Stories on President Obama’s strategy-for-the-Islamic-State speech this evening have made it plain that the military approach is going to be a combination of U.S. airpower and various Iraqi and Syrian proxies on the ground. “Obama’s ISIL Strategy to Emphasize Coalition Effort,” headlines RealClearPolitics.
Since the administration repeatedly has drawn a “red line” on U.S. “boots on the ground,” this comes as no surprise. But it will come at a cost, measured primarily in time but also perhaps in terms of mission failure. There are limits to what American airpower can achieve, particularly when applied in penny-packets and under operational constraints. And there are also lots of limits to what the on-the-ground members of any coalition can accomplish.
Since announcing its commitment to deal seriously with the Islamic State, the administration has steered well clear of anything that might carry the sulfurous smell of George Bush and Operation Iraqi Freedom. So whatever “air campaign” may unfold, it isn’t going to be of the shock and awe variety. What we’re likely to see is a continuous set of precision pinpricks delivered from drones, cruise missiles, or carrier aircraft. There will need to be “surges” of airpower in the event that Kurdish or Iraqi forces are in position to try to retake any of the urban areas held by IS forces – in the case of Mosul, a city of three-quarters of a million people, that would be a very substantial surge. It’s not that there can be a carpet-bombing of IS positions; fear of collateral damage and civilian casualties would be high. But there would be a constant need for on-call fire support – and, for U.S. “advisers” to make those calls.
The requirements for airpower would metastasize were the campaign to include Syria, or, perhaps more properly, when it does. If carrier air were employed – and the Navy’s F/A-18s would be the most flexible platforms for the job, at least until the Marines start using the F-35s they’ve got – covering both Iraq and Syria would probably require keeping a carrier in the Persian Gulf and one in the Mediterranean. That’s really all the entire U.S. Navy could sustain over an extended period of time, and the administration has floated the prospect of a three-year campaign. So much for that “Pacific Pivot.” And that’s assuming there won’t be a paralyzing paranoia about sending pilots into harm’s way. Who remembers Scot O’Grady? The IS videographers surely do.
The on-the-ground, “coalition” order of battle is likewise limited. The most useful and powerful partner would be Turkey, but Secretary of State John Kerry got the brush-off from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the other day. To begin with, IS fighters nabbed a gaggle of Turkish diplomats (and, no doubt, intelligence operatives) when they seized Mosul, making the Turkish domestic politics of coalition participation even more delicate. More deeply, Erdogan’s “neo-Ottoman” foreign policy, though a failure, has driven Turkey’s strategy in the Syria war, providing a rationale for taking in an enormous number of refugees and keeping the border open to resupply Syrian rebels – including the rebels formerly known as ISIS.
The Iraqi Kurds and Sunni sheiks of western Iraq are more politically promising partners, if only because they have no place else to turn. Although both have been sold out by the United States before, they have most to gain by even an Obama-style recommitment. Alas, the pesh merga and the Anbari tribal militias are ill-prepared to conduct the kind of fight that defeating the IS forces would demand. It would take quite a while for them to acquire such firepower, mobility, mass or logistical ability to sustain operations. And, if they did get such capabilities, that would shift the military balance within Iraq.
That’s because the parts of the Iraqi military that we’ll be most likely to employ are perhaps the weakest force in the country. They lack the discipline, equipment and training of the most loyal regime forces – which are Nouri al-Maliki’s recreation of Saddam’s Republican Guard – or the numbers that Shi’ite militias can muster. Maliki may have stepped down, but to consider the new government as one reflecting “national unity” is, uh…let’s say “premature.” There’s no defense minister yet, and the past efforts to create a truly national army have been collapsing since the U.S. withdrawal. An Iraqi army capable of driving the Islamic State out of Iraq would be a disruptive force in Iraqi domestic politics – a good one, perhaps, but one that no faction in Iraq is ready to embrace.
In Syria, creating an effective land-force partner will be an even tougher challenge. The Obama administration’s reluctance to seriously support any element in the anti-Assad war – let alone one that might qualify as “moderate” – now passes from irony to tragedy. It won’t be possible without a very serious American effort (which will also be the litmus test for others, like the Saudis or Emiratis, who might be helpful), and it might not even be possible with such an effort.
Finally, even if all these long-shots come through, there is every prospect that this will turn out to be a leaderless coalition and thus a strategic failure that makes the situation worse. This is a near-feral group of cats to herd. To do so with any effect at all would require either intense presidential attention – of the sort that Barack Obama always abjures – or delegation to a proconsul – which, alas, would in this situation almost have to be a military officer; no other figure would be credible or capable. And this White House combines a control-freak, inside-the-bunker mentality with a phobia of military “insubordination” that presages a coalition break-up before it’s even complete.
From the day he was elected, Barack Obama shown no ability or interest in being a wartime leader, even within the United States. It’s hard to imagine a less likely candidate to lead a naturally fissiparous coalition to victory.
