As new US-led air strikes were launched against Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria yesterday, the prospect of British involvement in military action in the region has moved closer .
The Prime Minister David Cameron has talked about the need for an international coalition to destroy IS, and the Labour leader Ed Miliband has suggested he would be open to the idea of airstrikes in Iraq. A coalition supporting British involvement in strikes could be confirmed when Parliament is recalled tomorrow.
However, in moving towards supporting limited airstrikes, Mr Miliband has also correctly identified the main areas of concern about their potential effectiveness.
British involvement in strikes in Syria, for example, should be ruled out for the foreseeable future not only because they are being carried out without UN authorisation and are therefore illegal under international law, but also because action against the IS jihadists in Syria risks playing into the hands of President Bashar al Assad and making him more secure and more able to pursue his campaign against his domestic enemies.
There are other serious risks around deeper involvement in military action, the most obvious of which is that the UK Government would make attacks on its citizens more, not less, likely. Earlier this month, the British hostage David Haines was murdered by IS fighters and an important question for MPs voting to support military action has to be: could it inspire other jihadists, some of whom are British themselves, to capture and kill more hostages in revenge?
There are also no guarantees that the airstrikes would permanently disrupt IS. The US Government has had some success so far in attacking IS operations on the ground, but if there is one clear lesson from recent military adventures, it is that for every victory, there is a defeat; for every Kosovo, there is an Iraq.
This unpredictability should not mean, however, that military action should be absolutely ruled out, because the danger of IS is clear. It poses a threat to the stability of the Middle East and, if it progresses much further in Syria and Iraq, the wider world. It is also a specific and real threat to the UK, having declared hatred for Britain and an intention to strike at us if it can.
One of the objectives of any military action should be to limit the ability of IS to act on that intention, but the British Government must also be wary of creeping beyond the stated objectives. The former Prime Minister Tony Blair and others have already been suggesting troops on the ground may be needed, but thousands of troops have already been deployed in Iraq and the country is still in chaos.
If it is now more likely that Mr Cameron will win parliamentary support for British involvement in airstrikes in Iraq, the military campaign must be accompanied by a political one and its aim must be to tackle the grievances and divisions in the Middle East that have fuelled IS in the first place. Airstrikes may help expedite the process, but they alone cannot make the region safer.
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