With over 2 million refugees and tens of thou-
sands of casualties the agony of the Syrian peo-
ple shows no signs of coming to an end any
time soon, but the West ’ s motivation to do
something is no justification for doing the
wrong thing. Precision strikes using Tomahawk
missiles is the appealing option, but without
putting troops on the ground would be doomed
to failure. If there was a day when things
changed in international affairs it was May 1st
2003. That was the day when the then US Presi-
dent George W Bush gave his “ M ission Accom-
plished ” speech aboard the aircraft carrier USS
Abraham Lincoln. From September 11th 2001 un-
til then it was a beautifully simple world, black
and white, good guys against bad guys.
The good guys were the US and its allies, the
bad guys Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda and vari-
ous Islamist fanatics such as the Taliban. With
the disaster that subsequently engulfed Iraq
and the ongoing pain of Afghanistan it has
been revealed that the world is really not that
simple, not black and white but many and ever
increasing shades of grey. With the Damascus
chemical attack of 21st August 2013 President
Basher al-Assad of Syria has shown himself to
undoubtedly be one of the world’ s bad guys,
but any reasonable assessment of the Syrian
opposition raises all sorts of concerns and re-
veals at least some of them to be no better. This
has made a complex situation even more diffi-
cult for the leaders of the western democracies
to handle.
When the Damascus chemical attacks were re-
ported around the world, and it seems highly
probable that the Syrian regime is responsible,
there were quite understandable demands for
action. The US Secretary of State, John Kerry,
quickly began mobilizing support for limited
military action with the objective of destroying
the Syrian regimes chemical weapons capability.
Mindful of the lack of public support for a full
intervention involving ground forces, the oft re-
ferred to “ boots on the ground ” , the preci-
sion strikes option is the only one so far on the
menu. The Obama administration naturally has a
huge aversion to anything that would risk
American casualties, and so even putting Ameri-
can aircraft over Syrian airspace would have to
be avoided.
It is widely known that the Syrians have an ex-
tensive Integrated Air Defence System (IADS),
equipped with some of the latest Russian sur-
face to air missiles including the highly capable
SA22. Whilst the performance of the equipment
itself, the Command and Control system (C2)
and its integration with any kind of Early Warn-
ing (EW) system is unknown, its mere presence
is enough to force the precision strikes option
to take the form of ballistic missile strikes.
These would be Tomahawk cruise missiles fired
from US Navy destroyers in the Eastern Medi-
terranean. The destroyers themselves can sit
outside the range of any Syrian anti-shipping
missiles and strike with impunity targets
throughout the country.
These missiles are extremely effective against
fixed targets, with a range of over 1000km and
excellent accuracy. Likely targets for a first strike
would be C2 facilities and high profile military
targets rather than any chemical weapons
dumps. The question has to be
Will the strikes be effective in degrading the
regimes chemical weapons capability
What happens next
The answer to the first is easier to assess than
the second. Undoubtedly the US military has the
capability to destroy whatever part of Syria it
chooses, it is just a question of firing enough
missiles. With a unit cost of over a million dollars
per missile though, and the danger of collateral
damage and its effect on already fragile Ameri-
can public support,
any campaign would have to be very limited in
duration. There is also the issue of targets,
whilst buildings and facilities are easy and in-
volve loading the coordinates into the missiles
GPS system, chemical weapons loaded into the
back of a truck that may then be parked next to
a school is a completely different story.
So it has to be assessed that precision strikes
with Tomahawk missiles would be effective in
visibly punishing the Syrian regime, but not in
degrading their ability to use chemical weap-
ons.
It is a blessing that the Russians have politically
outplayed the Obama administration and that
the option of limited military action has at least
be temporarily shelved.
It could only have caused more problems in a
region already hugely destabilised.
What is most likely to happen now is that an As-
sad regime emboldened by its perceived sup-
port from Russian and US prevarication that it
takes as weakness will make token attempts to
comply with demands to hand over chemical
weapons it was until recently denying even ex-
isted. This will go on for months with no obvious
benefit and no end in sight until finally the US
and its allies lose patience. Even the British
members of parliament who voted against mili-
tary action will change their mind, having
watched yet more footage on news coverage of
atrocities carried out by both sides in the Syrian
civil war and listened to ever more desperate
pleas from the relief
agencies operating in the border areas. Mean-
while the numbers of displaced civilians will rise
well over the current two million and the body
count will mount. It is likely to then be appar-
ent, even to war weary western governments
that intervention is necessary, and by then the
Putin administration is Russia may be willing to
play the part of international peacemaker. It will
then become possible to gain UN Security
Council approval for intervention, not against
one side or the other, as would be the case in
striking only against the Assad regime, but as
genuine peacemakers. The only workable solu-
tion will be for a full UN military intervention as
suggested by formed Canadian General Romeo
Dallaire, who led the UN peacekeeping force in
Rwanda.
Only sufficient numbers of ground troops,
suitably equipped, effectively lead and with ro-
bust rules of engagement can form the re-
quired buffer between the warring parties and
bring some semblance of peace to Syria, allow-
ing the diplomats to do their work, and saving
the innocent people of the country from relent-
less suffering.
PUBLICATION BY
QUANTUM TRADING
PRIVATE BRITISH INTELLIGENCE
SECURITY FIRM