Politics

The William Hague-John Kerry press conference

September 10, 2013
Placeholder image!

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office ought to iron the American flag it brings out for such events. The UK one too, while it’s at it. The crumpled state of the draped banners behind William Hague and John Kerry as they climbed onto the podium (half an hour after the advertised kick-off) was a symbol of the state of the transatlantic relationship a week and a bit after the Commons declared that Britain was not going to join the US in any Syrian conflict.

They did deny that; the relationship was both “special and essential”, said the Secretary of State. They cited their personal friendship, too, which means, in this context, that as politicians who have given decades to foreign affairs, they have met many times and broadly share the same instincts, say, on whether to intervene when a dictator starts shelling his own people with sarin gas. But that aside, this was a press conference with a wall down the middle; on one side, Kerry talking the book of a man with license to act on those instincts (the vote in Congress this week permitting), and on the other, Hague, who at least at the moment does not.

Kerry, who has the bearing that a career in the US Senate demands, a thick cap of greying hair and eyes with no flicker of self-doubt, said that as a prosecutor he had come across convicts with less evidence of criminality against them than there was now against President Bashar al-Assad and his use of chemical weapons. Kerry’s background as assistant district attorney has always sat uncomfortably with some liberals (in the sense of that term in US politics), as does now his firm championing of the doctrine of liberal intervention.

Yet critics should home in not on that part of his case – which he made well – but on his claim that the US was going to engage in “an unbelievably small, limited kind of effort”, a “very limited, very short term effort, that degrades [Assad’s] ability to use chemical weapons”. This is, to use his word, unbelievable. The response to this action from Assad and from the region is unpredictable. And the justification needs more work, although I must say I’m with them both in standing up for the principle of liberal intervention.

It is not enough to say, as Kerry did, that this is both punitive (of Assad) and a deterrent (of Iran, Hezbollah, and others he says would feel able to use such weapons without fear if Assad provoked no response). He needs to explain whether he is setting aside entirely the process of establishing legality; whether endorsement by the United Nations Security Council has become nice to have, but not necessary. He dodged too, as he could given the timing, the question of whether the Administration would respect Congress’s view if the vote went against President Obama (Kerry’s weekend trip to Vilnius, Paris and London has awkwardly taken him out of the Washington fray, given his valuable skills in arm-twisting in the Senate).

 

Hague, who clearly shares some of those thoughts, had to stand by and list the ways in which Britain might help, without sending missiles. He cited too, their joint commitment to advancing the Middle East “peace process”, and though that might seem trite, Hague has reminded the Commons—and members of the Obama Administration—at every chance of the need for a sense of urgency. But that too is a dispute where the US controls the pace (or lack of it).

 

It would be too sweeping to say that Little Britain now has no value for the US; the picture is one of steady but gradual decline in Britain’s influence on America, in which the Syria vote is only a small part. But it is hard, as Kerry flies back to the jostling in Washington, not to feel he was on a costly trip to a backwater when the real drama was at home.