Canada’s role in Syria likely limited

Bashar al-Assad cannot be part of the way forward for Syria, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau concluded this week, because he is guilty of war crimes against innocent children.

That sounded as though Canada had made a decision, but it was really just empty words. The United States administration of Barack Obama made the same apparent decision on Aug. 18, 2011, with the support of other western countries, and yet President Assad is still there, still withstanding the rebel forces who want to remove him from power. The western countries that keep dismissing Mr. Assad from power have no army on the ground to remove him and no better candidate to put in his place.

Canada’s Chrystia Freeland and the foreign ministers of the other G7 industrial nations met in Lucca, Italy, this week to talk about Syria and agree that Assad must go.

Since they have no means to make him go, they sent U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson off to Moscow to ask Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to ask his boss, Vladimir Putin, to get rid of Assad. But Assad is Putin’s client and the basis for his claim to a role in Middle Eastern affairs. Putin will gain nothing by dumping his faithful ally.

Canada is not going to do anything on its own about bringing peace to Syria. Canada might act as part of a coalition, along with the U.S., other industrial democracies and Middle Eastern nations.

The prospects for building such a coalition and bringing peace and stability to Syria are, however, extremely dim.

Former U.S. president George W. Bush decided in 2001 that he had to topple the Taliban government of Afghanistan, and led a coalition invasion with Canada and others. The Taliban were kicked out of the capital but they still dominate parts of the country. The U.S. and its allies are still trying to extricate their forces from the continuing conflict. Mr. Bush decided in 2003 he had to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The U.S.-led invasion achieved that aim and started a civil war that still continues 14 years later. The North Atlantic Treaty nations, including Canada, sent bombing runs against Libyan dictator Muammar Ghaddafi in 2011, helping local insurgents defeat his forces. The country has been in turmoil ever since.

The U.S. and its allies have no appetite for another such campaign. U.S. President Donald Trump hurled a volley of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase last week to show his displeasure at Assad’s alleged use of nerve gas against beautiful babies. Assad shrugged and went back to killing the babies with cluster bombs and barrel bombs.

Canada, of course, wants to be on the side of peace and justice in Syria. Mr. Trudeau knows that his people are watching the same television news reports that so distressed Mr. Trump. If a coalition seems to be forming that has both the means and the intention of bringing stable peace to Syria, Canada should act within that coalition to keep its goals realistic and its actions humane. Since this probably involves an invasion, a war with Russia and the erection of a new ruling group to take Assad’s place, Canadians should not expect it to happen soon.

Canada can help pull some survivors to safety. But we should not lead anyone to expect we are going to war against Bashar al-Assad.

This editorial was published April 15 in the Winnipeg Free Press and distributed by the Canadian Press.

“Canada, of course, wants to be on the side of peace and justice in Syria.”