The Commons debate on whether the existing British air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq should be extended to Syria revealed the strategic black hole at the heart of Westminster. Despite the stirring calls to arms from both David Cameron and Labour’s potential leader Hilary Benn, this was less a debate about Syria and more of a litmus test for the principle of intervention. It was also clear that Labour can no longer make a meaningful contribution to debate about national security with a leader whose ideological commitment to pacifism allows no circumstances in which force would ever be used. The result is that the only formal opposition to government policy is binary — intervention or no intervention. The effect on national security should not be underestimated. The lamentable lack of strategic content in almost 12 hours of debate made clear that despite the outcome, the practice, if not the principle, of military intervention is in poor health on both sides of the House.
It is hard to imagine an intervention with a stronger moral and strategic mandate — a UN resolution and a request for assistance after an attack on a Nato ally. Nonetheless, political will must be matched by a commitment to a strategy that has a strong chance of succeeding. Yet militarily the plan under debate will not prove to be decisive. At best the extension of air strikes represents the correction of a logical deficit in the UK’s contribution to the fight against IS. We are in practice at war with a pseudo-state that requires conventional land forces to defeat. Western politicians still do not seem to have grasped that unlike al-Qaeda, whose aim was the removal of infidels from the region, IS seeks control of territory with no borders because all must be enfolded into the caliphate. Clearly, special forces and air power alone won’t decisively change the facts on the ground.
