The latest G8 summit is now being held at Lough Erne, near Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. It is likely that the civil war in Syria will feature strongly on the agenda, and of course the event is being held on an island with its own history of protracted conflict.
Opinions differ on the extent to which countries could and should intervene in Syria. It is always an area of policy that presents a huge range of options from doing nothing at all right through to some form of direct military intervention. Importantly, whatever action is taken should have United Nations sanction and should be clear about its goals.
Interventions in Afghanistan have proved to be very costly historically, whether British, Soviet or UN-led. We have now had forces in that theatre for 12 years, twice as long a period as the Second World War.
Similarly the invasion of Iraq in 2003 sought to oust a dictator who many wished to see disappear. That said, Iraq was one of the more secular countries in the Middle East and the same probably could not be said now. Was that factor a policy consideration or just overlooked?
Military action taken by Britain and France in Libya proved quite successful, leading to the overthrow of another reviled dictator. So if the goals are clear and the mandate is there, we can see the benefits of assisting genuine liberation movements.
We get it wrong if we act without a mandate. A classic example was the British, French and Israeli collusion in 1956 to attack Egypt and gain control of the Suez Canal. This particular military expedition was rightly curtailed by a near-unanimous vote in the United Nations General Assembly.
It is also possible to operate with the wrong motives. British imperialist policy of the eighteenth century might have been summarised with the expression, “Make the world England”. This would not have been a legitimate policy objective. Neither would a modern derivative of attempting to transplant Westminster into the lives of unwilling nation states.
While I am a democrat, I do believe that even UN-backed interventions need to have more behind it than political philosophy. The winning of hearts and minds is not achieved merely by the advocacy of a system of government. Often forays into the affairs of other countries take us into areas where more important aspects of life are quite rudimentary, thinking of services such as energy and water supply. Fixing issues such as these is a really important contribution that we can make.
Then there are also the realities of political power. Ideally the five permanent members of the UN Security Council should be aligned on what to do and how to do it.