Experts Mull Options for Dealing With IS
Experts Mull Options for Dealing With IS
Cecily Hilleary, Voice of America
The terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have added urgency to the conundrum now facing the U.S. and its allies: What to do about the Islamic State group?
Coalition partners have conducted more than 8,700 strikes against IS targets in Iraq and Syria, but critics, like Senator John McCain, say air power is insufficient. They are calling for the U.S. to send in ground forces.
"Offensive combat against dug-in foes is extremely difficult,” said James F. Jeffrey, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“You can see how long it has taken for a very large force to take Ramadi, even though there are a lot of Sunni Arabs involved in there, along with the Iraqi military and U.S. airpower. But if you want to generate a momentum, U.S. troops are very good at that," he said.
Sending in troops would send out a powerful message that the U.S. is willing to get its feet dirty, he said.
"We think we can just tell other people to go on the offensive when we're not?” he said. “I mean, who are we? The basic role we have shown ever since World War II is we have to be in the fight. You're not in the fight at 20,000 feet."
Jeffrey envisions a joint European/Arab ground force backed by U.S. military advisers and trainers.
Aim to Contain
Some analysts caution that a ground war would further fan IS's narrative that the caliphate is engaged in a defensive war against Western hegemony.
"American attempts to reorganize the politics of other countries by the sword have foundered on nationalist resistance to outsiders, unreliable local allies, deeply embedded cultural practices, and the inherent crudeness of the military instrument," Barry Posen, director of MIT University's security studies program, recently wrote in The Atlantic magazine.
He argued that airstrikes already have stalled IS expansion, which he said could explain why IS has begun to focus on "theatrical attacks" abroad.
Posen believes the U.S. should establish a no-fly zone over northern Syria, deploy more special-operations forces, step up intelligence operations and intensify strikes on IS oil interests. He also advocates pressuring Saudi Arabia into using its "clout and resources" to counter IS's "poisonous message."
Terror expert and author Jessica Stern argues that the U.S. should take a lesson from George Kennan, the U.S. diplomat who in 1946 argued in favor of "patient but firm and vigilant containment" of Soviet Union expansion.
"ISIS, too, will no doubt eventually collapse as a result of its equally false utopian promises and difficulties delivering even rudimentary human needs, such as health care," Stern wrote in a separate Atlantic essay.
Some analysts say the group may already be floundering. "IS planned for every contingency but one," said Musa al-Gharbi, Managing Editor for the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflicts (SISMEC).
"They anticipated that a lot of people would either begrudgingly accept their occupation or actively endorse it," he said. "They did not expect to see this mass exodus of Sunni Arabs of their target demographic, in numbers of hundreds of thousands, from areas that were already sparsely populated."
Their flight is a strong counter to the IS narrative of caliphate as a utopian ideal, al-Gharbi said, and it has cost IS dearly in dollars and cents.
"Oil prices have fallen considerably, and so IS is increasingly having to rely on taxation, that is, extortion, from the population in order to keep themselves financially solvent," he added.
Those who are fleeing to Europe — a trip that can run upward of $10,000 or more, said al-Gharbi — are those members of the population who tend to be better-educated and more highly skilled.
"ISIS is not only losing a lot of taxpayers, they are losing the taxpayers who pay the most taxes," al-Gharbi said, using a common acronym for the Islamic State.
Conversely, foreign recruits tend not to have skills that IS needs to run its enterprises and government. For this reason, he believes the West should embrace as many refugees as possible.
Diplomacy Unlikely
Former Ambassador Jeffrey dismissed the idea of negotiation with IS in one word: "madness."
"Definitely outside the realm of practicality," echoed Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a Jihad-Intel Research Fellow at the Middle East Forum who recently leaked an IS administrative blueprint to London's The Guardian newspaper.
"Theoretically, ISIS does allow treaties with outside powers, but the terms that they impose are so stringent that I think it would be impossible that they could negotiate with any government," he said.
