After 1945 Europe said “never again” but never again is happening before our eyes in the Middle East, says Guardian columnist Natalie Nougayrède
Syria is a European crisis as well as a Middle Eastern one, and the world’s worst human rights disaster in decades. Historians may one day tell us to what degree the west wasted a chance to force Bashar al-Assad to the negotiating table, had sufficient and timely pressure had been brought to bear on his forces, in particular through targeted strikes. That’s how Slobodan Milošević was forced to sign the 1995 Dayton agreement, which put an end to mass atrocities in Bosnia.
Fighting resumes in eastern Ghouta despite 'humanitarian pause'
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In the summer of 2013, a window of opportunity was arguably lost as a result of American hesitation. If archives are ever opened up, we may learn that it was the US failure to uphold red lines over chemical weapons use in Syria that emboldened Russia’s Vladimir Putin to launch his military intervention in support of a dictator whose army had been massacring civilians since 2011.
I’m not writing this to whitewash European policies. British restraint, or rather abstention, on Syria predated Barack Obama’s. And France, whose fighter planes were ready to take off in August 2013, could hardly go it alone. Still, trying to connect the dots between the Middle East, Russia, Europe, and how the US chooses to act or not act, remains important. The ravages of war in Europe’s vicinity, and the spillover effect of Middle Eastern chaos, are developments whose impact is yet to be fully measured.
There have been half a million deaths in Syria, and we’re still counting. The first victims of the slaughterhouse were in the Middle East, not Europe. Yet we are connected to these atrocities in ways that go beyond our on-and-off capacity for indignation as we sit watching television images of children being bombed in their hospital beds in eastern Ghouta.
In the heyday of post-cold war optimism, Europe was supposed to be able to export stability. Instead, in recent years, instability and chaos have spilled into Europe from the outside. The European project was born from the need to ensure the past wouldn’t repeat itself. Today Germany is a reluctant hegemon in Europe and an even more reluctant military actor. Britain and France are former colonial powers in the Middle East whose influence today looks insignificant.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/27/syria-europe-moral-eu-helplessness