The adventures of David Cameron.

• Author: Gray, Freddy

Britain has got its mojo back," said the British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne on December 7. He wasn't doing an impression of Austin Powers. He was speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations about the British Parliament's decision to bomb ISIS in Syria. Osborne explained to the council that he and the prime minister, his close friend and ally David Cameron, had tried to intervene militarily in Syria two years earlier and had been rebuffed by the House of Commons. "It was quite a striking moment," he recalled, with sadness. "It was a moment when Britain was unable to follow the lead asked of it by our prime minister and the government." But George Osborne felt better because now Britain was dropping bombs over Syria--for him a "source of real pride."

He mentioned, almost in passing, that in 2013 he and Cameron had wanted to attack the forces of Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president, rather than ISIS. Yet he did not dwell on that fact, because he knows that ISIS is Assad's enemy, and most analysts agree that harming the Syrian government in 2013 would have been a boon to death-cult Islamists across the Middle East, especially those fighting under the black flag of the Islamic State. The chancellor preferred to skip past such thoughts. "We are going with you as we reassert Western values," he concluded to his American audience, "confident that our best days lie ahead."

Most people know, however, that the British are not bringing much to the fight. The Royal Air Force (RAF) has already been attacking ISIS in Iraq since September 2014, and it's hard to see what, if anything, that effort has achieved. Officials admit that British aircraft have carried out only 8 percent of the allied strikes, so the sub-Churchillian rhetoric about our proud nation never shirking its duties seems more like posturing than anything else.

In the days before the vote, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon emphasized that although Britain's role would not be huge, the United Kingdom's forces brought a "qualitative edge" to the war on ISIS. "The skill of our RAF pilots and the capability of our aircraft means the UK can conduct the most complex strikes--what is known as dynamic targeting," said Fallon. He boasted about the United Kingdom's Brimstone missile--"a low collateral damage, precision weapon that even the U.S. do not possess"--and something called a raptor pod on our Tornado fighter jets, which is brilliant at tactical reconnaissance.

Such statements tap into the ineradicable British fantasy that we still punch above our weight in international affairs. Yet it's fair to say the United States and other allies conducting 92 percent of the campaign could probably cope without the UK's contribution. Britain's hard power is not what it was, to put it mildly. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were stretched to breaking point. In the last five years, David Cameron's "austerity government" has set about cutting back the size and budget of the armed forces as part of its failed attempt to tackle the nation's debt problem. The RAF has been dramatically diminished. For the attacks on ISIS in Iraq, Britain has deployed just eight Tornado jets from its base in Cyprus. Now, for the Syria missions, it has added only two more. The Tornado is an old bird, first developed in the 1970s. The RAF has in recent weeks deployed a further six Eurofighter Typhoons to take on ISIS. Yet the Typhoon is itself a symbol of British decline, built as it is in conjunction with the European Union so as to keep costs down. And the Typhoon can't fire that Brimstone missile of which Fallon is so proud.

Britain's latest military escapade in Syria is less about hurting ISIS and more about symbolism--"a highly potent gesture," as Bob Stewart, a former British colonel turned Conservative politician called it. Britain wants to show solidarity with France following the ISIS-inspired terror attacks in Paris on November 13, and to make British politicians feel they could once again stand tall in the world.

It's hard to exaggerate quite how badly parliament's rejection of Cameron's first proposed Syria intervention hurt his pride, and the feelings of his nearest and dearest. It's possible he felt emasculated by it. The rumor in Westminster was that Cameron's wife, Samantha, who had been on a charity tour of Syria with Save the Children that March, had persuaded her man something needed to be done. Following inconclusive reports that Bashar al-Assad had again used chemical weapons to crush his opposition, the prime minister cut short his family holiday and came back to London at the end of August gunning for war.

After agreeing with Barack Obama that Britain would support American missile attacks on Assad strongholds, Cameron realized that his diplomatic reputation was at stake. Because of the number of dissenting voices within his own shaky coalition government, Cameron knew that he would have to secure the support of the then opposition leader Ed Miliband for a vote to attack Syria to...