Postulations against Obama’s IS Campaign Often Predictable and Undeserved

Pavlov lives! The first airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria had scarcely passed before predictable criticisms began to surface, writes foreign correspondent Paul Brill in his column, as he examines the United States’ Islamic State strategy.

Ditto following President Obama’s U.N. address. The gist of those complaints? With such an extensive military action or limited operation, the United States once again finds itself in dangerous territory without a clear exit strategy.

Purpose and Necessity

I’d be the last to swear that the purpose and necessity of the campaign against the Islamic State has been elevated beyond all doubt, and that the Obama administration is a shining beacon of consistency and resolve. But the discussions center around a considerable amount of postulations — subsequently chewed over by every Tom, Dick and Harry — of which much can be debated. To name but a few:

1. Everyone knows that an enemy like the Islamic State cannot be subdued by airstrikes alone. True, but no one is maintaining that pretense. This phase in particular focuses on pushing back the Islamic State’s advances, and damaging its capabilities and sources of income. To that end, airstrikes are actually an effective solution. In Iraq, success has already been achieved with regard to the first point.

The political signal sent by the participation of five Sunni states is of no small importance. It is a substantial breakthrough, given the half-hearted stance that a number of these countries have adopted toward extremist resistance groups in Syria, who were seen as pawns in the war against the Shiite forces in the Middle East. That the U.S. has managed to drag these countries, who prefer to never openly declare allegiances, off the fence is a diplomatic achievement of the highest order, after which the exact measure of their military contribution is neither here nor there.

2. The military campaign has been initiated without a conclusive strategy. The misunderstanding there is that a strategy could offer an insurance policy of sorts, with guaranteed success. This is, especially in a crisis situation with all its ensuing uncertainties, an impossible demand. And it is not fair to suggest that Obama is simply improvising on the spot. The military campaign is sealed by a political campaign against Shiite sectarianism in Baghdad. Pressure is being exerted on Turkey — something in which Europe could also assist — to close its borders against the oil operations with which the Islamic State has been financing its war.

Other elements of the strategy include delegitimizing Muslim extremism, providing humanitarian relief to the victims of Islamic State aggression, and building up military forces who will eventually conduct the ground offensive: the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Iraqi army (including a Sunni “national guard” who can operate in liberated Sunni areas), and the “moderate” Syrian resistance. Therein lies a substantial problem — even if that Syrian resistance can be turned into a meaningful force, it will certainly take a few years. The worrying question is whether the international coalition has the stamina required for that wait.

3. Obama did not take any action against the Assad regime’s massacres, but now that two Americans have been beheaded, he is pulling out all the stops. That would appear to be correct, but it must be noted that until recently in war-weary America — as well as in Europe — there was an overwhelming lack of public support for a new mission in the Middle East.

A Different Threat

Yes, the mood has changed since the beheadings. But just as important is the fact that there is a fundamentally different threat in question. Despite all the gruesome deeds attributed to Assad, he lacks the ambition to unleash an outright holy war, complete with attacks in other regions of the world, and to bring as large a part of the Middle East as possible under his control. Conversely, this is exactly the agenda of the Islamic State, which has for the past few months brought astounding audacity and force to the table.

It is of course very unpleasant that the counterattack requires working together with such unsavory parties as Saudi Arabia, and indirectly even with Assad & Co. But sometimes you must choose the lesser of two evils in order to successfully combat the greater. We can make ironic jokes about it, but in reality it isn’t very different from the American-British WWII alliance with Stalin, who at that point had already slaughtered millions of Russians.

I know, Islamic State jihadism is not the same as Nazi Germany. Exaggeration does not further understanding, but neither does underestimation. The Islamic State victory march had reached a point where not only had the humanitarian horrors become a heavy weight, but a geopolitical debacle loomed large. Obama is certainly no trigger-happy interventionist. He has rightly judged that, in this case, the danger of doing nothing is greater than the risks of a mission for which the script is as yet unfinished.