Voices and Votes, Not Shells and Guns

Here's to Commons votes on any escalation in the Middle East and on any intervention in Ukraine, as John Redwood writes:

The Defence Select Committee of the Commons is wrong to chide the UK government for doing too little to fight ISIL.

They are right to warn against supporting Assad in Syria as part of any campaign against ISIL. [Really? The Christians support Assad, and why would they not?]

ISIL are a very nasty group of fanatics, but they are not unique in a troubled Middle East.

They are one faction amongst several fighting for supremacy. They need the oxygen of publicity to help their recruitment.

They use the western media to show their potential followers that they are able to stand up to the west, that they are the best at pushing ahead with extremist aims, and they can command the attention of the most powerful states and alliances.

They use extreme exhibitions of bestial violence to draw attention and seek a response.

ISIL want to turn local wars into international wars. They want to turn a Sunni/Shia conflict into a wider conflict between Islam and the west.

If our government defines them as unique amongst all the warring bands it flatters them and serves their purpose.

They are trying to get Jordan to cut loose from what they define as the western side of the conflict.

If we allow ourselves to be driven into committing our armed forces to intervention on the ground we give them a further cause to resist and a new argument to terrified local populations to accept their mastery.

It is not easy in the west to urge caution or to say there are limits to what we can and should do.

The west wishes to believe in its own invincibility and right. Any sensible retrospection on our interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya should give us pause for thought.

It is not always possible to make things better for people living in these countries, however good our intentions and however skilled our armed forces.

Sometimes it is best to avoid doing harm.

It is said that the western air strikes to date have arrested the advances of ISIL, and have given the Kurdish forces the chance to fight back successfully in some places.

That may prove to be an intelligent use of western power. However, it does not solve all the problems.

It still requires substantial military effort by local forces on the ground, and above all will need great political skill in turning any victory there into a successful outcome.

Will the Kurds wish to live in some remodelled Iraq or will they want their own country? When will the Iraqi government be able to win over most of its Sunni population? When will there be some outcome to the long and bitter Syrian civil war?

Bombing more targets in Iraq, or sending in more special forces and military advisers, is not going to solve these huge problems.

In the meantime it is important not to rise to ISIL’s provocation in ways which they can exploit.

And, recanting Thatcherism while making his pitch for a column on the Morning Star:

David Cameron is not irrelevant or wrongly absent from the issue of the future of Ukraine. 

The decision of Germany and France to take up the question of peace with Russia does not make the UK irrelevant any more than it makes the USA irrelevant.

Russia is well aware that NATO is the main decision making body over the use of western force, and the UK is an important part of NATO’s political decision making and command structure.

Let me begin by making clear I do not support Russia.

I condemn any supply of Russian arms to the rebel forces, and any use of Russian military personnel to help them. The last thing the Ukraine needs is more weapons and further resort to violence.

By the same logic I do not support the west supplying weapons or military assistance to the Ukrainian government.

The west should do all it can to promote a political settlement within the troubled territory.

Sometime the protagonists are going to have to sit down and talk to each other, so why not start now rather than after hundreds more have been killed by both sides in the conflict.

Ukraine shows that far from being a force for peace in Europe, the EU can become a destabilising influence.

Ukraine was relatively stable before the EU offered closer links with Ukraine and encouraged politicians sympathetic to the west in what was a very split country.

Today the pro western government in Kiev is unable to speak for many of the Russian language citizens in their area, with the dreadful consequences we see.

I do not want the west actively supporting or encouraging a government which shells and fires on its own civilians, whatever the provocation.

I want the west to assist that government to talk to all its citizens and discuss what a new political settlement might look like that could meet the legitimate political aims of the many in the parts of Ukraine that do not currently look to Kiev for succour.

Russia may well be trying to split the west by hosting Germany and France. Nonetheless I wish Germany and France well in seeking a negotiated peace.

Of course they must make clear that NATO will not accept Russian military expansion into NATO guaranteed countries that wish to remain independent of Russian control.

They are however right to see if there is a political way forward in a country close to Russia, a non NATO member, which has stumbled into civil war in part thanks to the offers of the EU as well as owing to Russian military opportunism.

We are told they will try to draft a paper and talk again at the week-end.

I do not support or welcome EU adventurism, whilst condemning Russian aggression.

The EU has behaved badly.

It needs to redeem itself by leading overtures for a peace in Ukraine based on voices and votes, not shells and guns.