The British parliament debate on Thursday regarding armed action against Syria served as a reminder to the rest of the world, especially the United States, that making decisions on military conflicts is not easy. Such actions, which will cause bloodshed and human misery, must only be carried out when there is compelling and undisputed justification and must be sanctioned by the organisation entrusted by the world to act in its interests — the United Nations.
The US may have already taken the decision to strike Syria. And bombs may be falling on selected targets by now. But the fact remains that whatever the political discourse adopted by the Obama administration suggests, Washington seems inherently unable to learn from past mistakes, most recently the lessons of Iraq.
Unilateral actions against sovereign states lead to the prolonging of instability in vital regions like the Middle East, thereby planting the seeds of more conflicts.
On the other side, in the case of Syria, the moral factor cannot be ignored. As the civilian death toll keeps rising and more children and helpless civilians are massacred, can the world sit idle and continue debating the legality of military action aimed at neutralising the regime’s ability to slaughter more of its people?
Critics of the American plan to strike Syria often disregard the continuing suffering of the Syrian people and point to the somewhat similar brutality displayed by the regime’s opponents.
Therefore, and it is maybe late to say this, the US and its allies should have waited for the UN inspectors’ report to build an international consensus on the need to confront the violence against the Syrian people. That is why the British House of Commons vote, humiliating as it was for Prime Minister David Cameron, was one of the most sober debates on this complicated international issue in a long time.
And its minutes should serve as a guide to future deliberations on international conflicts.