‘Obama’s War’: The President’s Bitter Pill

President Barack Obama’s announcement regarding his strategy to strike the Islamic State is a complete reversal of his Middle Eastern policy. Breaking his inaugural pledge that the U.S. would seek “a new beginning” with the Muslim world and instead slipping back under the hawkish shadow cast by his predecessor has transformed the conflict in Iraq from Bush’s war into Obama’s war.

Obama’s new strategy to eliminate the Islamic State entails expanding the scope of U.S. airstrikes, forming a broad international coalition, and further mobilizing local and international forces to directly participate in the battle against the Islamic State, and training and equipping the Iraqi military, Kurdish peshmerga forces and the more moderate factions within the Syrian opposition, while the U.S. military itself will not deploy troops to directly engage in ground-based combat. From the U.S. perspective, this is to be a “low-investment” war of coaching from the sidelines. But various signs suggest that it will be difficult for this new U.S. stratagem to see any real effect.

First, being able to rely on the Iraqi military and Kurdish peshmerga forces to defeat the Islamic State is little more than a pipe dream. The balance of victory will ultimately be determined not by airstrikes, but by the ability of ground troops to overcome the enemy. From Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, previous U.S. withdrawals have without exception been preceded by a deluge of investment in manpower and materials as they trained and equipped local armed forces to maintain political stability following their departure, but such efforts have always fallen far short of their goals. So can the Iraqi military be propped up in a similar manner? One need only look at the Iraqi army’s crushing defeat in the face of the Islamic State offensive to recognize the dubious nature of that proposition. More importantly, despite the alliance of convenience between the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces, the two hold very disparate goals. While maintaining a united front in the stand against the Islamic State, each faction has its own designs as to the future of the country, the latter attempting to strengthen and develop its own forces even as it battles the Islamic State, and will seek to assert its independence when all is said and done.

Next, although allies of the U.S. have been outspoken in their support, they have stepped forward only with the most extreme caution. The U.S. claims that 10 NATO member states have vowed to oppose the Islamic State, comprising the core of its coalition. To date, however, not one of those has brought up direct participation in military strikes against the Islamic State. Australia could be said to be the most proactive nation to join the effort, taking the initiative in stationing 600-plus military personnel and eight fighter jets in the United Arab Emirates, but the stated primary mission for those forces consists only of “contributing to international efforts to prevent the humanitarian crisis from deepening.” France and Turkey have only offered to assist in gathering intelligence; and aside from voicing support, the U.K, and other allies have not taken substantive action.

Moreover, there is the Arab nations’ passive stance. Secretary of State John Kerry has barely taken the time to cool his feet in his trips to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other countries, hoping to drum up support among the Arab nations to join the U.S.-led coalition. But despite statements issued by 10 of those states saying that they would stand together to fight the threat of terrorism, the only concrete measure proposed was a Saudi pledge to help train moderate forces among the Syrian opposition. There are three major reasons for the rather lukewarm reaction from the Arab states. First is the ever-looming specter of sectarian conflict. The aforementioned 10 nations are predominantly Sunni, the same sect as the Islamic State, and as such, they would naturally be reluctant to weaken the organization only to see Shiite Iran gain influence in Iraq. Second is the fact that since the Arab Spring, the erratic and capricious behavior of the U.S. has severely damaged its reputation and exposed the short-sightedness and brutal pragmatism of U.S. foreign policy. Third is the fact that although the U.S. has not blinked at the deaths of thousands of Arabs, it is now using the death of a few Western hostages as the basis for rushing into another war, a temperament that could be called brash and unthinking at best, and at worst displaying a complete disregard for human life.

In the end, U.S. strategy has proven the validity in Bashar al-Assad’s words regarding Syria’s battle with terrorism. The fact is that the U.S. and Syria are currently facing a mutual enemy in the Islamic State. The U.S. wishes to cross the border to bomb Islamic State extremists within Syria, but at the same time is offering a wealth of arms to the opposition Free Syrian Army to overthrow the Assad regime. This makes apparent the confused and contradictory state of U.S. strategy, with the likely result of being ineffective on all fronts.

Six months ago, Obama proffered various excuses to avoid sinking back into the quicksand of Iraq. Why, then, has his attitude undergone a fundamental reversal? Quite obviously, Republican criticisms of his “passive” foreign policy and the mounting pressure from imminent midterm elections have forced Obama to retool his policies. That this is a war that must be fought has been preordained by U.S. politics, and the inevitability of that outcome is not something that can be changed by the will of a single individual.

However, prospects for Obama’s war in Iraq are anything but bright. U.S. strategy is wildly divergent from the realities of the Middle East, and even its most central concepts have no hope of effective implementation, much less any delusions about winning with some ace in the hole or a single decisive blow. As Obama himself has said, this will be a long and protracted conflict, and one that will not see its conclusion before his time in office expires. In the end, the likely result will be the elimination of one enemy only to groom another in its place. Obama won his office by criticizing the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, but he will close his own term by reigniting that very war.

The author is a former Chinese ambassador and is currently a senior research fellow at the China Foundation for International Studies and a special commentator for the Global Times.