ISIS: Thoughts on the President's Strategy

Last night was…odd.

President Obama, in yet another defining speech of his administration, presented his strategy for confronting the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL), the crazed fanatics running around Iraq and Syria, cutting off heads, selling women into slavery, and financing their activities through smuggling, illicit oil sales, and good ol’ fashioned kidnapping ransoms.

To borrow one of the more colorful phrases of our beloved Vice-President, Uncle Joe, “This is a big @#$@ deal!”  This speech ranks amongst the most important of the President’s life.

The Administration’s response to ISIL has been…well, it hasn’t inspired confidence.  As ISIL marched out of Syria and across western Iraq, the President described them as the “JV” team. 

When ISIL conquered Mosul and gained control of its vital hydroelectric dam, President Obama took a cautious “wait and see” approach.  (He eventually ordered airstrikes in support of Kurdish forces, and we retook the dam, but Kurdish control of the dam remains tenuous.)

And, of course, there was the two-week vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, culminating in the President declaring, “We don’t have a strategy.”  Even Jimmy Carter felt malaise at that one.

(We’ll ignore the “optics” of playing golf and laughing immediately after announcing that an American journalist had just been beheaded, lest I be accused of piling on.)

So this speech was, in fact, a Big F’ing Deal.  This was the President’s chance to salvage a crumbling foreign policy and set the country on the path to securing his legacy rescuing an Iraq that is descending into chaos.

For those of you who missed it, the President outlined a strategy predicated upon four initiatives:

• ·      Airstrikes against ISIL forces operating in Iraq and Syria
• ·         Support for “partner forces” on the ground through training, equipping, and intelligence-sharing
• ·         Cutting off logistical and financial supports to ISIL, including foreign fighters
• ·         Robust humanitarian efforts

And my reaction after watching the speech, re-reading it this morning, and thinking about it over my morning coffee is…huh?

With most politicians, but especially with President Obama, we have to be careful to distinguish the style from the substance, and cull out platitudes from genuine policy proposals.  

As usual, the President’s style was near-perfect, and he delivered the requisite platitudes – lavishing praise upon the military, vowing to “hunt down terrorists wherever they are,” and waxing poetic about America’s promise and future – with appropriate gusto, resolve, and fake humility.

When it comes to substance, however, the President’s speech left me with far more questions than answers. 

To his credit, I think we at least have a strategy.  But is it a good strategy? 

As we examine the constituent parts, it is not clear it is a strategy that will work.  His approaches, which look so good on paper and sound so good in a speech, are fraught with very real dangers. 

6 Questions I still have:

1)      About that “inclusive government”

The President said, “That’s why I’ve insisted that additional U.S. action depended upon Iraqis forming an inclusive government, which they have now done in recent days.”  He was absolutely right to do so.

Here’s the problem: the new inclusive Iraqi government is neither new nor inclusive.  (See: Voltaire and Holy Roman Empire)

The new leaders are essentially a recycling of the old leaders.  The new Prime Minister hails from the same Shi’a secularist party as the old Prime Minister, who so purposefully and effectively alienated Iraq’s Sunni and Kurdish constituencies.  The new Foreign Minister is another old Prime Minister, and the new Oil Minister is the old Vice President.

It is a Cabinet “flush with warmed-over ministers from Maliki’s government,” said Wayne White, a former Iraq analyst for the State Department now with the Middle East Institute in Washington. “It’s hardly a signal that a major change in outlook is in the offing.”

To make matters worse, The Cabinet isn’t even finished.  The two most important posts – Minster of Defense and Minister of the Interior – have not been nominated, much less confirmed. These are the two key ministers who will be responsible for partnering with the United States…and we have little clue as to who will end up sitting behind the desk.

The Kurds have only reluctantly agreed to participate in the government…for three months. In fact, most of them were boycotting the proceedings in the cafeteria until shortly before the vote.  In three months, the political wrangling resumes, with no assurance that a unity government will be maintained.

As for the Sunnis…well, it will be nothing but a major miracle if they actually start trusting and working with this government.

2)      Yemen and Somalia are success stories?  As proof that his proposed strategy will work, President Obama stated, “this strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.” 

