And critics say PM Stephen Harper has no interest in putting these policy decisions into the hands of Parliament.

PUBLISHED Sept. 9, 2013, THE HILL TIMES

The global community is still “inept” on how to deal with international crises in light of the mass atrocities currently taking place in Syria, says a retired Canadian Forces general.

“Instead of having reinforced the responsibility to protect and operationalize it and take the risks of going through the deliberate process, the stages of the responsibility to protect, which is the creation of the post-Rwandan catastrophe, we are still inept, internationally, to bring about not only conflict resolution, but conflict prevention,” Quebec Liberal Senator Roméo Dallaire, a retired general who led the UN peacekeeping mission during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, told The Hill Times. 

Several Western countries have been engaged in debating how to respond to the Syrian civil war, which escalated on Aug. 21 with a sarin nerve gas attack which the U.S. estimates killed 1,429 people in a Damascus suburb.

U.S. President Barack Obama has drawn a “red line” on the use of chemical warfare and has said that the United States should intervene with a military strike.

The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted last week 10 to seven to approve a resolution authorizing U.S. military force in Syria. The resolution will now be debated on the floor of the Senate and later the House before Mr. Obama has a chance to also approve it.

At a press conference in Sweden last week before the G20 met in Russia, Mr. Obama told reporters: “I do think that we have to act, because if we don’t, we are effectively saying that even though we may condemn it and issue resolutions, and so forth and so on, somebody who is not shamed by resolutions can continue to act with impunity.  And those international norms begin to erode.  And other despots and authoritarian regimes can start looking and saying, that’s something we can get away with.  And that, then, calls into question other international norms and laws of war and whether those are going to be enforced.”

A week earlier, the British Parliament debated a similar motion that was defeated.

The French government is also calling for an armed response against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime because it believes that it used chemical weapons against its own civilians in a war that’s created two million refugees, four million internally displaced people, and more than 100,000 killed since it erupted in 2011.

The United Nations is currently conducting tests to determine whether chemical weapons were used and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, has urged the international community to not intervene militarily until a UN weapons inspector’s report is complete. Russia, a Syrian ally, has asked those who want to intervene with a military strike for proof that chemical weapons were used and that it was Mr. Assad’s government that used it.

Russia and China also hold a Security Council seat at the UN and back Syria, making a UN-sanctioned response to the crisis deadlocked.

In Canada, however, Parliamentarians did not have a chance to debate what its government should or could do to help either militarily or from a humanitarian perspective.

The NDP called for Parliament, currently on its summer recess, to be recalled so MPs could discuss the issues. Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.), who recently announced that Parliament would be prorogued and not return until October, said last month that while Canada supports its allies and that the crisis in Syria needs to be dealt with militarily, the government does not intend to get involved.

“At the present time, the government of Canada has no plans … of our own to have a Canadian military mission,” Mr. Harper said.

NDP MP Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre, Ont.) told The Hill Times that Parliamentarians should have a chance to craft a Canadian response rather than Mr. Harper deciding by himself what it would be.

“We hoped to have been talking about this in Parliament if we had just gone with the regular schedule, we would’ve been back within a week. Clearly this is not just any conflict. This is the issue that’s seizing the world community and like other countries, we should be having a debate about what our role is, particularly when we get the ambiguity we’ve had from the government,” he said, noting that when Canada got involved in the Libyan civil war in 2011, the government worked with the opposition,” said Mr. Dewar, his party’s foreign affairs critic.

“This is seemingly the biggest test for him and he’s trying to navigate the waters on his own and he certainly hasn’t reached out to us, which by the way is how other countries are handling this,” Mr. Dewar said. “He’s come up short on being able to handle the most important foreign affairs file we have in front of us that has implications not just for Syria, of course, but for the whole region. … I think the main problem for him is that he doesn’t have the capacity within his own office and Cabinet to come up with a Canadian consensus on this issue. That should be noted. He should be reaching out to others.”

The Conservative government came to power with a commitment to rebuild the Canadian Forces, and has since trumpeted the military as a main point in its foreign affairs policy, Mr. Dewar said.

It’s strange, therefore, that Mr. Harper has not been more vocal about getting involved in Syria, he said.

“They’re left with this position of we’re strong and muscular and the military is the face of our foreign policy, on the one hand, but on the other hand, in this case, when the Americans are looking for support, all they get from Canada is words. It’s quite strange,” Mr. Dewar said.

“I’ve been noting that for the last couple of years, in the past where Harper is glad to embrace the military and showing that’s his imprint on foreign policy, but I guess they’re learning that the world is a little more complicated and you can’t just have a one-dimensional foreign policy,” said Mr. Dewar.

Kyle Matthews, senior deputy director at the Will to Intervene Project of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University, said he’s surprised that the Canadian government is not saying more about the issue or generally that there is little debate about it in Canada.

