RUSI Analysis, 19 Sep 2013 By Professor Michael Clarke, Director General

The UK can do little to impact the Syrian civil war. However is shoring up its interests at the periphery of the conflagration, reinforcing the UK’s military reorientation East of Suez. The question is whether or not, in light of Parliament’s vote last month, the govt. now desires to say so.

The events of the last month have reinforced the actual fact, as though it needed any reinforcement, that the united kingdom has neither the appetite nor the capacity to get meaningfully enthusiastic about the Syria crisis. A year or more ago a big military/diplomatic initiative may need had a beneficial effect, and in another year or two the conditions can be right for such an initiative to assist close some kind of peace deal. But for now, the suffering will go on while the Western powers have little more to give than a prayer for the weak and a cheer for the brave.

The international community cannot address the centre of the crisis – a deeply sectarian civil war during which the political choice is between many sets of bad guys who control the fate of the victims. However the war is destabilising the region. The Levant could go right into a meltdown that might see political collapse in Lebanon and Iraq, whatever happens in Syria, immense pressure on Jordan and Israel, and a not-so-proxy war during the region between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. [1] 

In response to those prospects, the Western powers are being drawn into much greater involvement on the periphery of the crisis. As with the collapse of Yugoslavia within the 1990s, if the time is just not propitious for an imposed peace, a minimum of the external powers could act to contain the conflict and limit its political fallout. It really is no comfort to the victims of a vicious civil war, but nor is it a dishonourable political strategy.

Shoring Up Syria’s Neighbours

Not far below the skin a natural division of roles is emerging between america and the united kingdom (and now France) in moving to shore up Jordan and reinforce security around the Gulf.

The US could be smarting from the humiliation of not enforcing the ‘red lines’ it has asserted, but its more subtle military role within the region can be more significant in the end.  In summer 2013 exercise Eagle Lion happened in Jordan involving over 8,000 foreign troops from nineteen different countries, but 5,000 of those troops came from the united states CENTCOM command. And around 1,000 of them have stayed in-country. ‘CENTCOM Forward-Jordan’ is now a primary US military hub that serves the personnel manning US Patriot air defence batteries, technical advisers, trainers and Special Forces elements. [2] A squadron of F16s has stayed directly to work alongside the Jordanian Air Force in providing air defence. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsey has already visited CENTCOM Forward-Jordan to elucidate to these involved the significance in their reassurance mission to Jordan. A marine assault ship stays as regards to provide extra support. The united states is bolstering the territorial integrity of Jordan while its aid efforts attempt to relieve the pressure created by well over 600,000 refugees flooding right into a country of only six million people. Not least, NATO has provided Patriot batteries to Turkey, supplied by the united states, with some support also from Germany and the Netherlands.

The UK’s Position within the Gulf

Meanwhile, the united kingdom have been quietly bolstering its position within the Gulf, especially in Qatar, UAE, Oman and Bahrain. The Defence Cooperation Agreement of 1996 between the united kingdom and the UAE was effectively revived in 2012 with a major Ministerial visit in November that concluded a ‘long-term defence partnership’ accompanied by renewed hopes of a main deal to sell Typhoon fighters to the UAE which include other new, and sensitive, technologies.

 The Al Minhad airbase in Dubai is not any longer only a staging post for UK forces inside and outside of Afghanistan, but becomes a big transport hub for UK forces moving across and outdoors the region and a base for a good amount of pre-positioned equipment for Army training in hot and desert environments. Training with Omani forces can also be expected to be stepped as much as provide training in hot and mountainous environments. The Royal Navy’s use of the Jufair naval base may be expanded as facilities at Jufair are upgraded by the Bahrainis. [3] 

Qatar has emerged as a prime political and economic partner of the united kingdom. Saudi Arabia is the West’s most crucial partner within the region. The massive US base at Al-Udeid, outside Doha, makes it impractical, and unnecessary, to develop more facilities in Qatar, and Saudi Arabia would not permit foreign bases or stationed forces on its territory; however the UK has done a lot within the last three years to resume its defence and security relationships with both countries, partly to displace some French influence that was considered already waning in Doha and Riyadh.  

