Why the US Should Have Left ISIS to Regional Powers
by Mitchell Blatt (@MitchBlatt) and Sumantra Maitra (@MrMaitra)
We are watching a repeat of a known script again, as the West is again spearheading a bombing campaign in the Middle East, the scope of which is snowballing every minute. The US is again doing the heavy lifting, with France and Britain providing support. Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia and Belgium are also supposed to take part, although the timing is not fixed yet.
So, what went wrong? Here are the three major factors.
Proper estimation: There is a serious chance that the ISIS threat is overestimated. Before launching in any war or bombing campaign, a careful analysis of the ground situation and long term objective needs to be done. An appraisal needs to be made based strictly on interests, which would be independent, unbiased by humanitarian arguments, and multilinear. There are major questions about the difference in the “desire” and “operational capabilities” of ISIS. The number of active fighters in ISIS is not proportional to the large swathes of territory they now currently cover.
The fact that ISIS now presides over such a huge area is not a testimony of their fighting prowess. Rather, it proves that the opposition to ISIS was never strong. The major opponents of Sunni extremism in Arab world, the secular Ba’athists, are either divided or dead. Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi are dead, and Bashar Assad is a shadow of his 2007 self. The Egyptian army generals are still skeptical and fuming over Obama’s disastrous foreign policy backing the ouster of Mubarak. The Kurds are an effective fighting force, but they lack arms, food, and most importantly command and communication device and structures. Also, the Kurd forces are completely overstretched having simultaneous problems with Iran, Arabs and Turks. It is still unclear how much of Assad’s opposition is or ever was moderate. Without any strong secular central authority over such a vast stretch of land, from Libya to Iraq and Syria, it is no wonder that ISIS is able to take and lap up as much territory as they did.
Involvement of other powers: The Obama administration is touting four Arab allies joining in the bombing of ISIS in Syria, although serious questions remain as to how much firepower each ally used. But there should be no doubt that these Arab powers are not working to contain ISIS as much as they are acting to counter the perceived regional hegemony of Iran. The Sunni Arabs don’t want to pass on a chance to bomb and degrade the infrastructure of Syria, a Shia powerhouse. They can decrease the regional power structure and hegemony of Iran, the greatest Shia regional rival, while at the same time boosting domestic politics perceptions. Perhaps the greatest mistake of the Obama administration would be to trust Arab allies when it comes to solving Arab problems. History is not on Obama’s side.
Non-Involvement of Key players: The best way to tackle ISIS would be to involve three powers that are now mostly on the sidelines, Iran, Egypt, and Russia. Iran, being the regional hegemon and a Shia powerhouse, should have led from the forefront in tackling Sunni extremism. Egyptians should have been invited to be more involved, as the Middle East can never have peace without Egyptian public relations. Russia, as a strategic ally of Iran, should also have been involved militarily, maybe like backdoor negotiations like during the Iran-Iraq war, or the Suez crisis or even Vietnam. The advantages would have been multi-tiered. First, the burden of cost wouldn’t then be American or European. For all the talks of a multinational coalition, America’s great power allies were slow to join the cause. France and Britain have both joined the bombing campaigns in Iraq but are staying out of Syria. Not even Turkey, where ISIS is butchering village after village near its border, is getting involved. This is a big setback for the Obama administration, no matter how they try to spin it.
France’s involvement is no surprise, as France is the most interventionist of European powers, regardless of the political party ruling France. Also, North and Central Africa and parts of Middle East are considered to be traditional French sphere of influence. Finally France is also deterring its own domestic Muslim population, possible the largest and most radicalized in Europe. French foreign policy has always been what they describe as “an iron hand in a velvet glove”. All in all, Obama’s coalition is shockingly bad, even compared to George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing”.
The reason is Europeans have assessed correctly that even though ISIS is brutal beyond any sane human description, the direct threat ISIS poses to mainland Europe can be contained and monitored with intelligence and policing. Secondly, Europe is now facing a prospect of a revanchist and revisionist neo-colonial Russia, a geo-political threat far greater and existentialist than any terrorist organization, no matter how brutal or large they are. The most prudent policy would have been to involve Russia in the Middle East, and if possible as a forefront in facing the ISIS threat. That way, the Iran-Russia axis would have been bearing the cost burden, and this war of attrition wouldn’t be chipping in the Western economy. Make no mistake, this is going to be a war of attrition, a twenty first century version of the Thirty Years’ War. Also, it would have given Russia and Iran the essential prestige boost and brought them as equal negotiators in any deal and détente.
Unfortunately, Realism is amoral, and most of the times hard to justify under constant scrutiny and glare of media and liberal ideology. While it may be easy for academics, it would be impossible for a politician to argue that it is not in their country’s national interest how many people die in Iraq and Syria. Furthermore, it would be hard to justify allowing Russia and Iran to send troops into Iraq and Syria without American pushback.
But, that is also the only way to get out of the Middle East. In International Relations, the idea is called “buckpassing”. That occurs when one great power passes the responsibility of a regional security onto another great power or regional hegemon. Obama and US, for the lack of a better word, is failing miserably to pass the buck, when it is sorely needed.
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Sumantra Maitra is a research scholar on Russian Foreign Policy and Neo-Realism. His papers are published online at www.works.bepress.com/sumantra_maitra,and he tweets at https://twitter.com/MrMaitra.
Mitchell Blatt is an American editor and columnist currently serving as the Foreign Editor of Map Magazine in Nanjing, China. His writings are available at www.ChinaTravelWriter.com, and he tweets at https://twitter.com/MitchBlatt.
