West can intervene in Syria — and with Russia’s blessing

Kofi Annan, the UN special envoy to Syria, did not mince his words when the security council met on Thursday (7JUN). “If things do not change, the future is likely to be one of brutal repression, massacres, sectarian violence and even all-out civil war.”

The UN’s impotence is devastating to behold, with Russia and China holding out against the US, Britain and France over foreign intervention. But this was the situation the world faced with Libya, as Gaddafi’s forces closed on Benghazi; the crucial change came when the Arab League demanded the security council intervene. We are at that point again, with the Arab League head, Nabeel Al Arabi, asking Ban Ki-moon to submit the fighting in Syria to the security council under chapter VII of the UN charter, as a threat to world peace and security.

The danger of fighting spilling over to Syria’s neighbours — Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel — is very real. Indeed, by any objective reading of the charter, the security council should pass a resolution authorising the council to take measures including military force. However, this is where the problem in the security council is at its most acute: to use force against the Syrian army means Nato or US forces in a multinational grouping. Russia and China do not trust either arrangement. Both feel that when they abstained to allow the invocation of chapter VII in the case of Libya, the wording was deliberately misinterpreted to force the Gaddafi regime out of power and create the chaos that resulted in his summary killing. There is some substance to this complaint, and not just in relation to Libya but also to the UN’s involvement in the 2003 Iraq war and Nato’s bombing of Kosovo in 1999.

However, another model offers a positive precedent. In December 1992 Cyrus Vance, the UN special envoy to Bosnia, and I asked Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the then UN secretary general, to write to the Nato secretary general and ask that they start joint planning for an intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This paved the way for a no-fly zone and a successful military intervention by Nato in August 1995. We need something similar now: a UN-Nato plan supported by Russia, in which Nato, led by Turkey, would provide the threat of force needed to support Annan’s diplomacy.

We have learnt much from past conflicts about Nato-UN and Nato-Russian joint activity, and those lessons could be drawn on now with regard to Syria. In Bosnia Russian troops worked very well with Nato on the ground to implement the Dayton accords. In the case of Kosovo, the experience was not so good — in part because Nato did not give Boris Yeltsin and his peace envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin, sufficient credit for their diplomacy. Nato falsely claimed that the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo was purely the result of their 78 days of bombing. Quite apart from misunderstanding the important role that Moscow played in twisting President Milosevic’s arm, this led to a mistaken belief in the strength of air power alone. Air power can tilt the balance of fighting, but only as an adjunct to diplomacy; equally, successful diplomacy often depends on the ultimate threat of force.

In the case of Libya, we saw what happens when there is too little UN diplomatic involvement. Early on, a representative of the secretary general was appointed, but with little scope for working with Nato. Many regard that intervention as a great success, but government forces were only able to retake control of Tripoli airport this week, and there is still much to do to achieve a stable government there.

In Syria the situation, in this regard, is much better. Annan is a credible figure capable of working with Nato and Russia, and having good relations with the security council and some political leaders within Syria. In this way the threat, and if need be the reality, of force can more easily be put behind a strategy for a transitional administration in Syria, if Russian interests can be accommodated.

Many will ask: why bother with Russia? The answer lies in Kosovo, a state whose independent status is still not recognised by many countries — including five in the EU — because the intervention lacked UN authority.

After US and British mistakes over the war in Iraq, and now Afghanistan, we are in a new era of what I have called “constrained intervention”. The days of going it alone, without UN authority, are over. Russia can’t be pushed aside — its interests must be taken into account. It is encouraging that the Russian Middle East peace envoy has now said that the Annan peace plan can be adjusted.

Russia’s main naval port in the Mediterranean is in Syria. Russia supplies the Syrian government with arms and has close intelligence links. This gives Russia’s leaders leverage if they can be persuaded to use it; they could ease out the Al Assads and create a transitional administration. The international community must recognise, however, that Russia is not about to abandon its political interests in that country any more than the US would abandon its bases in south-east Asia, Diego Garcia and Guantanamo.

At the same time, Russia knows that it can’t run for too long in the UN against the tide of Arab feeling in the Middle East. Under President Putin, Russia has already been helpful over Afghanistan: using its influence in surrounding countries to guarantee safe exit routes for the 2014 Nato withdrawal. In nuclear talks with Iran, too, China and Russia are working constructively with the US, Britain and France — the UN permanent five — joined for this negotiation by Germany.

The immediate challenge in Syria is to hammer out guidelines for a Nato military threat, led by Turkey, to intervene — not to replace, but to strengthen Annan’s diplomacy. Both Russia and the Arab League will have key roles, as will the US, UK and France.

The best mechanism for breaking the impasse and drawing up such guidelines is the Nato-Russia council, which has formally existed since 2002. Sadly, it has not been very effective, but over Syria it could start to fulfil its potential for providing a forum for discussions. The Russians know that the prelude to any no-fly zone is cruise missile and air attacks, co-ordinated by Nato, on ground-to-air missile sites in Syria. To start detailed discussions about this now in the Nato-Russia council, prior to agreeing a UN resolution on force, might ease Russian concerns. The scale of the humanitarian tragedy in Syria demands that we try.

-Guardian News & Media 2012

Lord Owen, a former UK foreign minister, was EU peace negotiator in the former Yugoslavia from 1992-95