Syria: the case for action

[davidbfpo]

Prompted by today's debate in the House of Commons, a new (temporary) thread. First a couple of documents: 1) the public letter from the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), with its assessment:http://slink.eu/yd

The BBC's Security Correspondent, Frank Gardiner, tweeted:

UK Govt intelligence case just published on Assad regime culpability for alleged gas attack rests more on logic than hard evidence.

His partner, Gordon Corera, has analysed the JIC letter:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23883617

2) The UK government's legal case:http://slink.eu/ye

From the later document:

If action in the [United Nations] Security Council is blocked, the UK would still be permitted under international law to take exceptional measures in order to alleviate the scale of the overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe in Syria by deterring and disrupting the further use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.”

The Government sets three conditions:

1) “convincing evidence, generally accepted by the international community as a whole, of extreme humanitarian distress on a large scale, requiring immediate and urgent relief”;

2) “No practicable alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved”; and

3) Force is necessary and proportionate.

In a sharply worded commentary, the normally "tame" RUSI has rejected the case presented, it ends with:

For the truth is that, although clever lawyers will always find a wheeze, the Syria operation has little justification in international law.

Link:http://www.rusi.org/analysis/comment.../#.Uh8d3GR4anZ