World

After Tunisia should we bomb Islamic State in Syria?

In the wake of the beach massacre is it time for the government to take further military action?

July 02, 2015
The Tunisian terror attack could prompt the government to rethink its strategy towards Islamic State ©KHALED NASRAOUI/LANDOV/Press Association Images
The Tunisian terror attack could prompt the government to rethink its strategy towards Islamic State ©KHALED NASRAOUI/LANDOV/Press Association Images

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has pointed out that it is illogical to observe an international boundary between Iraq and Syria when Islamic State regards it as a single continuous space, of which it controls large parts. If we are bombing IS in Iraq why would we not bomb it in Syria? Particularly as what will have the appearance of a direct response to the Tunis beach massacre will play well for a government keen to talk up its counter terrorist credentials.

Fallon’s careful preparation of the ground is, in many ways, more interesting in a political context than in a military one. Having been overruled once by parliament on Syria, the newly mandated Prime Minister will wish to avoid any similar embarrassment again and the Defence Secretary’s musings should be seen as a wet finger in the air to test popular and parliamentary response.

In purely military terms, the contribution of six Tornado GR4 jets, Reaper drones and a variety of tanker, surveillance and command platforms has had a modest impact against IS in Iraq. The US provides significantly more aircraft, so do the French; the Dutch and Australians also chip in. Meanwhile, the Americans, the Canadians and the Sunni Arab monarchies are already operating in Syrian airspace, so any British decision to extend operations across the Iraq/Syria border is somewhere short of momentous.

But an incremental military escalation is not the real issue at stake. The proximate debate conceals a far greater one about what exactly is IS and how much force should we be willing to commit against it? If we see IS as simply a nihilistic cult that will eventually collapse under the weight of its ludicrous pretension to be the inheritor of the tradition of the Damascene and Baghdadi caliphates, then decisive military action may be appropriate. Indeed, a cast of military luminaries loses no opportunity to intone that airstrikes are not enough and only the commitment of ground forces will do the job properly. A view echoed by right wing commentary that adds that we are also failing our friends, allies and oil suppliers in the Middle East by our mealy mouthed vacillation.

An alternative view, however, might see IS as the Sunni revanche in a millenarian struggle between the Shia and Sunni strands of Islam. This view might go on to assert that we are at the end of the first decade of the 30 Years’ War of the 21st century, and, like all religious wars, a solution can only be found from within the belief system. Further still, just as the 30 Years’ War, 1618–1648, evolved from a sectarian conflict into a regional power contest between Hapsburg Spain and Bourbon France, so will the chaos in the Middle East eventually boil down to the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In these circumstances, military intervention into private Muslim grief might appear as folly. A view echoed by left wing commentary that would characterise it as an imperialist gesture, unfit for our times.

So far, the west has inclined to caution. Whether that is because it is convinced by the compelling logic of the war within Islam or simply because it does not want to get its fingers burnt again in a region it little comprehends is open to debate. But the fact that America has risked the indignant outrage of its long term Saudi ally by seeking an accommodation with Iran on uranium enrichment shows it has least half an eye to history.

A carefully orchestrated process has been set in train that will see parliamentary debate speak of existential threat and generational war. For which, of course, the extension of air operations across a non-existent border is a risibly inadequate response. The danger in conflict of taking baby steps without reference to the bigger forces of geography, history and religion is that the outcome is the result of disassociated and expedient decisions that often fail to connect where we end up with where we started and is the antithesis of strategy. Let’s have a debate, but one on the nature of our enemy and how much of their war we want rather than an insignificant gesture wrapped up as decisive action.