The Guardian view on the choice before the Commons as it debates air action in Iraq
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Version 0 of 1. The most fundamental question before the Commons on Friday is whether we – Britain, the United States and other western nations – should be in the Middle East at all. We have fought our wars on its soil, used its resources, rearranged its borders, created many of its states and repeatedly meddled in its affairs. A series of interconnected crises have roiled the region ever since the modern history of our interference began two centuries ago. We have done much harm, to be set against a very uncertain amount of good. Isn’t it time we were gone? MPs should be very clear that the broad, long-term answer is yes. That is also increasingly the underlying public mood in all western countries, which is why the Arab spring was greeted with almost as much euphoria in Europe and the US as it was in the region itself. We saw an emancipation that would make possible an end to our embroilment in, and responsibility for, a troubled and dangerous place. Unhappily, that was a mirage. It is now even more troubled and dangerous, as the rise of Islamic State (Isis) has demonstrated. Yet the task of restoring order is nevertheless clearly best left to the local powers, even though some are weak to the point of collapse, while others are deeply divided along sectarian and ethnic fault lines. So when the Commons debates whether or not Britain should join America in bombing Isis forces in Iraq, and weighs a similar course in Syria, it should be on the basis that the aim of military action by outsiders, and of the diplomacy and coalition-building which should accompany it, is to gain time for the local states to set their own affairs in order. If and when they do, Isis’s time will be over, its military eclipse but a symptom of its social and political defeat. President Barack Obama speaks of a long campaign to “degrade and destroy” Isis. Here British rhetoric should part company with that of the US. Our argument should be that our military and diplomatic help is conditional on local progress, local compromise and local effort. That means that the states which have been feeding this conflict from a distance, notably Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, have to arrive at some kind of truce, while the damaged states at its centre have to remake themselves, difficult though that is. Borders might change, formally or informally. It is not borders which matter, but the restoration of something approaching a humane order. It follows that if, after a time, there has been no such progress, we reserve the right to withdraw. Equally, if it becomes clear that military action is counter-productive in the sense that it is assisting Isis in the radicalisation of the population under its control, we should reserve the right to stop. The situation differs from that in Afghanistan and Iraq, where we had large and inflexible ambitions. When they proved unrealisable, politicians were left with a choice between admitting failure or reinforcing it. We should not set that trap for ourselves again. Nor should we balk at criticising or differing from the Americans. We gave good political advice to them in Iraq, advice which might have made a serious difference, and they ignored it. Our military capacity is a minor element for the US, but the political cover provided is not without importance. That should be a ticket for our voice to be heard. Wars are not plays. They are not necessarily all right on the night. If countries only fought wars they were sure they would win, the history of human conflict would be a short one. Critics who demand proof of success in advance ask too much. Yet it is true that the consequences of military action are especially unpredictable this time. Any number of dismal scenarios can be imagined. The ultimate justification of such risks is that British interests are at stake. They are. This is not a matter of guarding against jihadi bombs in London. Indeed, if that were our only interest we would be better served by staying out. Of far larger import is the fact that the political and economic health of Europe, including Britain, is intimately bound up with that of the Middle East. We cannot prosper while a great civilisation goes down next to us like a sinking ship. If we can help avert that, we should do so, but with the strong reservation that we will stop if we see we are making things worse, and very much in the hope that this will be the last chapter in the vexed history of our interventions in that region. |