RUSI Analysis, 30 Aug 2013 By Professor Malcolm Chalmers, Research Director / Director, UK Defence Policy Studies

The UK Parliament’s decision to not intervene militarily in Syria marked a massive watershed in UK defence and security policy. The results would be examined with interest by allies and potential adversaries alike.

 
20 Brigade departs from Basra, Iraq in 2009. Iraq had cast a shadow over last night’s vote.

Last night’s defeat of the govt. in the home of Commons was an assertion of Parliamentary sovereignty, on problems with war and peace, without modern precedent. It’s now hard to peer how any UK Government could undertake significant military action without the support of Parliament, or indeed of the broader public. And it’s difficult to work out such support being given unless there’s a clear national interest involved, or if military operations are undertaken with the imprimatur of a UN Security Council (UNSC) mandate – at the least until the shadows of Iraq and Afghanistan have faded much farther from the national consciousness.

Some commentators have all in favour of the tactical errors and special circumstances that contributed to the defeat. Calling for a vote while the UN inspectors were still in Damascus was always going to be an exceptionally hard sell when the case for action rested heavily on an assessment of what happened at the ground. Government whips had limited opportunities to convince backbench sceptics, who had only just returned from their constituencies for this vote. The Prime Minister took Labour’s support largely with no consideration, a stunning omission given the $64000 role that Ed Miliband’s opposition to the Iraq war had played in his surprise leadership victory in 2010. 

The Shadow of Iraq and Afghanistan

Yet something more significant has happened. This was not a vote simply against the premature timing of the talk, or for greater consideration of evidence on whether chemical weapons were actually used (on which there could have been little question amongst MPs). Rather it reflects the fact – person who Cameron accepted once the outcome was announced – that opposition to military action would have remained strong and widespread, whatever new evidence the UN inspectors eventually publish. For the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan have left most MPs – and, much more so, a wide majority in their voters – deeply sceptical of claims that military action can remain limited once the primary shot is fired. The voices of these who speak of the implications of inaction have, for now, been marginalised.

Many within the defense force will welcome this decision. Over the past decade, their main operational focus have been to conduct operations – in Iraq and, after 2006, in Afghanistan – for which a robust basis of public support was conspicuously lacking. This hasn’t ever been a cushty position for the militia of a democratic country to be in, and plenty will therefore be relieved by Thursday’s vote.

No More Intervention?

The tide of interventionism had already ebbed substantially since its high-water mark, as evident by the Government’s strategy to Afghanistan and its evident reluctance to think about further ‘boots at the ground’ operations. But this decision marks one other step in that process. No UK government, for the foreseeable future, would be capable of contemplate military action without first taken with if it is in a position to gain parliamentary approval.

Some of the army operations of the last twenty years would probably still have gained approval from today’s House of Commons. The liberation of Kuwait from Iraq in 1991, under a transparent UNSC mandate, would likely were overwhelmingly approved – as would the support that the united kingdom gave to america inside the overthrow of the Taliban after 9/11.

But most other interventions of the last quarter-century would have found it hard to get past the sceptical gaze of the united kingdom public because it is today, or of the home of Commons. With the good thing about hindsight, there’s little question that they might have opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But they might even have been sceptical of ‘wars of choice’ where the united kingdom Government desired to get out in front of the Americans – the UK’s costly ‘surge’ in Afghanistan from 2006, certainly, but in addition the UK’s support for using its own ground forces in Kosovo in 1999 (to the good irritation of Bill Clinton), and the united kingdom / French led drive for military action against Gaddafi in 2011.

How much impact an additional ebbing of appetite for intervention can have at the UK’s relationship with the united states remains an open question. For some within the US foreign policy establishment, this vote would be seen as further evidence of ‘anti-Americanism’ and wider European ‘demilitarisation’, as Richard Haass has commented in today’s Financial Times.[1]  Yet they need to surely take note that the trends in UK opinion parallel similar developments within the US. President Obama still seems set on conducting limited strikes against Syria over the following couple of days. But he has shown little appetite for further military action, unless Assad chooses to escalate further or use chemical weapons on an enormous scale again. The foremost likely scenario still remains that the war will grind on, with horrific human consequences, and the West won’t intervene again.

If the usa finds itself keen on further significant military action inside the Middle East (let’s say against Iran), it’s now less likely that the united kingdom will feel in a position to join it. But this vote may also add to the voices of these inside the US, including President Obama himself, who’re themselves weary of repeated military involvements within the Middle East.

The risks from this UK vote therefore lie, not quite a bit relating to the special relationship – which remains important and useful to both parties – as in what it says about wider trends in UK and Western willingness to apply military force in future. The united kingdom Parliament and public are not any longer prepared to present their Government the good thing about the doubt on military operations, and the govt can be constrained in what it might probably do in future subsequently. The results for UK defence and foreign policy could be examined with interest by allies and potential adversaries alike.

 Note

[1] Richard Haass, ‘Britain drifts towards isolation’, Financial Times, 30 August 2013.

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