Does Cameron's seven-point case for Syrian airstrikes stand up?

Test 1 – How airstrikes would improve the chances of the international coalition

The foreign affairs committee

Rafael Behr responds:

The prime minister restates a version of the argument that he has advanced from the start of this process: that Britain is already engaged in a multilateral campaign against Isis in Iraq and that there is little military or strategic logic to a requirement that action be contained on one side of a border that Isis does not recognise.

The distinction is a legal one. The Iraqi government invited western intervention, while the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad is neither a willing nor a desirable partner for collaboration with the RAF – just two years ago, his forces were the priority target for airstrikes. The shifting legal situation is dealt with in the third test, but to first build his case Cameron is making the point that Isis must be deprived of territorial freedom wherever it operates; that the UK has firepower capable of shifting the balance; and that withholding such power is a dereliction of responsibility to our allies.

This is self-evidently true if we accept the underlying presumption that military action to degrade the terrorists’ operational capacity is working – and David Cameron insists that it is. By extension, he argues that the damage done to Isis capabilities in Syria and Iraq necessarily limits the scope for terrorist organisation of attacks in the UK: offence as a form of pre-emptive national defence. Again, it is plausible that hitting Isis bases disrupts terrorist plotting, not least by killing potential plotters, but airstrikes are a blunt and unproven instrument on that front.’s first test was: