Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Elton Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, it is not often that so much has been said, and so quickly, at the beginning of a debate. The danger of repetition is very great, and it also makes it possible to be briefer than one might otherwise be. I suppose it is true, as the noble Lord just said, that our reaction to any prospect of war is conditioned by our previous experience, and my previous experience about the decision to go to war is not a happy one. It is impossible to escape the first question on this, which is certainty as to what has happened to which we are reacting. I read through the JIC report on chemical weapons use by Syria with increasing confidence that we knew what had happened, particularly when I got to the sentence which said:

“The JIC has therefore concluded that there are no plausible alternative scenarios to regime responsibility”.

I then turned the page and found that the next paragraph stated:

“Against that background, the JIC concluded that it is highly likely that the regime was responsible for the CW attacks on 21 August”.

That struck all the chords present in the literature that we received on the eve of the advance into Iraq.

The function of this House is to scrutinise ruthlessly what is proposed by Governments when it could cause great risk to this country. Therefore, one has to be sceptical in the extreme before one is happy to agree with a proposed military intervention. We are told that there would be no intervention in the civil war. But any military response would be directed at Assad, must be to the advantage of the rebels and will be seen as an intervention on their behalf. Nobody has considered who they actually are. The Minister will tell me when he replies, but am I not right in saying that large elements of the rebel forces are in fact jihadist terrorists, whose aims are the overthrow of democracy and the rule of law such as we have in this country? Those would be the people whose chances would be enhanced by a successful invention against Assad or the regime. That is a national interest on which we need to keep a close eye.

One really cannot get it all in in five minutes but everybody agrees in theory that we have to be clear about what we want to achieve by doing this. We call it an objective. If it is a military objective, it has to be pretty precise. The noble Baroness, Lady Farrington of Ribbleton, tried to get in on the end of—I do not know why I have forgotten his name but I know it very well.

[Noble Lords]

Ashdown.

[Lord Elton]

Yes, right. Past form tells me that I shall forget it again next time. She tried to get in on the end of his time to point out that nobody has said what the intervention is actually going to be but apparently it is going to be either cruise missiles or aircraft-delivered explosives. Well, if you drop bombs on dumps of chemical weapons, you are then the aggressor because you spread them around the country. On the other hand, if you decide to attack those people who are thought to be in control, you release them from control. I cannot see what an effective military intervention would be. Until we know what it is going to be and how it is supposed to succeed, we cannot give even a tentative green light.

As to a purely humanitarian intervention in the way of aid, this is a battlefield; it will not be possible to deliver it without armed support. If you have armed support, then you are invading. It is not at all clear what is being proposed when we are asked to support in principle an armed intervention. The bottom line is: will it do more harm than good in the long run? Will our humanitarian intervention actually be inhumane? Until we know the answer to those questions, we must proceed with the greatest caution. I, for one, do not see the way in which we can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

So far as we know, the weapons are still well controlled by the regime, and one of our expectations is that if there are indications that the regime is losing control of them, the Russians as well as others will be very concerned about that loss of control.

A number of noble Lords have talked about punishment. I regret that one or two of our American allies have used the word “punishment”. The intention is deterrence, not punishment. The intention is a limited and proportionate response that will deter the regime from thinking that it can use chemical weapons again. The risk of inaction, about which my noble friend Lord Ashdown and the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, have also spoken is that if we do nothing the regime is likely to assume that it can use chemical weapons again, and in larger quantities if it wishes. The argument, therefore, for a limited, carefully calibrated and proportionate response is to say, “Thus far and no further”.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, can the noble Lord help us? It would be very helpful if he said what sort of form this limited and proportionate intervention might take.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

For very obvious reasons, I am not able to say that. I am privy only to some of the discussions that have taken place on this, but I can assure him that the intervention would not be aimed at command structures. Someone suggested that we want to take out the President himself or, indeed, that it would be aimed at chemical weapons stocks. For very obvious reasons—