IS forbids external relations with any state hostile to "Islam's spread," a broad definition that would likely be applied to all Western governments, al-Tamimi said. Further, IS demands that any treaty should serve Muslim interests, not those of "disbelievers."
"Negotiating would also mean having to extend legitimacy to them as a state," al-Tamimi said.
This is a typical recommendation from someone who lives in an ivory tower.
“Terror expert and author Jessica Stern argues that the U.S. should take a lesson from George Kennan, the U.S. diplomat who in 1946 argued in favor of “patient but firm and vigilant containment” of Soviet Union expansion.” What we call radical Islam has been around far longer than the USSR ever existed, and I see no sign that it will collapse upon itself, even if it promotes false promises. ISIL could collapse if the conditions were right, but with Assad, Iran, Russia, Lebanese Hezbollah targeting Sunnis writ large, that leaves little room for a Sunni uprising to crush ISIL. IMO looking at the situation through a Cold War paradigm is misleading. In short, it is the misuse of history to justify an approach based on a historical event as a parallel event that in reality has few parallels.
al-Gharbi’s comments about tens of thousands of Muslims fleeing Syria and Iraq counters ISIL’s narrative is true, but in the short run, but the shift to xenophobic politics in the West due to the invasion of refugees may very well push them back into ISIL’s or another VEO’s camp. However, as AMB Jeffrey stated, “We think we can just tell other people to go on the offensive when we’re not?” he said. “I mean, who are we? The basic role we have shown ever since World War II is we have to be in the fight. You’re not in the fight at 20,000 feet.”
IMO, we need to move past our half-assed attempt at unconventional warfare, and conduct what we are now calling hybrid warfare where we employ conventional forces against hard targets, and use unconventional forces to establish political control over the areas secured from ISIL? Then turn that force on Assad himself if he isn’t convinced to step down.
Very well said. How do you think Russia would respond? Can they be convinced to go along with such a plan?
Regarding a strategy under which UW, etc, might be pursued — as discussed by Bill M., etc., below — this such strategy would seem to need to be based, first and foremost, on a valid premise.
For example, it might be based on the premise that everyone, everywhere — in the non-western world — desired, more than anything else in life, to be “liberated” from their oppressive regimes; this, so that these presently-denied populations might enjoy a fully western way of life, a fully western way of governance and the other benefits of modern western values, attitudes and beliefs. This such “liberation” premise allowing that, with this barrier removed (the oppressive regimes), these populations would, immediately and easily:
a. Throw off their old, outdated and now-detested traditional ways of life and, immediately and easily,
b. Adopt, in the place of these, modern western ways.
Such a premise requires, I believe, that the populations are (1) willing and able to make the transition outlined at “a” and “b” above, and — of equal importance — are (2) willing and able to fight and die to achieve such a transition.
The above, might we say, was the invalid “the populations are ripe for the picking” premise adopted by the Bush Jr. administration; a premise which has proven not only to be gravely false but which, also and accordingly, has resulted in today’s worldwide catastrophic circumstances?
If my above depiction of our invalid premise, and the horrible international circumstances resulting therefrom, is correct, then this would suggest that we — before we start discussing “strategy,” adopt a new premise upon which to base our new strategy; for example and logically: that “the populations ARE NOT ripe for pickings.”
Thus, a strategy and way forward that, due to the accuracy of the premise upon which it is based, might lend itself to
a. Our foreign policy, UW, etc., successes. And which might avoid,
b. Worldwide catastrophic results — such as those now associated with the Bush Jr. administrations invalid premise.
(Note: If “the populations are ripe for the picking” premise is still considered to be a valid premise, then our strategic corrections, of course, would seem to need to be focused more on how to help these populations — who are both willing and able to make the radical “westernizing” transition that we [and they] desire — and are willing and able to fight and die to achieve same — achieve their objective. Otherwise, and as noted above, we must, first and foremost,adopt a more valid premise — upon which to base our strategy — and the UW, etc., opeations that are undertaken in such a strategy’s name.)