Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt]

My Lords, throughout history, nations have taken military action out of self interest, but they have increasingly acted with the good of others prominent, or at least present, among their motives. As many have mentioned, we intervened in Sierra Leone to prevent an elected Government being deposed by gangsterism. We deterred a possible massacre in Kosovo and we helped to throw out Saddam after his unlawful invasion of Kuwait. Out of common humanity, I am one who strongly supports the fundamental notion of using military force to avert barbarity. I regret, as does President Clinton, that in Rwanda we failed to stop the worst massacre of modern times, and that we stood by in Bosnia.

However, the consequences of military action cannot easily be predicted. It can be quick and decisive in pursuit of a clear goal, as in the Falklands, but it can also spiral out of control, as in our second venture in Iraq. Military action is not only unpredictable, it is never cost-free. It will always involve sacrifice and pain. In World War II, the United States had to transform its economy, mobilise millions and suffer massive loss of life to save a continent an ocean away from totalitarianism.

The issue before us, that of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, is heinous and grotesque. As the noble Lord, Lord Watson, has just mentioned, the sight of those bodies—men, women, children and babies—in neat serried ranks enshrouded in their kafans was heartrending. So what, as many have asked, should our objective now be; what our response? A civil war of great complexity is raging within Syria with a multiplicity of groups and their supporters defined by faith, politics and other national interests—the splits within splits that were graphically described by the noble Lord, Lord King. I can see no immediate prospect of any military or diplomatic intervention that would bring an early end to that tragic conflict, although the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, among others, credibly delineated a pathway that might draw in Russia and Iran.

The reasonable objective of a finite, limited and clinical military strike could be, as many have said, to deter the further use of weapons of mass destruction in Syria and even elsewhere in the world. But for all the aforementioned reasons, before picking the military option, there must be a reasonable expectation, as the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, suggested, that more good than harm will flow from such an action. It is not clear that it will. The situation in Syria is unusually tangled. We have a ruthless regime in place with advanced weaponry, which is fighting for its life with few options open to it. Moreover, Syria is located in the most troubled and unsettled part of the world—the “powder keg” described by the noble Lord, Lord West—riven by rivalry, history and hate. Syria is itself sponsored and supplied by a nuclear superpower.

We can all be genuinely united in our sense of outrage and repugnance. We will all want the whole world to signal that the use of such weapons is unacceptable. We will all agree that those involved must in due course and when possible—and it will be possible—be brought to justice before the international courts. However, like most who have spoken in this excellent, informed debate, I am not yet persuaded that military action is the right course in this particular set of circumstances.