Syrian Crisis: Labour Was Not Opposed In Principle to Military Intervention.

A sense of reality is needed by those understandably praising Ed Miliband. The opposition leader  was not against military intervention but saw that Cameron and Hague were indeed evidently rushing Britain towards war and played the game he had to play well should the government reject his call to pursue diplomacy further

Jack Straw, the former British Foreign Secretary at the time of Blair's decision to 'stand shoulder to shoulder' with GW Bush and his invasion of Iraq, is now trying to spin the line that Labour's opposition to the government motion, defeated in Parliament, was not about rejecting the "Special Relationship" with the USA.

'That a legislative assembly occasionally rejects a recommendation from the executive will come as no surprise, least of all in Washington. That's almost the norm in US politics – even when the president and the congressional majorities are from the same party.'

But this has not happened on a foreign policy issue such as a decision to go to war for a long time, some historians have said since the mid-nineteenth century or even as far back as 1782. To downplay the significance of this in order to try remain onside with Washington is Straw's gambit.

'Labour's amendment last night was designed to fill that void, to set out a process for taking a clear decision on military action, on evidence. The government could, and should, have accepted it, and Cameron would have enjoyed a brighter morning if he had.'

So accepting the amendment which would have made the case for military intervention proceed more smoothly and still without any definite guarantee that if the UN inspectors did not find sufficient evidence, then there could be 'compelling evidence' provided from elsewhere, such as Washington.

As it happens, the rejection of both the government motion and the amendment is good because it prevents any decision being taken on the issue of chemical weapons alone irrespective of what the UN inspectors find. Both political party leaderships were confronting each other over the framing of the case for military intervention.

If missile strikes from the US and France take place with Arab League backing  ( which is unlikely ) and diplomatic support from Britain in trying to get the legal pretext organised after the UN inspectors present their findings, there is no certainty that a new way of advocating British involvement could not be found.

However, Straw touched on one apparent difference between the opposition and the government

'To achieve such a ( political ) settlement we need greater engagement with both Russia and – especially given the opportunity presented by the election of the new president, Hassan Rouhani – with Iran. Diplomatic endeavours are afoot to set out a political roadmap for peace in Syria.'

Yet greater diplomatic engagement was needed with Russia and Iran long ago in order to bring about a political settlement. But that was made on the precondition at any Geneva Conference that Assad and his supporters would step down in favour of a new regime with the 'rebel' leaders.

This precondition was a continuity in Washington's foreign policy from the time of Hillary Clinton and the demand 'Assad must go' through to June 2013 when the leaders of the Syrian National Council scuppered talks because they would not negotiate with Assad unless he agreed to capitulate.

The coercive measures being put forth now in the form of missile strikes from the US and France are in continuity with the policy of pressurising Assad that he must step down on their and the Syrian National Council's terms only. That basically means Labour is either for Washington's policy or it is not.

In reality, Miliband was against the specific case being made by Cameron and not against Washington's policy on Syria so far. In the coming days we shall see whether he is prepared to criticise US policy should the missile strikes cause dangerous consequences.

The Unspecial Relationship.

In the wake of the defence cuts and the reduction of British forces to a military auxiliary in the USA's grand strategy, it seems that a necessary revision of the cliches about the "special relationship" need to be revised is is long overdue. Dr Mark Almond in July 2010 wrote an interesting column in the Daily Mail ( It's Time to Hit America's Reset Button )

Pressing the 'reset button' has been President Barack Obama's favourite term for trying to restore relations with Russia since they got frosty again, Cold War-style, in the past few years. But Britain and the United States ought to be thinking about that reset button, too.

Since the Second World War, Britain's leaders have liked to think they enjoyed what Winston Churchill called a 'special relationship' with Washington. Even as Britain's status as global Number One disappeared, our leaders believed this country could 'punch above its weight' because American presidents would listen to Whitehall's wisdom.

But like all US presidents, Obama strokes the egos of foreign leaders by emphasising Washington's 'special friendship' for their country. Only the British think they are unique.

