And the winner is...

The news from Syria that it will hold a referendum in ten days time on whether to introduce plurality into the political system is preposterous on so many different levels – no wonder the US State Department bluntly says it is laughable.  First of all, is how do you hold a meaningful ballot nationwide when so many of the rebel-held areas will not permit government authority and, particularly in Homs, people are crying out for basic services, not polling stations.  This leads on to the second point, that those who do vote will be in the relatively peaceful Bashar al-Assad strongholds and so the result will skewed towards the regime maintaining a monopoly of power.  Thirdly, Assad and his coterie have promised reforms before but shown no inclination to enacting these, indeed, in relinquishing any power at all – giving away with one hand, taking double back with two hands.  The ballot boxes will no doubt be stuffed with voting slips favouring the Ba’ath party.  Fourthly, this flawed facade will be trumpeted by Damascus towards the international community as the will of the people given free reign and Russia and China, masters of the fictitious election, will claim credit for their ‘measured’ approach in the Security Council allowing the expression of the Syrians to take place.  George Orwell would have a field day.  Assad wouldn’t care so long as he can field an army.

I was gratified to find that the savvy Malcolm Rifkind is of the same opinion that sending in troops on the ground is a non-starter.  Syria, like Iraq, is an Arab Yugoslavia and Colin Powell’s favourite Pottery Barn expression – ‘you break it, you own it’ – would come into play.  Barack Obama, in election year, seems very keen to avoid embarking on an open-ended commitment.  Let alone that the Free Syrian Army do not control any significant contiguous territory, western troops would be in flagrant breach of international law and find that, once there, they can do nothing right in the eyes of the local population.  Moreover, we have heard enough horror stories from Iraq and Afghanistan to disabuse us that liberal interventionism/imperialism is all sweetness and light. 

Again, my views coincide with Rifkind that non-lethal help e.g. body armour, night-vision goggles, intelligence on troop movements should be disbursed.  Arms may be smuggled in by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to the rebels, but as we have seen in Côte d’Ivoire with the fall of Laurent Gbagbo and in Libya, the ‘righteous’ side can commit atrocities of their own.  It is best that we do not have such blood on our hands too for supplying illicit firepower.

Where I find Rifkind’s reasoning questionable is in setting up a blockade.  Blockade is a tool of war as with Napoleon’s Continental Blockade against Britain or the Royal Navy ‘locking Germany out of the world’ in the Great War, but it can serve as a declaration of conflict too, which made Robert McNamara and his Pentagon staff so antsy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Leaving aside that Iranian vassals Iraq and Lebanon would refuse to toe the line (as they have done on Arab League sanctions on Syria), as Tehran quietly stokes its Achaemenid ambitions, what if Russian ships strove to beat the blockade in order to send arms to Syria?  We’re back to (a non-nuclear) 1962.  There was enough kerfuffle when Israel stormed a Turkish aid flotilla.  Imagine the ruckus were an American warship to commandeer a Russian vessel because it refused to stop and turn around.  Washington D.C. and Moscow’s re-set has suffered many setbacks but it would not recover from this. Ultimately, the West’s options are limited and the Syrian revolution will be running for a long time yet, neither side strong enough to deliver a knockout blow.