If using chemical weapons is wrong in Salisbury, it’s also wrong in Syria

IT was well after ­midnight when the Pentagon called.

US defence secretary Jim Mattis reviewed with me the options he was about to present to the President for last April’s strikes on the Shayrat Airbase.

It was from there that Syrian dictator Assad launched chemical weapons against his own people in Khan Shaykhun.

A few hours later, with our strong support, the US cruise missiles went in.

Now here we are again.

Assad has once more used chemical weapons, gassing hundreds of innocent people at Douma.

And the question is the same: how could the West stand idly by?

My answer is unequivocal. Chemical weapons are completely illegal. Their use is a war crime.

That’s why 194 countries, including Syria, signed a treaty banning them.

It’s why we work with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate any breach.

If we fail to do so, chemical weapons will surely become the norm, we will see them used again and again, even in small-scale conflicts or by dictators crushing domestic opposition.

Warfare has rules. The Geneva Convention protects civilians. The law of armed conflict requires force to be legal and proportionate.

When Parliament authorised strikes against ISIS in Iraq in 2014, I drew up our aircrews’ rules of engagement.

They were to avoid risking civilian casualties where possible, and minimise damage to hospitals, schools and infrastructure.

Four years on, thanks to the their skill and the precision of their weapons, ISIS has been almost eliminated from Iraq. That fragile democracy survives.

We’ve avoided the indiscriminate bombing and shelling seen over the border in Syria.

Secondly, military action is also justified to prevent humanitarian suffering.

Without any response from the West, Assad would be free to launch further chemical attacks on groups still opposing him. Britain is one of only a handful of countries in the world with the ability to stop him doing so.

Syria uses chemical weapons dropped from the air: we and our allies, the United States and France, have the planes and the missiles that can destroy stocks and the planes that deliver them. If you have the ability to act to save lives, morally you need to consider doing so.

So we were right yesterday to strike again.

We cannot allow the regime to keep gassing its own women and children, completely innocent civilians caught up in this appalling civil war.

Nor can we indulge in moral relativism.

If it’s wrong to use chemical weapons in Salisbury, then we must oppose their use in Syria. Especially when more than 400,000 have been killed in seven years of conflict  and from which five and a half million people, more than the entire population of Scotland, have fled after seven long years of civil war.

Finally, as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, we have a wider duty to uphold the rules-based international system.

The framework in which countries co-exist is starting to disintegrate.

North Korea has disregarded the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. In Europe, Russia is breaching the treaty on intermediate nuclear forces.

The UN Security Council is in danger of becoming redundant as Russia and China veto resolutions they do not like. It’s very dangerous. We must all stand by treaties we’ve agreed.

Parliament should be involved. Ministers should face searching questions. But limited actions to uphold international treaties and deter suffering are matters for government.
The Prime Minister was right to act and should have our full support.