It makes one wonder when the last time it was that the President received a briefing on the state of affairs in Yemen and Somalia.   I’m no expert on either, but Yemen and Somalia are really rather awful places…which is probably why a mere 4 months ago the President authorized the continuation of various executive actions against terrorist elements in Yemen and Somalia, citing their “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” 

What’s important here is that the President authorized those initial actions against Yemen and Somalia in 2010, citing their – wait for it -- “unusual and extraordinary threat.”  So our playbook for success in Iraq is mirrored on strategies in Yemen and Somalia that have not, by the President’s own words, changed the strategic nature of the terrorist threat in those two countries in over 4 years of operations?

If so, is the conclusion we can draw from our strategy in Yemen and Somalia that we will be playing Whack-a-Mole for years, and years, and years? 

If so, it is hard to square that strategy with the stated goal of “degrading and destroying” ISIL.  Instead, this approach looks an awful lot like containment.  

So which is it: are we destroying ISIL or are we containing ISIL?  This is a crucial decision, and one the President appears to have muddled.

 3)      Will airstrikes even work?

Airstrikes are great, at least until the ISIL fighters realize they just need to blend into the population and/or take human shields. 

The President said “we will hunt down terrorists wherever they are.”  Really? Wherever they are?

Does that include a house with innocent children sleeping inside?  Will we authorize airstrikes against a car carrying an ISIL leader in the middle of a crowded market? 

And what happens when – not if, but when – a Predator drone wipes out a wedding party, or a funeral procession, or just plain misses and takes out an entire family who had no idea they were living next door to a terrorist leader safehouse? 

Our airstrikes are great at killing people, but there is little evidence that they are good at counter-insurgency.

Finally, what happens if airstrikes don’t work?  The President ruled out ground forces.  This was a huge blunder, not because I want ground forces to go back into Iraq, but because he essentially just told ISIL, “If you can survive airstrikes, then you can survive.” 

Trust me, they can survive airstrikes

4)      About those “partner forces”

The President’s military strategy therefore depends upon an effective one-two punch: 

American-led airstrikes followed up by ground operations conducted by “partner forces.”

For those not familiar, “partner forces” is the euphemism for a wide variety of groups: the Kurdish peshmerga, the Iraqi national military, Syrian opposition fighters, Sunni militias in the west, and, ostensibly though rarely mentioned, Shi’a militias in central and eastern Iraq.

Here’s the problem: very few of those groups give a hoot about “Iraq.”  Given the history of the last, oh, 150 years, most of those groups are, quite understandably, more concerned about surviving the implosion of a state that they never really wanted in the first place (see: Churchill, Winston).

A couple of specific thoughts on each:

Kurdish Peshmerga:  The Kurds, our most reliable partners, have a wonderful saying: “No friends but the mountains.” 

To understand this phrase, it’s important to understand that the Kurds have been kicked around, usually rather brutally, for centuries.  As a result, they have developed a rather effective survival strategy of hunkering down in the mountains, eschewing permanent alliances, and always looking out for #1. 

The most we can hope for from the Kurds is that they will fight against ISIL fighters who threaten their territory.  That’s helpful, to be sure.  But we should not harbor any hopes of a grand Kurdish counter-attack that drives ISIL from the mountains of Mosul across the deserts of Anbar.  The Kurds will fight tooth-and-nail to protect their territory…and then they will retreat to the mountains.

Iraqi Military:  Yes, this is the same crack force that abandoned their weapons and ran as fast as they could from an ISIL that was less organized, less well-equipped, less funded, and less deadly.  And that’s after we spent 10 years training and equipping them.   

So why does the President think this time will be different?

Syrian Opposition:  While it is nice to think about the “Syrian Opposition” as a unified force in the field, the truth is there is no “The Opposition.”  There are many, many, many 

Oppositions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_opposition#Other_opposition_groups

How does the President plan on apportioning aid between the disparate groups?  What about those groups who we worry have some of the very same extremist elements that we are trying to defeat?  And what happens after we have armed them, even if we defeat ISIL and the opposition groups defeat Assad?  Have we truly learned nothing about the dangers of arming opposition groups who match our short-term interests but have little, if any, incentive to become our long-term partners?

Sunni Militias:  The President referred to these groups as Sunni “National Guard” units.  Lovely.  For those who have lost track – and it’s easy to do – the President is referring to the same group of people who led the original, Baath-Party-inspired insurgency immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein, then joined forces with Al Qaida in Iraq (remember AMZ? ), then teamed up with us as part of the Anbar Awakening, and then – wait for it! – supported ISIL in their march from Syria to Mosul.  The best we can hope for is that they will be fickle partners, and even that would count as a minor coup.

