Why British boots may end up on Syrian soil

DID YOU imagine we’d become bystanders i n the Syrian stand- off after the Commons vote against an air strike? Think again. Foreign Secretary William Hague said yesterday that the Coalition wouldn’t seek another parliamentary vote on attacking Syria ‘unless things change dramatically’.

Meaning U.S. air strikes leading to the fall, or fatal degrading, of the Assad regime. We have to help our chosen parties there seize power.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry — whom Hague meets in London this morning — was questioned about this by politicians in Washington.

Robert Menendez, of New Jersey — a Democrat, like Kerry — supports a punishment strike but wondered if the Obama administration would accept, in a resolution authorising an attack, ‘a prohibition for having American boots on the ground’.

The rather shifty Kerry replied: ‘It would be preferable not to have boots on the ground.’ But, he added, if Syria implodes, ‘all of us — the British, the French and others — have to prevent those weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of the worst elements . . .’

Which will certainly require ‘boots on the ground’.

Senator Bob Corker, of Tennessee, told Kerry: ‘I didn’t find that a very appropriate response regarding boots on the ground.’

Kerry: ‘Let’s shut that door as tight as we can.’ Don’t frighten the horses, or voters, in other words.

The Obama administration and our Coalition have failed to persuade the majority of our respective electorates that we must intervene militarily in Syria because Assad has allegedly used sarin gas against his enemies.

Will the Americans and ourselves come round if their argument is that, by not intervening after Assad is driven from power, or his position fatally degraded, the result is terrorist groups getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction?

Probably yes. Having got nowhere on Syria at the G20 meeting, a diminished President Obama addresses the American people on TV from the Oval Office tomorrow night.

Will he stick to the original script — that he seeks only a ‘limited, proportionate response’ to discourage Assad from using illegal weapons?

Surely Assad has used the weeks of bellicose threats by the West to beef up his defences, protect his most lethal assets and plan retaliatory action, possibly with the help of Russia and Iran.

AMERICA is the world’s number one military colossus, but what does that mean if its President is neither a warrior nor a deft exponent of power? Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to Nato, says of Obama: ‘He fundamentally doesn’t understand power. He refuses to . . .While he’s being reasonable and responsible, less responsible people are writing the facts on the ground every day.’

Obama didn’t sound too optimistic about tomorrow night’s broadcast, saying: ‘It’s conceivable at the end of the day that I don’t persuade a majority of the American people that it’s the right thing to do.’ If so, he’s unlikely to win enough support on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, either.

Constitutionally, as Commander in Chief, he could still launch a military attack on Syria. But he has hinted this might be hard to justify. No wonder he seems to have aged 20 years since winning the presidency in 2008.

Meanwhile, since our Parliament voted against taking part in a Syrian strike, the British won’t have much say in how it’s done. But an Assad-dislodging attack will mean U.S. boots on the ground. And that will mean our boots, too, unless Parliament votes against our involvement again.

We’d need to clear out the Assad-Alawite-Iranian-Hezbollah- Shiite alliance and defeat the Sunni Islamists and pro-Al Qaeda jihadists — assisted, if we’re lucky, by some Free Syrian Army units. So it’s difficult to envisage how we can end up in a good place, whatever we do or don’t do.

The worst position is the one I mentioned here two weeks ago — the dithering prelude to World War I.

Military historian and ex-brigadier Allan Mallinson wrote yesterday: ‘We have re-adopted the military policy of “splendid isolation”, that allowed war in 1914 to creep up on us.’