact that if the UK contributes ISR assets to a military campaign, then it doesn’t matter who pulls the trigger, we’re still on the hook for whatever happens. From this perspective, the fact that the UK is conducting strikes in Iraq and helping out in Syria means that we are already responsible for acts of violence on both sides of the border. At the same time, there is no violence-free option available to the UK. If we do nothing (as in, pack up our planes and go home) then violence still exists in the region – packing up and going home shunts responsibility for doing something about it to our erstwhile allies, or worse, gives the worst perpetrators of violence in the region license to go about their business of brutally suppressing populations and dissent. I think that it’s at least arguable that nothing we can do now will save us from an unfavourable judgement by generations to come. After all, we stood by and watched while IS erased substantial elements of the common heritage of humankind with high explosives. Whatever happens, therefore, we’re still involved, somehow, even if that means packing up all our kit and taking it home with us. The “act/don’t act” binary (pushed on both sides, I might add) is therefore a sham. Moreover, the UK might be a target of IS, but it’s always going to be a target of IS (and like groups). Free will means that we don’t get to pick who is allowed to dislike us. All the above pushes towards some form of engagement for the UK – we lose more by walking away than staying involved in the US coalition, but this doesn’t necessitate committing ourselves to trying to eradicate ISIS beyond what we’re already doing. The symbolic value of overturning the commons vote against action in Syria would send a message, but the action that follows from it wouldn’t change a thing. Better, in my view, to re-assert our existing commitment with America, and if necessary throw more resources in, rather than committing to a lofty goal that appears impossible with current (or projected) means.

At the end of the day: someone has to pull the trigger

My ultimate unease at widening attacks on IS into Syria relates to my equal unease at British strikes within Iraq. All the high-minded arguments about the ins and outs of international politics and grand strategy boil down to someone, somewhere, being asked to kill human beings, and bear that experience with them for the rest of their life. This doesn’t change if they’re sitting at the controls of a UAV back here in blighty, soaring over the deserts of Iraq, or if they happen to be holding a rifle and face to face with their target. I think that’s a lot to ask of a person. Thankfully, we have an all-volunteer force so some of the moral questions relating to compelling people to kill are at least ameliorated. Still, the political impulse to “do something” in the face of a Gordian knot tends to ignore the fact that service personnel aren’t toys. For all the talk of drones reducing war to a “video game mentality” (which is disproved in most serious takes on the subject), the political reduction of the armed forces to an intercontinental screwdriver is worse. I think there is a clear role for violence in both Iraq and Syria, but the goal of pushing IS out of Iraq, and attempting to prop up and strengthen that state (and perhaps cajole the Iraqi government into rapprochement with its Sunni population) is achievable. Is there a role for expanding strikes in Syria to achieve this? Definitely. But this should be predicated on the political aim of protecting and stabilising Iraq, not on taking us into an indefinite war against a proto-state that we haven’t figured out how to deal with. Articulating this (limited) goal is far more preferable in my mind to lofty goals with total aims.

Anything that looks like a joint campaign with Russia is a really bad idea

The polite way of putting this is that “proportionality” is a subjective concept that has no precise basis in international law, and is therefore an expression of national military cultures and their interpretations of international humanitarian law treaties. The impolite way of putting this is that Russia doesn’t give a toss about killing civilians in the pursuit of military objectives. At the time of writing, Air Wars has tracked just over 8500 US coalition strikes, killing a claimed 20,000 IS fighters, while also killing between 682 and 2057 civilians in the process. At the same time:

Airwars presently assesses 44 Russian incidents as having likely killed civilians in Syria to October 30th – which between them reportedly killed 255 to 375 non-combatants. This is roughly ten times the level of credible allegations against US-led Coalition operations in Syria.

Whatever disagreements campaigners may have with the US or UK government over the conduct of aerial warfare, targeting and precaution, I think both would agree that no-one wants a Russian-style air campaign. The problem is, if the US-led coalition escalates a large scale aerial campaign against IS in Syria, and Russia also strikes IS in Syria, the two campaigns will not only become functionally indistinguishable to those on the ground, but also to audiences worldwide. It really won’t matter if we take every precaution possible under the sun, wait 72 hours for someone to drive a Toyota into an abandoned road before killing them with a bomb, or conduct battlefield assessments to make sure that no-one else got hurt, if at the same time the Russian air force piles in and bombs an urban area without guided munitions. The US (and potentially, the UK) could say “It wasn’t me” until they’re blue in the face, but all the world is really going to care about is the headline civilian casualty count, which isn’t going to distinguish between us and the Russians (or, for that matter, the Syrian government). With this in mind, restricting the use of lethal force to areas that the Russians don’t operate in is a good way of maintaining some sort of distinction between us and them. Even if we part “own” strikes by the US, the UK could still maintain a semblance of narrative distance from Russian attacks.

Conclusion: Whoever wins, the UK loses

This is pretty much a foregone conclusion. We will spend money, effort and time killing people in an attempt to achieve a more-just state of affairs than the one that preceded it, in the midst of a region dominated by religious governments that are completely illiberal and, on the whole, antithetical to the core values of western democracies. Walking away doesn’t work because Russia and China would probably be there to take our place, which leaves long term engagement, which is messy. Note here that I am talking about governments, not people. If we could treat populations as indivisible from those that rule them, then the choices on offer would be a lot simpler. We know, however, that the societies living under theocracy and autocracy contain many people who, like us, just want to get along with their lives, rather than export their own brand of religion across the region. Those people tend to face persecution or execution (hi Saudi Arabia!), calling into question every single element of ongoing engagement. Nonetheless, we must engage, somehow. The extent to which we engage may be a reflection of circumstance, but it always remains a choice. The question is whether we double-down for no apparent reason and nail ourself to a cross of “Defeat ISIS” or whether we continue muddling along, trying to do our best with what is available to us. I’m for the latter, until a better option presents itself.

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Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

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Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

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