Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Government for this debate. There is nothing more serious that a Government can undertake than conducting military action. Like many others, I commend the Government on the wisdom of bringing this matter not only to the attention of Parliament but to the Security Council of the United Nations. I strongly support the decision to await the report of the weapons inspectors, without which the case for military action could be seriously undermined. The charter of the UN is clear that approval is necessary for the legitimatisation of military action unless a country is acting under Article 15—namely, self-defence—as Britain did following the invasion of the Falklands in 1982.

The evolution of the responsibility to protect is still taking place, and I have strong misgivings about that being used to justify military strikes in the next few days. In all probability, we will see those strikes. However limited, we must be clear that they are acts of war. Many Members have referred to the possible risks that that entails. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred to an article that I wrote earlier this week. I believe that those risks are considerable. Syria is not Kosovo in 1999 or Libya in 2011. Unlike those two countries, Syria is firmly embedded in a military and political alliance with Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah, which is almost certainly the most heavily armed non-state actor in the world. Within its ranks, that alliance is known as the axis of resistance. Syria is the bridge between Hezbollah and Iran, and neither could afford to see that relationship rupture. Syria, as has been noted, also enjoys considerable political cover from Russia. While it is improbable that Iran or Syria itself would engage in overt military action in retaliation for expected US raids, I believe that it is highly possible that Hezbollah would at the very least deepen its assistance to the Syrian regime, whose downfall it could not tolerate. It could also do so by widening the war to Lebanon, which in the past two weeks has already been the scene of two very large car bombings, where bombs have been planted in Sunni mosques.

Hezbollah might also threaten UNIFIL, the 10,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, in which many NATO countries are represented, including France, Italy and Spain. It might even seek to break the cessation of hostilities with Israel, which has lasted since the 2006 war. Hezbollah, an organisation that I had much to do with in my UN service in the Middle East, has already warned of the consequences of strikes against Syria and considers that it will undermine the balance of power and deterrence—concepts in which the axis of resistance believes strongly. Indeed, intervention could intensify the civil war in Syria. It would make a decisive military victory or the formulation of a compromise to end the war more difficult. In this regard—we should note this, I believe—both Syria and Hezbollah will draw some comfort from the fact that an allied military strike will not meet with support in much of the world, particularly in key developing countries with which we are trying to develop closer relations. I think of Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and even India in that regard.

Questions of legality will, as with the 2003 war, dog the West for some years to come if military strikes take place. There will also be consequences, perhaps profound, for the West’s relationship with Russia—a relationship that is hardly in good shape anyway. Seeking a political solution after air strikes would be extremely hard. Terrible though chemical weapons are, there are even worse weapons—I refer to nuclear weapons. Sitting in Tehran and perhaps watching on television missiles falling from the sky over Damascus, Ayatollah Khameini may well decide that Iran’s acceleration of nuclear power is the only option to preserve its independence. Russia and China, whose support we have counted on for so long in the nuclear negotiations with Iran, may well become less supportive of our position and that of our allies. Certainly the outlook for the next round of talks over Iran’s nuclear weapons will become much more complicated.

I believe that the Government, while seeking to prevent any further use of chemical weapons in Syria, must somehow at the same time forge a strategy that redoubles our efforts to seek a diplomatic and political solution, which is the only way to end this civil war.