Last week, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis delivered a preliminary set of options to accelerate the defeat of the Islamic State, a mission President Trump consistently and vocally-labeled as his top foreign policy priority.

The preliminary plan is the result of an exhaustive, inter-agency process, and the Trump administration has classified its contents. But there are some general themes slowly emerging, the most talked-about being that the deployment of additional United States forces into Syria for the bulk of fighting duties currently being carried out by Syrian Democratic Forces to eliminate the Islamic State’s presence in Raqqa. Unfortunately, we know little about the key question which would determine the long-term success or failure of such an effort: What happens the day after?