
This is particularly true because, in a certain
sense, Obama has a strategy, though it is not necessarily one he likes.
Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen.
Given the situation, the United States has an unavoidable strategy. There are
options and uncertainties for employing it. Let us consider some of the things
that Obama does know.
The Formation of
National Strategy
There are serious crises on the northern and
southern edges of the Black Sea Basin. There is no crisis in the Black Sea
itself, but it is surrounded by crises. The United States has been concerned
about the status of Russia ever since U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. The United States has
been concerned about the Middle East since U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower
forced the British to retreat from Suez in 1956. As a result, the United States
inherited -- or seized -- the British position.
A national strategy emerges over the decades
and centuries. It becomes a set of national interests into which a great deal
has been invested, upon which a great deal depends and upon which many are
counting. Presidents inherit national strategies, and they can modify them to
some extent. But the idea that a president has the power to craft a new
national strategy both overstates his power and understates the power of
realities crafted by all those who came before him. We are all trapped in
circumstances into which we were born and choices that were made for us. The United
States has an inherent interest in Ukraine and in Syria-Iraq. Whether we should
have that interest is an interesting philosophical question for a late-night
discussion, followed by a sunrise when we return to reality. These places
reflexively matter to the United States.
The American strategy is fixed: Allow powers in
the region to compete and balance against each other. When that fails,
intervene with as little force and risk as possible. For example, the conflict
between Iran and Iraq canceled out two rising powers until the war ended. Then
Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to overturn the balance of power in the
region. The result was Desert Storm.
This strategy provides a model. In the
Syria-Iraq region, the initial strategy is to allow the regional powers to
balance each other, while providing as little support as possible to maintain
the balance of power. It is crucial to understand the balance of power in
detail, and to understand what might undermine it, so that any force can be
applied effectively. This is the tactical part, and it is the tactical part
that can go wrong. The strategy has a logic of its own. Understanding what that
strategy demands is the hard part. Some nations have lost their sovereignty by
not understanding what strategy demands. France in 1940 comes to mind. For the
United States, there is no threat to sovereignty, but that makes the process
harder: Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not
existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary.
The ground where we are talking about applying
this model is Syria and Iraq. Both of these central governments have lost
control of the country as a whole, but each remains a force. Both countries are
divided by religion, and the religions are divided internally as well. In a
sense the nations have ceased to exist, and the fragments they consisted of are
now smaller but more complex entities.
The issue is whether the United States can live
with this situation or whether it must reshape it. The immediate question is
whether the United States has the power to reshape it and to what extent. The
American interest turns on its ability to balance local forces. If that exists,
the question is whether there is any other shape that can be achieved through
American power that would be superior. From my point of view, there are many
different shapes that can be imagined, but few that can be achieved. The
American experience in Iraq highlighted the problems with counterinsurgency or
being caught in a local civil war. The idea of major intervention assumes that
this time it will be different. This fits one famous definition of insanity.
The Islamic State's
Role
There is then the special case of the Islamic
State. It is special because its emergence triggered the current crisis. It is
special because the brutal murder of two prisoners on video showed a particular
cruelty. And it is different because its ideology is similar to that of al
Qaeda, which attacked the United States. It has excited particular American
passions.
To counter this, I would argue that the
uprising by Iraq's Sunni community was inevitable, with its marginalization by
Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite regime in Baghdad. That it took this particularly
virulent form is because the more conservative elements of the Sunni community
were unable or unwilling to challenge al-Maliki. But the fragmentation of Iraq
into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions was well underway before the Islamic
State, and jihadism was deeply embedded in the Sunni community a long time ago.
Moreover, although the Islamic State is brutal,
its cruelty is not unique in the region. Syrian President Bashar al Assad and
others may not have killed Americans or uploaded killings to YouTube, but their
history of ghastly acts is comparable. Finally, the Islamic State -- engaged in
war with everyone around it -- is much less dangerous to the United States than
a small group with time on its hands, planning an attack. In any event, if the
Islamic State did not exist, the threat to the United States from jihadist
groups in Yemen or Libya or somewhere inside the United States would remain.
Because the Islamic State operates to some
extent as a conventional military force, it is vulnerable to U.S. air power.
The use of air power against conventional forces that lack anti-aircraft
missiles is a useful gambit. It shows that the United States is doing
something, while taking little risk, assuming that the Islamic State really
does not have anti-aircraft missiles. But it accomplishes little. The Islamic
State will disperse its forces, denying conventional aircraft a target.
Attempting to defeat the Islamic State by distinguishing its supporters from
other Sunni groups and killing them will founder at the first step. The problem
of counterinsurgency is identifying the insurgent.
