It is becoming clear that the American-led international coalition and its airstrikes in Iraq and Syria alone are not going to defeat ISIS.
The US government, its Western allies, and its Middle East partners, thus far, are against deploying ground troops to Iraq.
The New Iraqi Army, a Shiite-dominated organization, has shown itself unwilling or incapable of defending Sunni-dominated western provinces. None of the parties concerned will commit soldiers to face ISIS, despite their acts of unspeakable violence and depravity.
Current US policy is against any military action in Iraq that does not come from the air, including firm support for non-conventional ground forces.
The results thus far speak for themselves.
Coming Back to Bite Us
Scholars and security professionals have long been on the fence regarding the wisdom of supporting local non-conventional or conventional forces through military and security assistance programs.
Many question if there is any tangible benefit in supporting friendly dictatorships, not to mention the intangible negative effects of supporting such systems. The same goes for supporting revolutionary forces, who at times topple an old adversary only to become a new one.
Most recently, the Obama administration’s hesitancy to support opposition forces on the ground in Syria appears to have been heavily influenced by a CIA study that US support for insurgent forces, specifically considering South American examples, has historically yielded little return.
However, this study, as many others which have covered the subject, does not provide satisfying answers.
There are many factors which must be taken into account, such as the stage in the fight at which assistance begins, the speed and concentration of assistance, and the morale, local support, and battle momentum behind the supported forces.
Nonetheless, current American policy is that the U.S. will only support military force in Iraq and Syria which it can apply itself directly and from the air or in the form of advice from military advisers. In fairness, it worked against Qaddafi in Libya.
One of the main supporting veins of this type of thinking is that U.S. advisory and material assistance to foreign forces — conventional or non-conventional — can and does come back to bite us. The botched Bay of Pigs invasion made Castro so paranoid about another attempt he asked Khrushchev to place nuclear missiles in Cuba.
US and British involvement in the toppling of Mossadeq in Iran to be replaced by the Shah created the chasm that's existed since the 1979 revolution. America supported Saddam Hussein against Iran and later went to war against him — twice.
The US supported Afghan mujaheddin and other fighters, such as Osama bin Laden, in their fight against the Soviets and they turned into al Qaeda and the Taliban we are still fighting today.
Will The US Keep Getting It Wrong?
Basing decisions today on whether or not to intervene in foreign conflicts on America’s track record of success or failure in Cold War actions is comparing apples to oranges and leaves out what broader concerns drove those decisions to take action.
There are two ways to win a contest: Win by competing or, alternatively, making sure the other guy cannot win and therefore winning by default. The first option generally involves a head-on battle. The second involves careful planning, probing, deception, and even “dirty tricks” — espionage, sabotage, and proxy wars.
During the Cold War, a head-on contest between the US and USSR would have meant nuclear war, something out of the question for both sides.
The US had to show up to every dirty match of the Cold War. If it did not, its enemy — the Soviet Union — would. Anywhere America did not show up, the enemy would win by default. And vice versa.
Causing the Soviet Union to expend vast amounts of economic and political capital — which it did not have — was the long-term strategy of the United States. It worked. Necessarily, this involved a Realist policy calculation of America becoming involved in places where and with people who, in better times with better options, it would have been better to stay away from.
It is correct that America married itself to brutal dictators and repressive regimes and kept them in power. Its track record of winning these battles and their follow on effects is mixed. However, it was a strategy that meant while some battles were won and some lost, every further battle meant the US and its allies were moving closer to eventually winning the war with Soviet Union. We were winning even when we were losing.
It worked. But it meant doing harm to achieve a greater good.
America’s Strategic Challenges Today
The Cold War is over and has been for a while. What kind of world is America facing today?
As Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey puts it, the situation is “2, 2, 2 and 1”: Two heavyweights — Russia and China; two middleweights — Iran and North Korea; two non-states — al Qaeda affiliates and organized crime networks; and, one system — the cyber domain.
It is no longer a bipolar world. Instead, we have a multipolar world with different foes competing at different levels in different places — all of which, in sum, means a bigger total problem for the US than any of its opponents.