There was an amazing longer term strategic logic to all this. The united kingdom was perceived as neglecting its Gulf allies over the past two Labour governments and Whitehall felt it was time to correct this perception. There has been a transparent ‘prosperity agenda’ behind an enhanced defence relationship with the Gulf, particularly at the back of what can be multiple Typhoon deal and all that may accompany it. And if america was ‘pivoting’ towards Asia and the Pacific, then Washington would express its Middle Eastern interests differently and would presumably welcome an unobtrusive but ‘smart’ military footprint within the Gulf from one in every of its allies. Not least, the long-term health of america-UK relationship would rely on the united kingdom being seen to be as globally-minded because the US, and never caught only in a post-Cold War straitjacket around the European continent.

The rejection of the main of military action in Syria within the UK Parliament on 29 August created a far more compelling logic to those ideas. Suddenly, the united kingdom gave the impression of an unreliable ally. The Prime Minister have been urging more assertive approaches to the Syrian crisis from both america and France for your time.  Now, as he aspired to guide an army/diplomatic push at the back of the Syrian Army’s chemical attack of 21 August, he was suddenly checked by his own MPs and the united kingdom would now not join an army response to the crisis.

Whatever damage this could have done to US-UK relations – still a question of speculation – it was a disaster for the UK’s relations with its partners within the Gulf.  The Sheikhs and Emirs may understand the vicissitudes of a democracy but they’ve very limited sympathy with what they see as weak leadership and inconsistency.  The sense that the united kingdom is minded to take itself out of the diplomatic frontline was only exacerbated by a frankly stunned reaction to the Parliamentary vote across Whitehall.

The governmental machinery failed to swing into immediate damage-limitation mode or assertive diplomacy to atone for a scarcity of deployed military capacity. In fact, little or no happened in those most important days after 29 August while the govt awaited developments in Washington – themselves truly astonishing with President Obama’s announcement on 1 September that he would consult Congress before launching any attack.

The damage that was done may partly be mitigated by a governmental try to shore up a few of its strategic and economic stakes inside the Gulf by creating a more explicit commitment to its security partners. The time is greater than right for the govt to fix the wear. In a feeling, it only has to declare more clearly what it’s been doing quietly; making sensible arrangements to interact East of Suez should it feel the necessity to achieve this. This may not be surprising if the govt. doesn’t make some explicit statement to this effect inside the near future. The united kingdom strategic logic in addition the dynamic of the Syrian crisis and its regional implications push the federal government on this direction. It has important interests to defend at the periphery of the Syrian crisis no matter if it has little direct national interests to defend in the centre of the conflagration.

There are, however, two difficulties in making such an explicit statement. Firstly, this kind of declaration would also play more explicitly into the Iranian nuclear crisis. The united kingdom will be putting itself further into the diplomatic limelight on Iran by talking openly about its commitments to its partners within the Gulf, most of whom feel overshadowed and threatened by Iranian power. Such limelight might not be entirely unwelcome, however, where Iran’s posture shows as a minimum some chinks of sunshine according to Syria’s use of chemical weapons.

More significantly, the united kingdom will be creating a statement that – however carefully couched – will be widely labelled as a ‘return to East of Suez commitments’.  Here’s all well and good in this type of globalised and changing world, but a hostage to fortune when the country’s military ability to deploy strategically significant forces is so low. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have taught us that, actually, the united kingdom can now only really tackle one fighting commitment at a time, or even that stretches us greater than military planning has habitually assumed.  A diplomatic ‘return to East of Suez’ can be logical and necessary within the present hiatus over Syria, but can also widen the distance between the country’s strategic ambitions and its military capabilities.

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