American, British and French ships and airplanes fired over 100 missiles at Syria Saturday morning, claiming it was in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons in the Damascus suburb of Douma.
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| UK envoy Karen Pierce, French envoy Francois Delattre and US envoy Nikki Haley before the UN Security Council meeting on Syria, April 13, 2018. © Eduardo Munoz / Reuters |
The three countries did not wait for UN authorization, or even for evidence from the scene: the international team of experts from the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had just arrived in Syria to investigate when the missiles began to fly. As US President Donald Trump triumphantly declared “mission accomplished,” his French colleague Emmanuel Macron called for the UN Security Council to step in and pick up the pieces.
“It is now for the UN Security Council to unite and take initiative on the political, chemical and humanitarian questions in Syria,” the French presidency said in a statement after Macron’s teleconference with Trump and British PM Theresa May on Saturday.
During the emergency session of the Security Council on Saturday, Russia proposed a resolution urging the US and its allies to “immediately and without delay cease the aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic and refrain from further aggressive acts in violation of the international law and the UN Charter."
Russia, China and Bolivia voted in favor of the resolution. Four other members abstained, with Ethiopian representatives saying there’s no point in voting for a resolution that would be vetoed anyway. The US, the UK and France ‒ all permanent members with veto powers ‒ voted against, killing the proposal. Apparently, when Macron spoke of unity at the UN, he meant unity behind the actions of London, Paris and Washington.
Willy Wimmer, a former member of Germany’s ruling CDU party, compared the behavior of the UK, the US and France to “the same attitude, which [was] used by Adolf Hitler in 1939 to enter into World War Two.”
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Angela Merkel quickly endorsed their allies’ attempt to take the law into their own hands.
European Council President Donald Tusk likewise cheered on the intervention, saying the EU “will stand with our allies on the side of justice.”
NATO also endorsed the bombing in a statement on Saturday, declaring that the alliance “considers any use of chemical weapons by state or non-state actors to be a threat to international peace and security.”