Since our strategic calculation is no longer based on the single concern of defeating the Soviet Union, the question is actually simpler: Do we want to defeat ISIS? If so, the US can – unlike against the USSR – take the direct route to victory by openly confronting them militarily. America certainly has the capability.
ISIS is, by all measures, certainly deserving of a resounding defeat. However, America’s leaders lack the will.
America also has the capability to support local actors on the ground to engage ISIS in Iraq. However, it lacks the will to do this as well.
Clausewitz differentiated between tactics and strategy thus: “Tactics is the use of troops to win battles; strategy is the use of battles to win at war.”
America’s tactics in the fight against ISIS, thus far, have been a poor showing.
It does not, in fact, want to use troops at all — only airstrikes. Though it is killing ISIS fighters from the air, destroying their equipment, and degrading them in other ways, they remain in control of western Iraq and eastern Syria. America’s side is not winning the battles.
Perhaps it will, eventually. The calculation is that the US and its allies will “degrade and defeat” ISIS through attrition over time — eliminating their troops and capabilities steadily from the air until they collapse.
However, if this does not happen before they, say, take Baghdad or before they achieve other major victories, this timeline may continue to extend — and with more foreign fighters flocking to join them. Will America’s will to deploy ground troops be any greater then?
Many American strategists also believed that with superior tactics, troops, and equipment they would defeat North Vietnamese communists over time. Perhaps they could have. But America and its leaders lacked the will to continue such a fight then as well.
Victory using such a strategy against such an enemy is not guaranteed.
A War The US Has Decided Not To Win
It is hard to picture a scenario in these circumstances in which America will win this war without winning the battles. The longer ISIS exists, the longer its propaganda machine will continue to poison alienated, vulnerable minds internationally — as the Ottawa attack shows.
The longer it exists, the more Shiites, Sunni resisters, Kurds, and non-Muslim minority groups will be murdered. American policy currently considers the downside of having to send American ground troops back into Iraq greater. American policy also considers the downside of providing material aid to local ground forces greater. It may come back to bite us.
However, is the prospect of ISIS continuing to exist, continuing to murder and enslave, continuing to disrupt regional stability, continuing to provide a calling and safe haven for Islamic extremism, continuing to prolong a Syrian civil war, and continuing to block the progress of a re-emerging Iraq any lesser an evil?
The current US strategy against ISIS seems to be doomed to lead, at best, to an eventual victory after yet another prolonged and indecisive Middle East intervention, with the same problems returning in another form a few years down the road. After all, ISIS itself is also the “same problem” popping up again.
Remember, much of the early ISIS infrastructure was based around the former al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) the US previously fought in Western Iraq.
Strange enough, this is a fight America can win if it takes the enemy head on with military force. For once, the enemy is using massed ground forces with columns of vehicles and even armor. Yet America lacks the will to do so.
This is a war we can win, but have decided not to.
If America is unwilling to commit ground forces and unwilling to support local forces to fight ISIS, then bombing them seems to be a waste of effort, other than to perhaps assuage our consciences. America should perhaps refrain from acting at all in Iraq and Syria and simply focus its efforts on Gen. Dempsey’s “heavyweights”, its touted “Pivot to Asia”, regroup from its weak showing against Russia in Ukraine, or focus on its nuclear negotiations with Iran and North Korea. It is better not to waste time, focus, and effort.
One of the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq is to fully commit to victory with sufficient focus, effort, material support and troop levels to assure victory or do not act at all. Middling solutions have cost us much in blood and treasure over the last dozen years. Against ISIS, America is, once again, taking a middling approach bound to be prolonged and indecisive.
As Clausewitz wrote, tactics is the use of troops to win battles. Strategy is winning war by winning battles. If America does not want to use its troops, it will not win battles. Therefore, it will not win the war. You cannot win a war you do not actually fight.
Chris Miller is a US Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient following two tours in Iraq and has worked as a military contractor in the Middle East. His work currently focuses on strategic studies.
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