Can Europe rise to the challenge of a new Syria?

Europeans like to regard the fall of the Berlin Wall as a foundational moment. Syrians recently provided the world with a similar event. Reuters

Europeans like to regard the fall of the Berlin Wall as the foundational moment of a bloc that faces the world as one union. Syria has just provided the world with a moment that could resonate on the same level for it and its neighbours.

So how then are Europeans rising to the challenge of adapting to what will be a fast-evolving and many-sided new era? The immediate feel of the European response could be described as “stuck”. Even the UK, which left the EU to pursue a nimbler role in world affairs, is only gingerly rolling out its response. But the impact of what happens in Syria is second only in Europe to that in the Middle East.

The UK’s hang-ups revolve around the 2013 period when the British Parliament took a decision of genuine global importance. Former US presidential candidate John Kerry said in his memoirs that Barack Obama was willing to establish chemical weapons use in Syria as a red line. This was to be achieved by authorising retaliation against Bashar Al Assad’s government – until British MPs voted to stay out of it.

Syrians celebrate the fall of Assad

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Washington had assumed Britain would support the US and, as in the case of Libya a few years before, was also happy to have the full involvement of the French. Then the British pulled the plug. Mr Obama cited resistance in Congress and stepped back from the stage. Coming a few years after deciding to rely on the UK and France in Libya – describing them as the tip of the spear (Mr Obama’s phrase was “leading from behind”) – the 2013 Syria decision was a turning point for US prestige.

As we have seen during the past two weeks, Mr Al Assad’s government was always vulnerable to a rebel offensive. In the void left by the US there was a sudden rush to change the battlefield calculus by Iran-backed militias. There was also an emboldened need to secure the Russian foothold in Syria.

Not least because he was the primary force behind that UK vote in 2013, then opposition leader Ed Miliband is today one of the most powerful members of the UK Cabinet. The vote 11 years ago hangs over the British reaction to the collapse of the Assad administration. The whiff of it not being Britain’s place to get too involved now dogs Foreign Office officials.

Add to this the return of Johnathan Powell, the new national security adviser to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Mr Powell was another powerful figure who captured UK headlines a decade ago. Now the country’s approach to Hayat Tahrir Al Sham will be overseen by him. The UK’s engagement terms – which he is determined to pursue – will be closely scrutinised.

Even the UK, which left the EU to pursue a nimbler role in world affairs, is only gingerly rolling out its response

Foreign Office officials have conducted an intense round of role-play scenarios on the strands emerging in Syria and are confident their emerging gameplan has been well stress-tested. The first contacts with HTS on the ground are underway. Nonetheless, the wariness in Whitehall is high that the UK can be a meaningful player in Syria.

Over in Brussels, European foreign affairs ministers spent Monday discussing a set of rules to govern their approach to Damascus. These discussions are highly technical with a tentative caution overlaid in the rules that will be set down for officials. A new EU special envoy charged with competent handling of the brief is a priority for many of the ministers around the table.

For a region that itself was forged in the crucible of the wide-reaching effects of a government’s collapse, these calm and collected discussions are far removed from the heat of the events taking place in Syria. Given the coincidence of the time of year, it is not hard to see in the fate of Mr Al Assad and his wife Asma an escape from the end that befell the Romania dictator-couple Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu in December 1989.

The European gatherings hold tight to processes, targets and eventual outcomes that prioritise normalisation. At the back of all this is the coming storm the Europeans fear will reach Iran. Here too the thinking has been to hold on for far too long to the idea that an “E3 approach” – led by France, Germany and the UK – that is dominated by the legacy of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal.

EU foreign affairs ministers met on Monday in Brussels to discuss their approach to the rapid changes taking place in Syria. EPA

That too is something that belongs to the Obama/ Kerry era. The JCPOA was concluded in 2015 but the first Donald Trump administration pulled Washington out of it three years later. China and Russia have gradually withdrawn all co-operation within the wider-format contact group that supported the goals set out in the deal and its authorising UN Security Council Resolution, 2231.

What is left is the E3 which at least brings the UK together with France and Germany in diplomatic lockstep on Iran. With their unflinching devotion to the idea that the framework can prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, the trio are upholding a principled position.

What they are not positioned for what is what’s to come, either from the events in Syria that are unfolding rapidly or the likely strategy to be pursued when Mr Trump returns to office on January 20.

Engagement with those actors who are at the heart of this new era is necessary but it is not a sufficient condition for maintaining influence in the changes now proceeding from the fall of Mr Al Assad’s government.