Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

What is Theresa May’s strategy in Syria?

Happy now? The US-led air strikes against Syrian bases, notably chemical weapons storage facilities, near Damascus and Homs and reportedly elsewhere, has been, according to all the participants, American, Brits and French, a success. Or, as Donald Trump put it, ‘the nations of Britain, France, and the United States of America have marshalled their righteous power against barbarism and brutality’. Well that’s good, if you put it like that. Unrighteous power would have been quite another thing. And no one wants to see chemical weapons used in Syria or anywhere else, no?

Trouble is, the actual war in Syria will not be terribly affected by these air strikes, except, as Russian observers unhelpfully point out, to the extent that the Syrian army will be weakened in its operations against the rebels. And it is with the war itself, rather than the peripheral – and  immoral – use of chemical weapons, with which we should be concerned.

Who do we actually want to win? Or are we prepared to say? The rebels who left the enclave of Douane – where the chemical weapons attack precipated last night’s air strikes – are, like those most pundits supported in Aleppo, a decidedly mixed bunch.

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