Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Jack Straw Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I am fully aware of the deep public scepticism and war-weariness in our country, linked to the difficult economic times people have had to deal with, and that they are asking why Britain has to do so much in the world. I totally understand that, and we should reassure our constituents that this is about chemical weapons, not intervention or getting involved in another middle eastern war.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister give way?

[The Prime Minister]

I give way to the former Home Secretary.

[Hon. Members]

And former Foreign Secretary, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice.

[Mr Straw]

And Member of Parliament for Blackburn.

The Prime Minister said a moment ago, within the hearing of the House, that one of the purposes of any action would be the “degrading” of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons capability. In a letter that General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent to Carl Levin, of the United States Congress, a couple of months ago, he spelt it out that fully to do that would involve hundreds of ships and aircraft and thousands of ground troops, at a cost of $1 billion a month. Given that the Prime Minister is not proposing that, could he say what his objective would be in degrading the chemical weapons capability?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, the right hon. Gentleman has had many jobs—Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and so on—so perhaps I should just refer to him as “my constituent”. That is probably safer.

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, however. I think that the Dempsey letter was addressing the point that if we wanted entirely to dismantle, or to attempt to dismantle, Syria’s weapons arsenal, that would be an enormous undertaking which would involve ground troops and all sorts of things, but that is not what is being proposed; the proposal, were we to take part, would be to attempt to deter and degrade the future use of chemical weapons. That is very different. I do not want to set out at the Dispatch Box a list of targets, but it is perfectly simple and straightforward to think of actions that we could take relating to the command and control of the use of chemical weapons, and the people and buildings involved, that would indeed deter and degrade. Hon. Members will ask this point in several different ways: how can we be certain that any action will work and would not have to be repeated? Frankly, these are judgment issues, and the only firm judgment I think we can all come to is that if nothing is done, we are more likely to see more chemical weapons used.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I was the final speaker in the debate in this House on 18 March 2003 on the resolution in which I had recommended to the House that we should take military action against the Saddam Hussein regime. That resolution was passed by 412 votes to 149. I have set out in detail elsewhere how I came to the conclusion that war against Saddam Hussein was justified, on the basis of information that was then available and of widely shared international judgments about the threats posed by the regime. But, whatever the justification on 18 March 2003, the fact was that there was an egregious intelligence failure, and it has had profound consequences, not only across the middle east but in British politics, through the fraying of those bonds of trust between the electors and the elected that are so essential to a healthy democracy.

Iraq has not, however, meant that the British public or, still less, this House have become pacifist. Two years ago, the House and the public approved action against the Gaddafi regime. The need for that action to prevent a massacre in and around Benghazi was palpable. It was approved by the Security Council and it was plainly lawful. But Iraq has made the public much more questioning and more worried about whether we should put troops in harm’s way, especially when intelligence is involved.

The question before us now is whether the use of chemical weapons changes the considerations that, up to now, have determined that we should not intervene militarily in Syria. We need to decide whether, as the Government motion proposes, a “strong humanitarian response” to the use of chemical weapons may, if necessary, “require military action” by the United Kingdom’s armed forces. My conclusion at the moment is that the Government have yet to prove their case. I think we are clear that chemical weapons were used, but we will get more information on that from the inspectors. We are also pretty clear that culpability for that is likely to have been with the Assad regime, but I say to the Prime Minister and to my right hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench that there was also very strong evidence about what we all thought Saddam held—[Interruption.] No, he had held an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and the issue was much more one of what we should do about that than of a widespread sharing of the assessment by the Security Council that Saddam posed a threat to international peace and security.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman described Iraq as an intelligence failure, but what actually happened was that Tony Blair said in this House that the information was “extensive, detailed and authoritative”, yet it later turned out to be limited, sporadic and patchy. That was the assessment of the intelligence services. It was not an intelligence failure; it was a political failure.

[Mr Straw]

We can debate the Iraq inquiries at another date, and I am sure that we shall do so. I accept my responsibilities fully for what happened in respect of Iraq. I have sought, both before the Iraq inquiry and elsewhere, to explain why I came to my conclusion. I simply make the point, which is widely shared across the House, that one of the consequences of the intelligence failure on Iraq has been to raise the bar that we have to get over when the question of military action arises.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

The House was told that there were weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the United Kingdom, and we were also told, in 2006, that we were going into Helmand province in the hope that not a shot would be fired. Does my right hon. Friend acknowledge that the result of accepting those decisions has been the deaths of 623 of our brave soldiers? Does he not realise that those are the reasons that the public no longer trust Government assurances about going to war?

[Mr Straw]

With respect to my hon. Friend, the arguments about Afghanistan, then and now, are very different. There will be other occasions to debate that matter.

Even if there is compelling evidence on culpability, the bigger question arises of the strategic objective of any military action and its likely consequences. The Prime Minister has accepted that such strikes would not significantly degrade the chemical weapons capability of the Assad regime. We need to be clear about that. The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) spoke about trying to take that capability down. However, if the first set of strikes failed to do that—the Prime Minister seemed to accept that they would be more by way of punishment and deterrence, rather than a degrading of the capability—what would happen after that? We all know—I bear the scars of this—how easy it is to get into military action, but how difficult it is to get out of it.

There is also the issue of precisely what the objective of the action is. The case seems to veer between the alleviation of human suffering and some sort of warning for or punishment of the Assad regime. If the Prime Minister comes back to the House to recommend military action, he must be clear about precisely what the purposes are.

This morning, we woke up to hear the President of the United States, Barack Obama, saying that by acting in

“a clear and decisive but very limited way, we send a shot across”

Assad’s bow. Let us pause and consider the metaphor that was chosen by the President, because it is revealing. A shot across the bow is a warning that causes no damage and no casualties—shells fired over the bridge of a naval vessel. In this case, it might be a Tomahawk missile that is targeted to fly over Damascus and land in the unoccupied deserts beyond. That cannot be what the President has in mind. We need to know what he really has in mind and what the consequences of that will be. There will be casualties from any military action—some military and almost certainly many civilian.

I have one last point to put to the Prime Minister. He sought to draw a distinction in his speech between our response to war crimes and taking sides in the conflict. However much he struggles to make that distinction, let us be clear that if we take an active part in military action, which I do not rule out, we shall be taking sides. There is no escape from that. We shall be joining with the rebels, with all the consequences that arise from that, and not maintaining a position of neutrality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Ottaway]

We have to take the world as we find it. The situation has been made quite clear, including by the Prime Minister: the aim initially is to attempt to degrade Assad’s capacity, so it is essential that our strategic objective be focused on the command and control of the chemical weapons programme. If that is not successful, I am sure that he and I will be back here asking, “Where do we go from here?”

I turn to the Attorney-General’s view that there is a legal basis for intervention without a Security Council resolution, which poses more questions than it answers.

[Mr Straw]

Will the hon. Gentleman be a bit more precise? Today, the Prime Minister widened the objectives to include degrading the chemical weapons capability, but General Dempsey has made it clear that that is possible to a significant degree only with the deployment of thousands of troops and hundreds of ships. Surely we have to be clear about what we anticipate will result from the use of Tomahawk missiles and such things before, not after, we embark on their use.

[Richard Ottaway]

The right hon. Gentleman put that point to the Prime Minister, and I thought he dealt with it. General Dempsey was talking about the wider picture, whereas the motion and the proposal concern the chemical weapons regime, which we will attempt to degrade.