France and Britain roll the dice on Syria
BRITAIN and France claimed victory yesterday with an EU decision to let them supply arms to Syrian fighters but it brings many risks and was cast by other diplomats and regional experts as a “miscalculation.” Shortly after midnight, after more than 12 hours of negotiation, the EU’s 27 member states failed to agree on how to renew their Syrian arms embargo. That means the restrictions expire as of June 1, allowing EU states to export arms if they want, although only Britain and France are inclined to do so. It is the most fundamental internal disagreement over foreign policy the European Union has had since the Iraq war 10 years ago and casts doubt on efforts to carve out a common stance that would help bind its members more closely together. But more immediately, it has raised ques- tions about what impact Britain and France — the EU’s leading military powers — can expect to have on the ground in Syria, what it means for a negotiated peace and whether it begins a slippery slope toward far deeper involvement in the world’s most combustible region.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague described yesterday’s outcome as “the right decision,” even though the overwhelming majority of EU nations, led by Austria, opposed not only the lifting of the arms embargo but also any notable easing of it.
Some analysts described a far wider fallout, worrying that the decision will scupper what little chance there was of success at US- and Russian-sponsored peace talks in Geneva next month, and will invigorate the flow of arms to President Bashar Assad from his Russian and Iranian allies.
“I would call it a serious miscalculation,” Daniel Levy, the head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations in London, said of the Franco-British push that dismantled the EU arms embargo.
“The risk is that escalation begets escalation,” he said, setting out the likelihood that Russia will ramp up its own arms supplies to Assad with weapons that come with far less oversight or restriction than any arms the EU may supply to the fighters.
“There’s a strong chance that things will be made worse, and then there’s the risk of mission creep, especially when the Syrian opposition are very clear that that’s what they’re after, that they want more Western skin in the game.”
France and Britain say they have taken no decisions yet on supplying arms, saying they first want to see what comes of the Geneva talks. But they also emphasized yesterday that they now have legal authority to send weapons to Assad’s opponents if they want, which they hope will pressure him to negotiate. “Our focus in the coming weeks is the Geneva conference,” said Hague. “What this is doing is sending that signal loud and clear to the regime and ... being very clear about the flexibility that we have if it refuses to negotiate.”