Allan Massie: The struggle within Syria is none of our business

AS THE President of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, arrives in London for a meeting with David Cameron, both the Turkish and British governments have stepped up pressure on Syria and its embattled but still defiant President Bashar al-Assad. “Change is inevitable,” the Turks say. Assad’s time is up.

Even the Arab League, that collection of mostly unelected and authoritarian leaders, has turned against him. With characteristic hypocrisy they criticise him for making war on his own people, something that none of them would be averse to doing if they thought circumstances demanded it.

Meanwhile, our Foreign Secretary William Hague, while reaffirming that we have no plan or intention to engage in military action in support of the Syrian rebels, has urged them to form a common front. Unless they do so, he says, they can’t be recognised as a government-in-waiting.

All this is sadly familiar. It invites the question: what business is it of ours? Assad’s Baathist regime is doubtless nasty. It holds political prisoners and engages in torture. But so does almost every regime in the Middle East. It has been ruthless in its attempts to suppress the opposition which has sprung up since the Arab Spring. But this is what governments do when faced with a rebellion.

We intervened in Libya – almost certainly going beyond what was authorised by the UN – and were able to do so successfully because the rebels were initially based in Benghazi and coming under attack there from Gaddafi’s forces. So the military position was fairly clear. Moreover, Nato’s intervention was approved by the Arab League, which was happy to abandon Gaddafi.

The position in Syria is murky. There is no front line, no clear geographical division between rebels and the government. Moreover, Assad still has friends: Iran, Russia and China. He still has an army which seems to be loyal. He is still backed by large sections of the population – including Syrian Christians who have reason to fear that the replacement of the secular Baathist regime will be bad for them. When you look at the position of Egypt’s Christian Copts since its former president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown, and at the fate of Iraqi Christians since the war of 2003, it seems likely they are right to be afraid.

However, the real question is: what’s it to do with us? And the answer surely is: very little. We are not the world’s policeman, and it’s a ridiculous delusion to suppose we are. We are no longer a world power. We are a medium-sized European state, and one whose economy is in a sad mess. We have no means of telling what sort of regime may emerge from the present troubles in Syria, and indeed it scarcely matters to us how things turn out there. It matters doubtless to Turkey. It matters probably to Israel. It matters to the Arab League. But it is no concern of ours.

The policy of non-intervention which the British and French governments adopted during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s was regarded by many at the time – on both Left and Right but especially on the Left – as dishonourable and misguided. Yet it may have been wise at the time, even though Britain and France were then both great powers as they no longer are. Non-intervention certainly makes sense today.

Our politicians still like to posture on the world stage. It makes them feel good and important. It is so much more agreeable to parade as world statesmen than to address themselves to difficult and perhaps intractable social and economic problems at home. But it is all out of date.

The 1939-45 war marked the beginning of the end of Britain as a great power. Few were willing to recognise this at the time. The humiliating failure of the Suez War in 1956 brought us up against reality. Subsequently our withdrawal from commitments east of Suez and Harold Wilson’s wise refusal to engage in the Vietnam War despite Washington’s urging may be seen as welcome acceptance of our changed status. We had no strategic or economic interest in Vietnam. So why should we intervene? There were people who thought we should, arguing that the advance of communism must be checked there. It was all nonsense. The Vietcong won and who in the West thinks about Vietnam now?

We had the choice for two or three generations between being an American satellite, ready to leap to arms when Washington blew the whistle, and being a merely European power. Too often our leaders chose the former, more glamorous role; hence our pointless involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq – also, one may add, in Libya this year. It has done us no good. Prime ministers and foreign secretaries have spoken proudly of punching above our weight. When boxers do that they end up exhausted or on the canvas. We should forget about it and retire from the ring. There is no reason to do otherwise, especially now that the curtain is coming down on the American empire.

It is instructive to compare our history over the last half century with Germany’s. Post-war Germany learned from defeat and gave up the pretence that it was still a great global power. Instead it concentrated on Europe, on building a prosperous economy, on manufacturing and trade. It has for the most part eschewed foreign adventures, and refused to take part in the Franco-British Libyan war. Has it suffered from this? Quite the contrary. Minding its own business has been good business for Germany.

We should learn the German lesson. The days of European empires are over. Our interest in the Middle East is only commercial. The outcome of the struggle in Syria is no concern of ours.

It would be good to think that David Cameron said this to the Turkish president yesterday. But I’m sure he didn’t. Instead we shall continue to posture and take sides in wars and upheavals in countries we know little about. The pretence that we are still a world power is gratifying to our politicians. It feeds their vanity. Nevertheless, it is a delusion, and a damaging one.