Commentary: air strike will have lasting consequences... and lasting responsibilities for the West

A decision to carry out punitive strikes against the Assad regime will take America, Britain and their allies into uncharted territory.

The strikes will have to be effective and sustained — not just pinpricks. With lasting consequences, they will bring lasting responsibilities, especially if it means the end of Assad and his military tyranny.

The evidence now seems clear. We have had detailed reports from Medecins Sans Frontieres sources that the people of Ghouta on the edge of Damascus were hit by a heavy bombardment using “neurotoxic” agents. The doctors reporting to MSF said many they treated had an immediate recovery reaction to the use of atropine — the standard anti-nerve gas agent issued to Nato armies, including our own. The MSF reports now appear to have been backed by what the UN inspectors gleaned from victims they visited in hospitals in the suburb of Muadhamiya.

The principle on which action will be mounted is also clear. It comes under the Responsibility to Protect, adopted by the UN in 2005. Known as R2P it holds that action is authorised to stop a regime destroying, torturing and maltreating its own population. The principle was announced to the world by Tony Blair at a speech in Chicago in April 1999 as Nato was bombing Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia in the name of protecting the Kosova people.

The way attacks would be carried out would be Tomahawk missile from US, and possibly British submarines and destroyers which are stationed already in the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea. They could also use a selection of missiles launched from aircraft, such as the Storm Shadow used by both the British and French air forces. This will require very precise targeting — a process which must already be under way by aircraft, satellite and even drone.

The first targets will be the known chemical weapons sites. They are already known to both the Nato allies involved, principally the US, Britain, France and Italy; and to Israel. In the case of VX and mustard gas, standard inventories in the public domain suggest Assad has more than a hundred tons of the stuff. Securing this may even require raids by special forces on the ground. Once the actions are taken, Britain and its allies become part of the Syrian conflict, and possibly the wider Middle East and they will be opposed by Putin’s Russia, now back to Cold War style hostility.

Bombing Assad will help the rebels, and al Qaeda. Barack Obama and David Cameron need to have a long-term plan for the aftermath of action and this I think concerns members of Congress as well as Parliament as the consequences will be with us for years.