British warplanes today launched air strikes on the al-Omar oilfield near the city of Deir Ezzor, thereby extending Britain’s contribution to the war against ISIS from Iraq to Syria. Four RAF Tornado bombers backed up by a Reaper drone attacked six ISIS targets using Paveway IV bombs before returning to their airbase in Cyprus. The strikes on one of the most important ISIS money-spinning operations came just hours after a dramatic day in the House of Commons. British lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to support Prime Minister David Cameron’s ISIS strategy, but the parliamentary debate left the opposition Labour party in disarray after 67 of its MPs, including foreign affairs spokesperson Hilary Benn, defied their leader Jeremy Corbyn by voting with the government.
In the overall context of the war against ISIS–both the chaos on the ground and the uncertain overall western strategy–it would be easy to dismiss the British move as small beer. UK forces are already deployed in the region; this latest move only extends the range of their activities. No ground troops will be deployed; only up to ten Tornado GR4 attack aircraft, six Typhoon FGR4 combat aircraft and ten Reaper MQ9A unmanned drones will participate in operations.
As military responses go, it’s no game changer. Nevertheless, the shift in British strategy is important, not least for these three reasons.
First, the RAF contribution in Syria may be limited, but it gives the Western allies a highly significant additional military option. What the British have, and the Americans want, is the laser-guided Brimstone air-to-ground missile. Tornados can fire these ultra-accurate missiles from 20,000 ft, hitting targets travelling at 70 mph. That gives the allies a new capability to target the ISIS leadership directly, aiming to “cut off the snake’s head.” The beauty of the Brimstone is its accuracy. By using a small warhead and an adjustable, pilot-controlled fuse, the weapon dramatically reduces the chances of civilian casualties. The UK Ministry of Defence says that of the around 340 air strikes carried out in similar circumstances in Iraq since last September as part of Operation Shader, civilian casualties have been zero.
Wednesday night’s vote in the House of Commons is also significant because, second, it draws a line under British policy after the War on Terror. The House of Commons vote in 2003 for the war in Iraq was one of the most controversial in parliament’s recent history. The scars that decision left on the British body politic were profound. Bitter memories of corrupted intelligence and the “dodgy dossier,” not to mention the human cost of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, left Britain battle-weary and sceptical. Wednesday’s vote does not represent closure on that earlier decision, but it does at least show that parliamentary approval can be sought and won for military action where the outcomes, as in 2003, are unclear and public doubts remain.
David Cameron, prime minister since 2010, has been careful not to run too far ahead of public opinion on questions of war and peace. Yet in doing so, he has stood accused of diminishing British prestige abroad; of reacting to events rather than, in Churchill’s phrase, “making the weather.” That’s the third reason why this week’s vote is important: it marks a shift to a more traditional approach in British foreign policy. That does not mean a slavish devotion to the “special relationship.” In fact one of the more amusing aspects of recent Transatlantic dialogues has been watching American officials and commentators huff and puff about Britain’s growing relationship with China. This from a country whose signature policy since 2009 has been the “pivot to Asia.” You asked for it; you got it.
Britain will now begin to play a larger role in the Western alliance, interestingly as part of a developing axis with President Hollande of France. Indeed, it was the statesmanship of the French president, rather than the American one, in the aftermath of the Paris attacks that did so much to convince the British Prime Minister to extend Britain’s military response to ISIS.
That direct move also coincided with a general shift in policy in the last six months towards something more expansive. In particular, George Osborne, the influential Chancellor of the Exchequer and effective Deputy Prime Minister, is said to have been frustrated by the limits that coalition government placed on the Conservatives between 2010 and 2015. He has been pushing for a more assertive approach since the party formed a majority administration in May. This week we saw what that bolder policy might look like.
The new approach is not a return to the neoliberalism of Tony Blair, whose belief in the power of governments to spread of democracy pre-dated even George Bush and the war on terror. Instead, the actions of this week look more like those of another dominant figure of the postwar era, the Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher. In foreign policy, she was often a pragmatic, even cautious figure, who recognized that war was not to be taken lightly. But she balanced that pragmaticism with a revulsion of appeasement and acceptance of risk when she believed Britain was right. As she pointed out in a House of Commons debate in 1986 about the bombing of Libya, “If one refuses to take any risks because of the consequences, the terrorist Governments will win and one can only cringe before them.”
This week Britain decided not to cringe.