There is no reason not to bomb the Islamic
State's forces and leaders. They certainly deserve it. But there should be no
illusion that bombing them will force them to capitulate or mend their ways.
They are now part of the fabric of the Sunni community, and only the Sunni
community can root them out. Identifying Sunnis who are anti-Islamic State and
supplying them with weapons is a much better idea. It is the balance-of-power
strategy that the United States follows, but this approach doesn't have the
dramatic satisfaction of blowing up the enemy. That satisfaction is not
trivial, and the United States can certainly blow something up and call it the
enemy, but it does not address the strategic problem.
In the first place, is it really a problem for
the United States? The American interest is not stability but the existence of
a dynamic balance of power in which all players are effectively paralyzed so
that no one who would threaten the United States emerges. The Islamic State had
real successes at first, but the balance of power with the Kurds and Shia has
limited its expansion, and tensions within the Sunni community diverted its
attention. Certainly there is the danger of intercontinental terrorism, and
U.S. intelligence should be active in identifying and destroying these threats.
But the re-occupation of Iraq, or Iraq plus Syria, makes no sense. The United
States does not have the force needed to occupy Iraq and Syria at the same
time. The demographic imbalance between available forces and the local
population makes that impossible.
The danger is that other Islamic State
franchises might emerge in other countries. But the United States would not be
able to block these threats as well as the other countries in the region. Saudi
Arabia must cope with any internal threat it faces not because the United
States is indifferent, but because the Saudis are much better at dealing with
such threats. In the end, the same can be said for the Iranians.
Most important, it can also be said for the
Turks. The Turks are emerging as a regional power. Their economy has grown
dramatically in the past decade, their military is the largest in the region,
and they are part of the Islamic world. Their government is Islamist but in no
way similar to the Islamic State, which concerns Ankara. This is partly because
of Ankara's fear that the jihadist group might spread to Turkey, but more so
because its impact on Iraqi Kurdistan could affect Turkey's long-term energy
plans.
Forming a New Balance
in the Region
The United States cannot win the game of small
mosaic tiles that is emerging in Syria and Iraq. An American intervention at
this microscopic level can only fail. But the principle of balance of power
does not mean that balance must be maintained directly. Turkey, Iran and Saudi
Arabia have far more at stake in this than the United States. So long as they
believe that the United States will attempt to control the situation, it is
perfectly rational for them to back off and watch, or act in the margins, or
even hinder the Americans.
The United States must turn this from a balance
of power between Syria and Iraq to a balance of power among this trio of
regional powers. They have far more at stake and, absent the United States, they
have no choice but to involve themselves. They cannot stand by and watch a
chaos that could spread to them.
It is impossible to forecast how the game is
played out. What is important is that the game begins. The Turks do not trust
the Iranians, and neither is comfortable with the Saudis. They will cooperate,
compete, manipulate and betray, just as the United States or any country might
do in such a circumstance. The point is that there is a tactic that will fail:
American re-involvement. There is a tactic that will succeed: the United States
making it clear that while it might aid the pacification in some way, the
responsibility is on regional powers. The inevitable outcome will be a regional
competition that the United States can manage far better than the current
chaos.
Obama has sought volunteers from NATO for a
coalition to fight the Islamic State. It is not clear why he thinks those NATO
countries -- with the exception of Turkey -- will spend their national
treasures and lives to contain the Islamic State, or why the Islamic State
alone is the issue. The coalition that must form is not a coalition of the
symbolic, but a coalition of the urgently involved. That coalition does not
have to be recruited. In a real coalition, its members have no choice but to
join. And whether they act together or in competition, they will have to act.
And not acting will simply increase the risk to them.
U.S. strategy is sound. It is to allow the
balance of power to play out, to come in only when it absolutely must -- with
overwhelming force, as in Kuwait -- and to avoid intervention where it cannot
succeed. The tactical application of strategy is the problem. In this case the
tactic is not direct intervention by the United States, save as a satisfying
gesture to avenge murdered Americans. But the solution rests in doing as little
as possible and forcing regional powers into the fray, then in maintaining the
balance of power in this coalition.
Such an American strategy is not an avoidance
of responsibility. It is the use of U.S. power to force a regional solution.
Sometimes the best use of American power is to go to war. Far more often, the
best use of U.S. power is to withhold it. The United States cannot evade
responsibility in the region. But it is enormously unimaginative to assume that
carrying out that responsibility is best achieved by direct intervention.
Indirect intervention is frequently more efficient and more effective.
George Friedman, Stratfor, September 9, 2014
"The Virtue of Subtlety: A U.S. Strategy Against the Islamic State is
republished with permission of Stratfor."
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