Uk Policy Change On Syria

[Gromit]

The UK now accepts that Assad can stay on in Syria.

// The UK accepts that Bashar al-Assad should be allowed to run for re-election in the event of a peace settlement in Syria, Boris Johnson has said, in a dramatic reversal of the British policy stretching back to the early days of the civil war that the president must go. //

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/26/boris-johnson-signals-shift-in-uk-policy-on-syria-bashar-al-assad

it would be funny if hundreds of thousands hadn't been killed while we pratted about for the last 6 years.

[Old_Geezer]

There is a world of difference between going with the pragmatic view that leaving things be is the best option for now, and believing that we were wrong to think he shouldn't be there (given an alternative option).

[New Judge]

“Its a good job that attitude wasn't around when it was kicking off in the Balkans in the 1990's.”

No it was not. It’s a pity it didn’t prevail. That matter, like the Syrian business, had nothing to do with us.

Mrs May has indicated quite strongly that the UK will no longer become involved in conflicts unless there is a clear and direct threat to the UK and it is in the UK’s interest to become involved. She also said that we should desist from trying to make the rest of the world in our own image. As such she has hopefully signalled an end to the many disastrous campaigns we have become involved in over the last two decades or more, usually at the behest of the US.

Under this revised regime the UK would never have become involved in the Balkan conflict. There was no threat to the UK and it most certainly was not in our interest to become involved. That conflict, like many others, was simply a matter of people of different ethnicities, cultures and religions, living in the same area, being unable to get on with each other. The world is full of such strife. Despite all the aggravation twenty-five or more years ago there is still instability in the region (as there has been for a century). Most likely there will continue to be so.

Mrs May has realised that the UK is not in a position to be part of a global police force. Not only that, I think she also accepts that it is undesirable for us to be so even if we were. For that I for one am very grateful.