In fact, the relationship between Britain and America has often been astonishingly one-sided, as demonstrated after BP's huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Many in Britain were amazed by the ferocity of Obama's response and the xenophobic emphasis on the Britishness of BP, ignoring the fact that lax US environmental regulation and the American obsession with a right to cheap oil for their gas-guzzlers contributed to the disaster.

Although the consequences of BP's mess are bad for the United States, they are far worse for us. In many ways it is the British public, not BP, which is paying for the Gulf cleanup through tax write-offs and the collapse in its value to pension funds here. Now, having driven its share price to record lows, the US oil company Exxon Mobil has been given tacit approval by the Obama administration to make a bid for BP.

Coming at the same time as the rising casualty toll in Afghanistan, the combination of economic woe and military misadventure should make Whitehall rethink long decades of blindly standing by Washington.

In truth, this is not the first time America has sought to undermine Britain. Even before the Second World War had seemed to tie Britain and America together, Whitehall had responded to growing US power by pursuing a policy of appeasement, Britain's diplomats deciding America's ever greater global influence should be accommodated, even at the cost of our own interests.

At the end of the First World War, Washington made it plain that it did not like Britain's alliance with Japan. The Japanese had got uppity by demanding Americans publicly accept racial equality. At America's insistence, Britain snubbed Japan.

The Washington Naval Conference in 1921 is often heralded as a model of disarmament talks, but in reality it paved the way for the Second World War. Britain conceded naval equality to the United States, but since America did not act as an ally, the limits on the Royal Navy made it weaker as Japan, Italy and Germany rose as rivals. America was further away from these threats and left Britain to face them alone.

In the Twenties, American central bankers plotted to detach Commonwealth countries such as South Africa from the sterling area in a bid to weaken the pound and allow the dollar to become the dominant international currency. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1925, Churchill put Britain back on the gold standard to head off this threat, even though it plunged our export industries into depression and helped provoke the 1926 General Strike.

Britain was alone against Nazi Germany in 1940. It is true President Franklin Roosevelt arranged for military aid to be sent from America under the Lend-Lease agreement, but it came at a heavy price. In return for Britain handing over billions of dollars' worth of economic assets in the Americas, the United States sent military equipment and other supplies. It saved Britain's bacon, but when it was cut off the moment the war ended in 1945 it left this country without its traditional markets in the Western hemisphere. US companies now dominated what had once been the basis of Britain's balance of trade surplus.

America did not join the war until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour and Hitler declared war on the United States. But Roosevelt made it clear America was not fighting to restore the British Empire. Behind Churchill's back Roosevelt used to joke to Stalin about him being an old imperialist. Until well into 1944, more British forces than Americans were fighting the Nazis.

The Second World War did produce a uniquely close relationship. Even today the British armed forces and intelligence services are embedded with their US partners. But the balance of power in the alliance has shifted decisively. From Britain's sacrifice of its nuclear know-how to help produce an American-owned atomic bomb in 1945 to the subordination of our unique code-breaking skills to the US National Security Agency, this country gave as much to make America a superpower as it got back from the alliance.

When British interests clashed with US ones, Washington had no problem in torpedoing them. In 1956, President Eisenhower was right about Suez but the price of failure was paid by Britain. Fifty years later, Tony Blair and the whole Establishment failed us and ordinary Americans by backing George Bush even though MI6 had sources inside Iraq saying Saddam had no WMDs.

Getting realistic about this country's relationship with Washington does not mean swinging wildly to Cubanstyle anti-Yankee hostility, but unless Britain's leaders pay more than lip service to Britain's national interests, a combination of economic hits and costly wars originating on the other side of the Atlantic could poison the alliance.

Dropping the phrase 'special relationship' is not enough. It would be healthier on both sides of the Atlantic to recognise those things we really do have in common. Honest disagreement among friends is a better basis for stability. A partnership of unequals cannot be securely based on illusions, however comforting.