Syria: UK Military Action

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, I should say at the outset that I support the Government’s proposal, albeit with some reluctance, principally because of the continuing absence of a meaningful political and diplomatic strategy worthy of the name and which should accompany military action. That said, three of the permanent members of the Security Council, the US, France and Russia, are already engaged in military action in Syria, which leaves us standing in the unhappy company of China at the moment. Moreover, many of our other key allies, including Australia and Germany, are involved, whereas we are not. I have just returned from a visit to the United States, where the perception of the UK in Congress, the media and academia is one of a declining power, rightly or wrongly. That should not dictate our policy, but it is certainly something we need to heed carefully.

If Parliament decides tonight to support the Government’s motion, I would urge that we pay greater heed to the urgent necessity of developing a meaningful strategy. It is not a strategy to say that Assad must go, but a caricature of one. When I joined the UN in the 1990s, we negotiated with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who certainly killed far more people than Bashar al-Assad ever will. The noble Lord, Lord Owen, is not in his seat now, but I worked with him in the 1990s. In the Balkans we negotiated with Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, all of them subsequently arraigned before war crimes tribunals in The Hague. As a great German theorist, Clausewitz, taught us many centuries ago, the enemy can only be defeated on the battlefield, or negotiated with. The former is not going to happen in Syria, especially since the Russian intervention on the ground.

I would encourage the Government to be more imaginative in this regard. What we should be saying is that, yes, Assad must go, but there would be no intention of outlawing the ruling Baath party. After all, that was one of the greatest mistakes of the ill-fated Bush Administration invasion of Iraq in 2003. We need to develop a strategy of detaching Baathist rank and file, and the Alawite community that supports it, from Assad. That is a strategy—not simply wishing the man will disappear. We should also be mindful of the fact that Syria has a vice-president, Farouk al-Sharaa, a Sunni by background, who has been under house arrest for several years now. The UN has been denied access to see him. I ask the Minister if he can raise the question of Vice-President Sharaa and access to him with the Russian and Iranian Governments. I also ask the Minister to reflect on our position with regard to the Baath party generally. That would be helpful in developing a meaningful political strategy.

Finally, and most importantly, can the Minister inform us when the Vienna talks will resume? They have not convened since November 2015, and I believe that they are not due to do so until January. Surely that is unacceptable. We have seen terrible terrorist attacks and military counterattacks; we need, above all, to see more diplomacy.