The Financial Times

Article 3. The Financial Times Why Syria will get away with it Gideon Rachman June 13 2011 -- late last week, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, launched an offensive of his own. In a speech in Brussels, he dismissed most of America’s European allies as a useless bunch of timewasters. I paraphrase — but not much. Mr Gates pointed out that while all Nato countries had voted to intervene in Libya, most had chosen not to participate in the actual fighting. Even those European countries that are taking part began to run short of munitions just 11 weeks into the fighting — forcing an exasperated America to step into the breach. More broadly, a situation in which the US accounts for 75 per cent of the military spending in Nato was “unacceptable” and unsustainable. If it is not rectified, Mr Gates predicted, Nato faces a “dismal” future. The conjunction of the Gates speech and the Syrian civil war is very telling. It explains why a 20-year experiment with the idea that western military force can put the world to rights is coming to a close. Just a few weeks ago, that would have seemed a surprising conclusion. Supporters of “liberal interventionism”’ hailed the decision to bomb Colonel Gaddafi’s forces in Libya as evidence of a longed-for new era, in which dictators can no longer feel free to massacre their own people. However a western failure to intervene, as the Syrian army brutalises and kills its own citizens, is likely to be a more accurate guide to the future than the Libyan campaign. There is, of course, a direct link between the west’s reluctance to get involved in Syria and the HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_031883