6 Strategies for Syria and Iraq by Timothy Hoyt, War on the Rocks
In June, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) launched a conventional offensive that caught the international community by surprise, temporarily conquering large amounts of territory, capturing the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, and routing the Iraqi army’s 2nd Division in the northwest. Unsurprisingly, the first response in the United States was a cacophony of editorials and interviews providing “strategic” advice to the Obama administration.
Creating or conducting “strategy by op-ed” is a fundamentally flawed approach, but has become increasingly popular and influential inside the Beltway. In 750 words, one can generally lay out one interesting idea with modest detail, and shape it for partisan purposes and domestic political opinion. Op-eds do not, as a rule, consider other points of view — in fact, they often contemptuously dismiss them. Such is the nature of the beast…
Comments
Outlaw:
Robert C. Jones is quoted by you above as saying:
"We need to realize that there is no military cure for what ails Iraq. Systems of governance will come and go and evolve; lines on maps will shift; alliances will form and fray as interests align or diverge. This is natural. The people caught in the middle will often suffer, but in the end, to have any hope of getting to a relatively durable and natural form of stability, this is a journey that every people must make for themselves . Perhaps we can help mitigate the high end of suffering and chaos to some degree as this plays out, but we must resist the urge to employ excessive power to control the outcome."
Clearly this is not the way of the world.
Consider, for example, the cases of Germany and Japan in the 20th Century, and the cases of the American Indians and the American Southerners in the 19th Century.
In all of these cases, a "military cure" (to include a lengthy occupation) to what "ailed these populations" proved to be the only means of achieving "a degree of stability."
Likewise, in each of these cases, this path to stability proved NOT to be a journey that these people looked as if they would "make for themselves."
One might suggest that, in Germany, Japan, the American West and the American South, "the high end of suffering and chaos" was terminated only via the decisiveness of "the military cure."
In each of these cases also, one might argue that -- had "the urge to employ excessive power to control the outcome" not been followed -- then the favorable outcomes realized might:
a. Not have been achieved via other ways and other means and
b. Not in such a relatively quick (and, thus, more-humane?) manner.
Herein what I am specifically asking us to consider is that -- should the more-decisive approach ("the military cure") not have be adopted in the cases of Germany, Japan, the American West and the American South -- would these populations have, in truth:
a. Been able to "make this journey themselves?" And
b. Do so -- in such a way and in such a time-frame -- as to similarly accommodate (1) our national security requirements and (2) the other wants, needs and desires of the American people?
Now, let us be brave enough to (and from the perspective of the information I have provided above) ask these same questions re: Iraq, Syria, et al.
There is another way forward and that was mentioned by Robert Jones in another thread.
RJ---no truer words are being written currently that apply to say Iraq, AFG, and Syria or for that matter any current hotspot say in Africa or even the Ukraine.
One can substitute any country in the place of the word "Iraq" and the comment still makes sense.
"We need to realize that there is no military cure for what ails Iraq. Systems of governance will come and go and evolve; lines on maps will shift; alliances will form and fray as interests align or diverge. This is natural. The people caught in the middle will often suffer, but in the end, to have any hope of getting to a relatively durable and natural form of stability, this is a journey that every people must make for themselves.
Perhaps we can help mitigate the high end of suffering and chaos to some degree as this plays out, but we must resist the urge to employ excessive power to control the outcome."
While we watch the activities of the IS in Iraq do not forget their activities in Syria--this is interesting oil article as it ties into a NYT article on the IS Syrian/Iraqi strategic strategy.
Currently the IS through the declaration of the Caliphate has created effectively a new Sunni State complete with oil reserves and revenue streams so the argument that the Sunni's in Iraq can not sustain themselves is actually false from the IS perspective---they are in fact right now in this time and space a viable state.
Then if you take the statement by al Hamdun that the Sunni's are ready to declared themselves independent of Baghdad if Malaki does not increase the number of Kurds and Sunni's in the government and allow a Sunni federated region--then the comment by Robert makes full sense.
http://www.arabnews.com/news/596796
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/03/world/middleeast/syria-ir…?
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/auslan...-a-979714.html
By the way we need to compliment Putin for starting this new spiral of border changes with his emphasis on ethnicity and language in the Crimea-- where in the ME one just needs to substitute religion for language and one has a new Putin Doctrine for the ME.
I am not the only one who has seen the moves by the IS in their Caliphate declaration.
Since then, however, the Shias have governed alone, excluding the Sunnis from any real power. The Kurds in northern mountains were left to form a fully separate state apparatus from Baghdad. To their chagrin, even this the Sunni Arabs could not do. Kurds already have a well-developed economy, rich with oil resources and complete with pipelines connecting them to the Turkish ports on the Mediterranean Sea. The remaining oil and gas deposits and export facilities are inside Shia south and central Iraq. Sunnis have none. An independent Sunni Arab northwest Iraq -- the Jazira -- would be an arid, landlocked, resource poor region at the mercy of the Kurds and the Shia.
But what if the Iraqi Sunni Arabs could absorb the Syrian Sunni Arab areas of western Jazira? It would double the population and bestow on it all the oil and gas resources of Syria in the Khabur basin. And if it were to punch a short salient from Idlib through the Alawite country to the coastal Syria, it would also gain an outlet to the Mediterranean.
To achieve this end, the help of the terrorists like the al Qaeda and its affiliates (ISIS, etc.) have been once again secured -- and with the same bloody outcome as in 2004-2007 in Iraq. However, seemingly the Sunni Arabs on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian borders are convinced they can control the terrorists by first taking advantage of their reckless suicidal prowess to bring down the local authorities, only to eliminate them once they have achieved their own goal of an independent unified Jazira.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/211226-iraq-syria…