Syria

The enduring image of the fall of Kirkuk is the Humvee. The advancing Iraqi forces rolled into the Kurdish-held city in them and the outflanked Peshmerga clambered aboard them to flee. The US-manufactured military truck is the vehicle of choice for America’s friends in conflict with America’s other friends. Humvees retail for £170,000 but the symbolism is free.  Washington’s shapeless, Janus-faced policy in the Middle East is easy fodder for cynics and reactionaries. These Yankee Doodle imperialists bluster into centuries-old tribal disputes thinking they can impose their clean-cut version of democracy on the Arab world and rebuild Rhode Island on the Red Sea. Look where it ends — in the

When Russia entered the Syrian civil war in September 2015 the then US secretary of defense, Ash Carter, predicted catastrophe for the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin was ‘pouring gasoline on the fire’ of the conflict, he said, and his strategy of fighting Isis while backing the Assad regime was ‘doomed to failure’. Two years on, Putin has emerged triumphant and Bashar al-Assad’s future is secure. They will soon declare victory over Isis inside the country. The dismal failure turned out to be our cynical effort to install a Sunni regime in Damascus by adopting the Afghanistan playbook from the 1980s. We would train, fund and arm jihadis, foreign and domestic, in

For Vladimir Putin, Syria has been the gift that kept on giving. His 2015 military intervention propelled Russia back to the top diplomatic tables of the world — a startling comeback for a country that had spent two decades languishing in poverty and contempt on the margins of the world’s councils. At home, the war took over as a booster of Putin’s prestige just as the euphoria over the annexation of Crimea was being eroded by economic bad news caused by low oil prices and sanctions. In the Middle East, Russia was able to show both friends and enemies that it was once again able to project power every bit as

‘Great Britain has lost an Empire and not yet found a role’. Fifty-five years on, Dean Acheson’s remark has not lost its sting. British statecraft is, even now, an attempt to lay claim to a place in the post-imperial world. The events of the past few months — Brexit, the election of the most unlikely US president in history and the debate over the Union — all raise the issue of what kind of country Britain hopes to be. The chemical weapons attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria last week has prompted the first foreign policy crisis of this new era. Britain’s role in the response

Let me take this opportunity to join with our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary in commending President Trump’s swift and decisive military action against the Syrian government as being ‘appropriate’ — one of my favourite words and one which I like to use every day, regardless of whether it is appropriate to do so. The important thing was not of course the destruction of a few Syrian planes and, collaterally, a few Syrian children. The crucial point is that this moderate and judicious use of expensive missiles ‘sends out a message’ to President Assad. And the message is very simple. We will no longer tolerate Syrian children being killed by

On this week’s episode, we discuss the future of Christians as a minority group, consider whether Trump has found an ally in Britain, and dissect the 21st century phenomenon of the ‘flake’. First, with Easter just around the corner, the fate of Christianity in an increasingly secular Britain came under scrutiny. In this week’s magazine cover story, Rod Dreher advocates for ‘the Benedict option’, where Christian communities develop stronger personal identities. But Matthew Parris argues against this proposal, and they go head-to-head on the podcast. As Rod writes: “The collapse of religion in Britain has been perhaps the most striking feature of the last generation. The sheer pace of the decline has been recorded by

Home Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, having cancelled a trip to Moscow over the Syrian poison gas incident, consulted other foreign ministers at the G7 summit at Lucca in Italy about how to get President Vladimir Putin of Russia to abandon his support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The Scottish Medicines Consortium accepted for routine use by NHS Scotland a drug called Prep which, at a cost of more than £400 a month, can protect people at risk of contracting the HIV virus through unprotected sexual activity. In England, 57 general practitioners’ surgeries closed in 2016, Pulse magazine found, with another 34 shutting because of mergers, forcing 265,000 patients to

The G7 has failed to agree on any new sanctions on Russia following the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons last week. This is a blow to Boris Johnson, who has been pushing hard for targeted sanctions on Russian and Syrian military figures thought to be linked to last week’s attacks. But it is worth noting who blocked this push for new measures: the Italians and the Germans. Those who regularly say that the EU is the best way to stand up to Putin’s Russia and that Brexit is, therefore, a mistake, should reflect on this. The Syrian regime is a client of Russia’s; most of Assad’s military success in