Free Syrian Army fighters stand on a military tank that belonged to forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad after they seized it in the town of Khanasir on Aug. 29, 2013.MOLHEM BARAKAT/Reuters
Stephen Harper said on Thursday he was a "reluctant convert" to the need for a military strike against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime because he is resolved that Canada will not become involved in yet another quagmire in the Middle East.
After the hard lessons of Afghanistan, Libya and the Arab Spring, the Conservative government is determined to avoid any further military commitment in a region where internal violence is spiralling out of control.
Other than offering solidarity with Israel, which confronts increased threats to its own security as a result of the chaos in Egypt and Syria, Ottawa will limit its support to humanitarian aid.
A senior government official, speaking on background, said the Prime Minister had brought a "show me" attitude to discussions with political and military leaders in the days after evidence emerged that chemical weapons were used in Syria. While the Prime Minister shared the outrage of other world leaders over the attacks, he was skeptical that the West could respond without making an impossible situation worse.
Mr. Harper's greatest concern, the official said, was that attacks against military targets and chemical weapons facilities could lead to the accidental release of chemicals, or to chemical weapons falling into the hands of rebel forces.
In conversations over several days with U.S. President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and other world leaders, Mr. Harper repeatedly asked what could be achieved by an attack on Mr. al-Assad's forces, how it might be carried out, and what the consequences might be.
Another concern was the impact the attacks would have on Syria's civil war itself. The Harper government has always been more reluctant than the United States, the United Kingdom or France to support the opposition coalition seeking to bring down the Assad regime.
As those three countries moved in recent months to provide training, aid and, ultimately, arms to rebel forces, Canada steered clear.
The government was convinced Islamist elements were on the ascendant within the opposition coalition, and that the West might one day rue the defeat of the Assad regime.
However, by Thursday Mr. Harper was willing to accept a limited attack, although not to commit resources to it.
"We have no plans of our own to have a Canadian military mission," Mr. Harper told reporters.
Mr. Harper is willing to support a strike in part because allied leaders had stressed that the attacks would be limited and effective.
Russian obstructionism at the UN Security Council meant that the U.S. and other NATO nations would have to act without the sanction of the United Nations.
And the introduction of chemical weapons as a conventional battlefield weapon was a precedent that could not go unchallenged or unpunished, Mr. Harper agreed.
Informing all of these deliberations was a concern for the security of Canada's most important ally in the region: Israel.
The Harper government had initially been reluctant to endorse the Arab Spring, fearing it could lead to regional instability and the rise to power of Islamist militants in Egypt and elsewhere. The chaos in Syria – with both Iran and al-Qaeda now deeply involved – only increases that insecurity.
Opposition politicians have called for the return of Parliament to debate the situation in Syria and Canada's response to it. The Conservatives do not intend to comply.
While it is now an established convention – the Afghanistan mission was the precedent – that Parliament should be consulted before the government commits armed forces to a conflict, Canadian support for an attack on the Assad regime, if and when it comes, will be entirely diplomatic.
Parliament need not be consulted on a press release.
John Ibbitson