LONDON: The spectacular mishandling of the case for military strikes against Syria could lead to Britain’s allies questioning its role as a partner in future conflicts, defence sources and independent analysts warned on Friday.

Military chiefs and their political masters would be conducting a “damage limitation exercise”, Michael Clarke, director general of the Royal United Services Institute, said. “It should be a blip, a democratic blip,” he said, referring to Thursday night’s Commons vote. “[But] there is a danger it could become a tipping point where the UK falls into strategic irrelevance in US eyes.” That could have an impact in other parts of Europe where Britain is regarded as something of a bellwether.Defence sources and independent analysts said that on Syria there had been a disastrous mismatch between incoherent political objectives — driven in the main by moral outrage — and the military means to achieve them.

General Jonathan Shaw, a former director of UK special forces who served in Kosovo and Iraq, drove home the point. “Military tools are ill suited to achieving political aims. What is the political objective that military action is meant to be enabling? A lack of clarity about the political objectives would seem to have created distrust in Britain’s enthusiasm for action.”

Defence chiefs heard their political masters refer to the need to “deter” and “punish” Syria’s Bahsar al-Assad and his regime, and, as Barack Obama put it, “fire a shot across the bows”.

General Sir Nick Houghton, the new chief of defence staff, would have told David Cameron and the National Security Council (NSC) what his forces could do in terms of capability but may have left analysis of the political and diplomatic consequences to others. Now that the vote has been lost, George Osborne, the chancellor, suggested on Friday there would be a “period of national soul-searching about our role in the world”. He added, “Britain has to ask itself, MPs, members of the media and the public have to ask themselves, what is Britain’s role in the world.”

Crispin Blunt, a former army officer and special adviser to Sir Malcolm Rifkind as both foreign and defence secretary, said he hoped the vote would relieve Britain of its “imperial pretension” and stop it trying to punch above its weight on the world stage.

Frustrated defence officials and military commanders — their fingers burnt by Iraq and Afghanistan, and their pride hurt by US criticism of the British record there — are itching for a coherent debate in the NSC about the UK’s strategic priorities and role in the world.

It is something Houghton’s predecessor, General Sir David Richards, had been pressing for. Thursday night’s vote could be a catalyst for such a debate, including the nature of the UK’s special relationship with the US, according to Philip Hammond, the defence secretary. It is certain to come under more strain if the prospect of US military action against Iran gets at all close.

By arrangement with the Guardian