“I don’t think there is any real interest by the Prime Minister’s Office in actually putting these foreign policy decisions into the hands of Parliament. I don’t think they want to have a precedence where they’re going to have to do that,” he said.

“There’s a great editorial cartoon in the Montreal Gazette that showed a picture of the Canadian Parliament and it had a janitor and someone else kind of discussing Syria and all the seats were empty. I really thought that hit it on the point. Why are we not discussing this? It’s one of the largest crises, it has the potential to turn into a serious regional war that if nothing is done, it’s not going to peter out, but actually going to continue to gnaw away at the Middle East and create more extremism and instability but yet we’re just pretending that what happens overseas in 2013 stays overseas and that is not the case,” said Mr. Matthews.

Mr. Matthews said the Canadian government is “playing it safe” when it should be speaking out. “I think he’s playing it safe by saying, ‘We don’t know how this could go. It could spiral out of control so we’re just going to really take a hands off and not take a risk,’ but I mean, if we’re a member of the G8, G20, we’re one of the top 10, 15 countries in the world, we shouldn’t be silent on this. We should be actually speaking out and speaking to Canadians about why we’re taking a certain situation but it hasn’t really been explained,” he said.

Sen. Dallaire said that Mr. Harper’s response so far is that of “a country that has lost its international prestige and influence in global affairs as it used to be a leading middle power with considerable backroom diplomatic influence and innovative ideas and was able to bring about, as Norway does, solutions that big powers and belligerence often can’t even fathom.”

Sen. Dallaire noted that since Mr. Harper came to power, Canada has withdrawn from several UN-related interventions and treaties because of “an aversion” to engaging with the UN in favour of NATO.

“Our not sitting at the security council now where we could be in the front lines of attempting to find an influence has only reinforced this pullback from the UN and a significant realignment to NATO particularly if we’re using forces and diplomatic efforts in potential conflict scenarios,” he said.

Sen. Dallaire said that “supporting your ally is positive” but the question needs to be asked: is a military strike the right solution? “I don’t believe so. I do not believe that conducting offensive operations against the Assad regime is the answer,” he said.

“I believe that, under the Responsibility to Protect, and under simply a recognition of the vulnerability of the civilian population, and the chances of this conflict escalating, and regionalizing all-the-more to Jordan and Lebanon, and getting Iran involved, what you’re supposed to be doing, in my opinion, is gaining the support of Russians and Chinese for a ceasefire and introducing on-the-ground separation forces under Chapter Seven [of the Charter of the UN] that will pull those forces apart and then we set up whatever process is needed to bring whatever political or diplomatic or judicial process which includes the International Criminal Court investigating it because there were crimes against humanity.”

The “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) is a UN doctrine created in 2005 and signed by 192 countries, including Canada, which led the move toward R2P, that outlines when it’s appropriate to intervene in another country’s sovereign affairs.

The doctrine sets out that states have a responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, and if these mass atrocities do occur, the international community has the responsibility to step in peacefully.

If peaceful measures have failed, the international community should use more coercive measures such as economic sanctions, and, although a last resort, military intervention, according to the R2P doctrine.

Sen. Dallaire said the international community should’ve intervened a long time ago, regardless of whether chemical weapons were used in Syria.

“The chemical weapon use is a crime against humanity, but the moving of two million refugees, four million internally displaced over 100,000 killed, god knows how many injured, the lack of humanitarian assistance being able to get in there securely—those are also what we call mass atrocities and these mass atrocities and genocide are down the same path, which requires us to intervene,” Sen. Dallaire said.

“So the chemical weapons exercise is an escalation of it, but it is not, for me, the tripwire that we needed to engage in Syria. So, the red line established by Obama was simply hedging your bets on how far you can sort of hopefully see this thing petering out versus actually wanting to intervene to stop it,” Sen. Dallaire said.

“Doing it outside of the UN potentially is a risk. I’m not necessarily convinced that it will break the back of Assad, nor do I believe that the follow up of what happens then has been thought through either,” Sen. Dallaire said. “It seems to me the use of force is only the first component of the solution. The second component is what do you do when the thing is blown up? That’s not clear.”

Following the G20 meeting in Russia last week, a joint statement was released saying that the G20 leaders “support efforts undertaken by the United States and other countries to reinforce the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons.”

Mr. Harper later said that while he prefers “to see a global consensus” on the Syria situation, he said the world cannot wait for one given the use of chemical weapons. “I think we share the view of our allies that when we see developments that we think in the long term are dangerous for the planet and therefore for us as well, we are simply not prepared to accept the idea that there is a Russian veto over all of our actions,” Mr. Harper said.

He later announced that Canada would contribute $45-million to help Syria, to go toward food, clean water, sanitation and shelter. Canada has given $203.5-million in aid since last January.