President Obama has been vague about many aspects of this most recent American involvement in the Middle East, but he has been absolutely clear about one thing: only the military forces of the countries under siege by the Islamic State can defeat the Islamic State. Numerous supporters of the president’s strategy keep repeating this mantra. When did we start believing that?
National Security Advisor Susan Rice underscored the point on Meet the Press:
It’s got to be the Iraqis. This is their fight. This is their territory…We’ll do what we can from the air. We will support the Iraqi security forces, the Kurds, and ultimately over time, the moderate opposition in Syria to be able to control territory and take the fight to ISIL.
Even former President (and potential First Gentleman) Bill Clinton agrees that “we can’t win a land war in Iraq, but they can and we can help them.”
Imagine if Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt broadcast that only the military forces of Belgium could defeat Nazi Germany. Those of us remaining unconquered would contribute our “unique capabilities in support of partners on the ground so they can secure their own countries’ futures” (as President Obama said last week at U.S. Central Command). Would the Free French have mobilized on that basis?
This isn’t World War II, of course, but President Obama isn’t arguing that this is a war of marginal concern for America’s interests. He has cast the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in apocalyptic terms. He describes our enemy as a threat “unique in its brutality” and a “network of death” that menaces not only the countries currently in ISIL’s grasp, or in the Middle East, but the United States, as well. He insists that “this is a core principle of my presidency: If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.” But the gap between the importance he accords to the threat and the limitations on means to address it are a major drag on building a functional coalition. Moreover, they place a crushing burden on the allies already under siege by the Islamic State.
As far as I can tell, we plunged down this rabbit hole with the 2013 State of the Union address, in which Obama announced that the way we fought the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan played into the terrorists’ hands. Obama referred to these engagements as “large-scale deployments that drain our strength and may ultimately feed extremism.” Ground wars actually help the enemy cause, according to America’s commander-in-chief.
Obama has returned American strategy to the Eisenhower administration’s delineation of “small wars,” civil wars or insurrections occurring outside the established U.S. and Soviet spheres of influence. The 1954 Basic National Security Policy explicitly ruled out committing American ground forces: “ground forces for such wars will have to be supplied indigenously…support will come from us with our mobile reserve of naval and air forces and logistics.” On this point, both the president and secretary of state were adamant that committing ground forces to these wars constituted “wasting our strength.”
The crucial distinction between Eisenhower’s strategy and Obama’s is that President Eisenhower considered such a strategy applicable to wars only outside the American sphere of influence. By definition, they were wars we were not invested in winning. But the case President Obama makes for war against the Islamic State is apocalyptic — the United States is absolutely invested in defeating ISIL, he claims. Obama believes we will win through very limited means, not that we have very limited interest in the outcome, which was Eisenhower’s view. It should also be remembered that both Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles eventually acknowledged these small wars were increasingly where U.S.-Soviet confrontation would play out, and that their strategy proved ineffective at containing the challenge. President Obama believes our limited involvement will be adequate for the task.
This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of coalition warfare and perhaps even of human nature. People do not surge to battle when you tell them it’s their fight alone — they stand up when you stand with them. It is folly to expect (as Obama did in both Iraq and Afghanistan) that threatening allies with abandonment leads to brave choices. It is folly to expect (as the president is doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria) that telegraphing the limits of your interest in helping allies win their war will make their resistance more stalwart. What piling so much risk onto allies leads to is accommodation by them with the forces that are winning their war, extended fighting that drags on for years with all the political fracture and human degradation and loss of potential, or outright loss.
President Obama is right that we need to work in partnership with countries where terrorists are seeking a foothold. But that does not mean we should force those countries already overtaken by terrorists to assume all the risk of the ground campaign. Roosevelt and Churchill let DeGaulle and his French forces lead the march into Paris, but they did not make the Free French lead the landing at Normandy and bear the burden of liberating France village by village and push back German forces. If we had contributed only our “unique capabilities” in World War II, the Nazis would still be in control of continental Europe.
Shared risks are what make coalition warfare successful. We ought not expect to off-load the greatest risk to the people already struggling under the greatest burden. As President Obama himself said, “You see, American influence is always stronger when we lead by example. We can’t exempt ourselves from the rules that apply to everybody else.”
Matt 
Charlieford 
Matt 
john werneken 
Guest 
Jay Reardon 
acj 
In the words of Department of Defense spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby, everybody will have to exercise “strategic patience” as the new air strike campaign against the Islamic State proceeds. Nevertheless, this month also marked the thirteen year “long war” against Islamic extremism in Afghanistan and Iraq (and around the world) and the American people can be excused for demanding more immediate results. Implicitly, Obama’s decision to strike now is a decision to “act early” before the Islamic State becomes really entrenched. However, acting early is the exact opposite of strategic patience.
When President George W. Bush increased the force committed to Iraq in 2007, more than a number of observers noted the war in Iraq was exceeding the number of years it took for the Allied Powers to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II. The comparison should have induced caution back then and it remains just as potent today as it illuminates what strategic patience would entail if genuinely practiced.
Excellent article. Panetta’s point that this President is more of a professor than a leader is just too true. Utterly foolish theory will continue to crash into reality with devastating consequences. It doesn’t take a genius to predict the devastating consequences will end up in our homeland, once again.
“This isn’t World War II, of course . . .”
Excellent observation, that.
But the author should have continued with the corollary,
“. . . and it’s too bad it isn’t. If it were, the Russians would be sending in the Red Army to do the vast majority of the killing and dying, and then we might win this war, too.”
There are certainly a lot of perils by limiting our wars, but this is not one of them. As bad as this seems, the threat from Russia and China is much greater. Stay focused on the ball – the one that can terminate your country.
Make the locals do most of the heavy lifting, and we can help. But that´s it. If they can´t or won´t do it, then too bad.
Obama is NOT wrong to limit our middle east commitment; a proper strategy would have no commitment to that worthless region whatsoever.
My President’s mistake is to avoid facing up to what real interests the USA has, and avoiding dealing with threats to those.
Rather than constructively criticize this article, which would take a long time given how many specious analogies and unreasonable observations there are in it, I’ll just say, “this is silly.” It sounds as if it’s written by a rank-and-file soldier, engaged in good ole fashion, blue-collar Obama bashing, but to my surprise, the author is a PhD.
Where has the author been the last 13 years? Can they not see the difference between WWII industrial, state wars and third world insurgencies?
Wow. So the idea is to increase war? I expect this kind of ignorance on FAUX Noise, not here. And the author is a PHD? From where — University of Phoenix, the online program?
The article is an excellent example of why WWII comparisons should be banned in politics. Not only is this “not WWII,” as the author said, it is not even in any way remotely similar to WWII.
Obama’s mistake is that rather than “speak softly and carry a big stick” he does the inverse. If ISIS and its war are only a marginal interest (and they are) then the POTUS should not speak with so much bluff and bluster about it. Just like his red lines in Syria and Ukraine, all talk, but no action– because Obama knows that these causes aren’t really worth fighting for. And he’s right; he should simply save the tough talk for when he damn well means it, otherwise no one will take him seriously when the real test comes.
Case in point: the Baltics. Obama talked tough and didn’t back it up before, and has lost much of his credibility. But the Baltics are a core interest, not due to any genuine importance, but ’cause Bill Clinton let them in NATO, and NATO *must* remain inviolable. So what if Putin tries to call what Obama has given him every reason to believe is a bluff? That’s how big, ugly wars are started.
As someone above said, we need to keep our eye on the ball; ISIS is a bunch of nobodies compared to China and Russia.