Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Michael Meacher Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

We are asked by the Government tonight to approve a so-called strong humanitarian response, with the implication of using force in principle and a second vote after the UN inspectors have reported, but there is no case in international law for this military attack—neither with a UN Security Council resolution authorising it, nor under article 51 of the UN charter, which permits a right of self-defence, but that clearly does not apply to a chemical gas attack in eastern Damascus, as that is obviously not an attack on another state. That is why the Prime Minister switched today to quoting long-standing international conventions that prohibit the use of chemical weapons. However, nothing in those conventions inherently allows other nations to take military action against such a state just because it has used chemical weapons—certainly not without wider international sanctions.

There is a second argument: what exactly—I have listened all day—is the aim of the military strike? Will it realistically succeed in achieving those goals? The stated aim is to hit Assad’s military targets, but not the chemical weapons, obviously, for fear of releasing poison gas into the atmosphere. Whatever else, this will certainly not be a short, surgical strike. I remind the House that it took 78 days of continuous bombing of Serbia before the Milosevic regime could be shifted from Kosovo, and only then when the US and UK threatened a land invasion. Even leaving that aside, no one has answered the question what will happen if the attack is made and Assad retaliates by using chemical weapon attacks on perhaps a greater scale, as his sites are all over Syria.

Let us not forget that Syria is no Libya. It is far stronger than Libya, with far more disciplined and larger armed forces, and it is still powerfully backed and reinforced by Russia. At worst, there is a very real danger of the west being sucked into a long-term war that it cannot win and that will only expose its impotence, as has happened already in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

None of that is to say that we should do nothing. We should press to have Assad arraigned before the International Criminal Court. We should freeze Syrian assets throughout the west. We should impose travel bans on all members of the Syrian leadership deemed responsible for the atrocities. Above all, we should press much harder for a regional peace conference, to achieve a settlement involving all the relevant parties, including the Russians. That is the only way to settle this conflict.