Con Coughlin: Winston Churchill’s take on unwinnable wars remains spot-on Cameron

The author’s book on young Winston, the PM’s holiday reading, may help Mr Cameron’s decision on Syria
27 August 2013
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Having spent his summer holiday in Cornwall reading about the young Winston Churchill’s exploits fighting against the Afghans in the 1890s, David Cameron will be more than aware of the pitfalls of waging war against a determined and resilient foe in a foreign land.

And as the Prime Minister prepares for tomorrow’s emergency National Security Council meeting to discuss Britain’s response to the deepening crisis in Syria’s bloody civil war, he would do well to remember the conclusions Churchill reached after his own brief spell fighting the great-great-grandfathers of the Taliban in the late 19th century.

As I explain in my book Churchill’s First War, young Winston, like any young subaltern of his generation, approached his participation in the punitive campaigns undertaken in 1897 by the British against the fierce tribesmen of the North-West Frontier with great relish and every confidence that the might of the British Empire would easily prevail over the “wild rifle-armed clansmen”.

But after six weeks of intense fighting, during which he came under fire “ten complete times” and on several occasions came within a whisker of losing his own life, Churchill had changed his tune. War was a gory spectacle, the young Winston concluded, and it was unlikely that the Pashtun tribesmen could ever be beaten by military might alone.

Indeed, in his later account of the campaign, Churchill even suggests that some of the collective punishments imposed by the British against the tribes, such as the wholesale burning of villages, might amount to war crimes. “We are a very cruel people,” lamented Churchill.

Certainly, as Cameron now weighs up Britain’s response to claims that Syrian President Bashar Assad has launched chemical weapons attacks against his own people, he would do well to bear in mind that there are no easy options when it comes to military intervention.

Just like the British in the 19th century, there is little doubt that the military firepower available to whatever international coalition can be cobbled together to confront the Assad clan will be infinitely superior to that of the Syrians.

Assad may have Russian-built anti-aircraft missiles at his disposal but they will be scant use against the barrage of cruise missiles that will be fired against key regime targets if, as looks increasingly likely, Cameron succeeds in persuading his allies in Washington and Paris that a military response is necessary.

There is even the possibility that the Royal Navy will participate in missile strikes against Syria, assuming it has sufficient stocks of cruise missiles to spare for such action. (During the Libyan conflict two years ago, Britain ran out of cruise missiles and found itself in the embarrassing position of having to ask the Americans to provide emergency replacements.)

Yet in many respects, as Churchill found during his brief spell of combat during the 1890s, launching military action is the easy part of the equation. It is what comes after the missiles have stopped falling on Assad’s bunkers that will present the real difficulties, particularly when, as Assad does, the “enemy” has powerful backers such as Russia and Iran to defend its interests.

Thus, before making the fateful decision to attack Syria — which most military chiefs insist would be tantamount to a declaration of war against the Assad regime — Cameron would be well-advised to allow the team of UN experts currently in Syria to verify whether or not Assad was indeed responsible for the recent alleged chemical weapons attack in Damascus.

Given that some of the inspectors were fired on by unidentified snipers yesterday as they attempted to visit the site of the alleged attack, it may prove impossible for them to reach a definitive conclusion as to culpability. But as someone who, as a Tory backbencher, backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Cameron will be well aware of the pitfalls of initiating military action against a rogue Ba’athist state before the UN inspection teams have completed their work.

Indeed, given the messy legacy of the Iraq war, seeking UN approval for coalition missile strikes against Syria is vital if the West is to claim the moral high ground in its efforts to remove the detestable Assad clique from power. UN backing for military action to prevent Assad launching further chemical attacks against his own people — if indeed that is what he has done — would give Britain and its other coalition partners the political and diplomatic cover required to remove Assad from power which, once military action has been initiated, must inevitably become the West’s objective.

The prospects of the UN sanctioning such action, though, remain low, not least because the Russians and Chinese will not play ball. The Russians, in particular, who have close military ties with Damascus, including use of the Tartus naval base, are still smarting over Cameron’s liberal interpretation of the UN Security Council resolution passed in the spring of 2011 to prevent Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi massacring anti-government rebels in Benghazi. Instead Cameron, together with France and the US, used it to launch a military campaign to overthrow Gaddafi’s regime.

As both London and Washington have already made it abundantly clear that they want to see Assad removed from power, it is extremely unlikely that Moscow will sanction any move at the UN which results in the removal of a valued ally.

And without such backing Britain and its coalition partners could quickly find themselves embroiled in a proxy war in Syria against the Russians, with the coalition trying to force Assad from office and the Russians using all their formidable resources to prop him up.

In the 1890s, Russian meddling in Afghanistan was one of the primary reasons Churchill, together with thousands of other British soldiers, found themselves fighting an unwinnable war on the North-West Frontier. Today, unless Cameron is careful, he could soon find himself in the same predicament as his illustrious predecessor, only with potentially more disastrous consequences.

Con Coughlin is the author of Churchill’s First War (Macmillan)

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