Shi’a Militias:  Most of these groups are supported by Iran.  The good news is that, by the time we would have to rely on them, the battle is probably lost already anyway.  But you can bet your bottom dollar that Iran will be funding and arming these groups

So let’s step back and realize the horror of the picture we have just drawn: we are going to send tons of money and weapons to a bunch of different groups, none of whom want to work together, and who, in fact, want to actively work against each other as soon as humanly possible. 

Ultimately, what we are doing is helping to create neighborhoods and pockets of potential future combatants.  Political scientists have a term for this: Balkanization.  It’s not a good thing.  But this is precisely the force that we are feeding by trying to arm, train, and equip a wide swath of “partner forces” who have no real interest in being partners.

5)      Why the United Nations?

The President announced, “I will chair a meeting of the UN Security Council to further mobilize the international community around this effort.”

Um, OK.  I guess.

But why the UN?  Is he looking for a Security Council resolution?  That seems odd since the approval of military activities inside of Iraq rests with exactly one governing council: the government of the sovereign state of Iraq, who has already asked for help.  What possible legitimacy can the Security Council confer that the government of Iraq has not?

Ah hah.  See, it’s not legitimacy for strikes in Iraq that the President is after: it’s legitimacy for strikes in Syria.

Which leads us to our next question: what is the President’s diplomatic strategy for getting Russia on board?  The Grand Reset notwithstanding, we seem to have found ourselves in the middle of a new Cold War with the Soviets Russians. 

Vladimir Putin is usually as reliable a partner in “counter-terrorism” as you can find – although his definition of “terrorist” is a bit more expansive and usually includes political opponents, journalists, and business magnates -- but in the current dynamic, Putin has an enormous incentive to embarrass the President by vetoing any resolution before the Security Council. 

Russia’s use of a veto is especially plausible since part of the President’s strategy still includes the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  Russia is one of Assad’s chief supporters, and it is difficult to imagine that Putin will support a resolution that implicitly backs Assad’s ouster.  Further, Putin probably hopes that the fight against ISIL takes up more and more and more of the President’s time, since the more we focus on ISIL, the more Putin can focus on annexing the Ukraine.  And Georgia.  And…

Right on queue, the Russian Ministry of Affairs sent out this Tweet this morning: 

#Lukashevich: We urge the United States to strictly comply with international law and to stop dividing terrorists into “good” and “bad”

This looks promising.

So in two weeks, chances are that the President gives a big speech where  a) Nothing really happens and b) He is humiliated by a loud “Nyet!” and any resolution fails. 

6) About that “broad coalition”

Word is that Saudi Arabia is letting us use some bases there for training and logistics.  Great – that’s very helpful.  And I hear that Albania is sending some equipment.  OK, that’s cool, too. 

And I’m sure Jordan and Kuwait will pitch in, as well. We can probably count on our British, Australian, Polish, and Canadian allies (among others) to step in and help with some transportation, funding, or intelligence sharing.

But what about regional partners? 

We need Turkey, but relations with Turkey are at an all-time low in the Post-World War II world.  Plus, are they really going to get behind a strategy that involves giving even more money and weapons to Kurdish forces, seeing as how the Turks have their own problem with Kurdish separatists?  But the problems with Turkey can probably get ironed out.

Here are the tricky ones: Iran and Syria.  To what degree will we cooperate with those countries?  We won’t at all with Syria, but what about Iran?  Are we just going to do our thing, and they’ll just do theirs? 

The problem with ignoring Iran is that it ignores a political reality on the ground: Iran holds far more sway with the Shi’a political elements in Iraq than we do.  And Iran has no problem, none whatsoever, with making sure that the US is bogged down in a fight in the west.  The 

President gave no indication about how he will handle this thorny issue.

So of the 6 countries that border Iraq – Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey – only 3 of them are really interested in helping out (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan), 2 of them we probably can’t work with (Syria and Iran), and the last one (Turkey) is probably more likely to prank-call in an order of 95 pizzas to the Oval Office than to offer meaningful support.

But thanks for the help, Albania.

So those are my questions and concerns for the President.  The problem, as I see it, is that a failure along any one of those dimensions can sink the whole ship. 

Do we have a strategy?  Yes. 

Do we have a strategy that would work under perfect conditions?  Probably.

And now for the $25,000 question:

Can we actually implement the strategy? Almost certainly not. 

And in the absence of perfect conditions and a strategy we probably can’t truly implement, what is the backup plan?