…on how to let regimes in the Middle East deal with ISIS:
On reflection, I think we need to let Arab allies seize the ground now held by ISIS. That’s because — unlike us or Israel — they won’t be squeamish about running the firing squads until there aren’t any ISIS fighters left. We and the Israelis, on the other hand, should quietly remove the people funding ISIS.
Is it a good idea? Well, you might very well think that: but I couldn’t possibly comment.
“Rubble doesn’t make trouble.” The United States doesn’t have that capability\willingness right now. Between too many lawyers (and lawfare) and the general purge of our senior officer corps of most of our potential Shermans or LeMays it will probably take at least half a generation to flush out the current mess… if ever.
So we’ll have to rely on proxies and subordinate whatever our foreign policy goals are to probably Turkey and the House of Saud. Given the bad options before the United States I’d rather see massive aid and direct military support poured into Jordan. We aren’t going to do that since it would require boots on the ground and a huge amount of support, besides probably piss off the Sauds. I’m pretty sure the King of Jordan has a legitimate claim on the areas in question though (which may help stability…the Turks rank above the British & French in the region’s ‘book of grudges’ and the Saudis don’t have the manpower).
The wildcard is the Kurds… personally if we’re going to upturn the board, a Kurdish state in the region is probably inevitable, but we’ll be ending our alliance with Turkey in the exchange (and their participation in NATO as well not to mention break up Iraq). Demographically, the Kurds are making babies while most of their neighbors are at or below demographic replacement rates. I think I read an article that around 50% of Turkey’s population will be Kurdish by 2030 by current trends (if it isn’t there already… census data is extremely political in the region). KRG isn’t going to give up dreams of a ‘Greater Kurdistan’ anytime soon.
In any case, unless we send troops and money in a lot greater quantities to the Alawites and our erstwhile Iraqi ‘allies’ and take the fight from there, the United States has no chance of pushing this back into the prior status quo. As it stands now, the U.S. virtually gave up it’s vote on how things turn out. It’s just one more crack in the post-war Bretton-Woods economic foundation that I’m sure won’t come back to bite us in t he ass;-)
Is it the best possible outcome? No
Is it a better outcome than the aftermath of Iran nuking Israel? Yes.
Starting from our current status, absent some enormous shift in the American political landscape, is it the most likely way to defeat ISIS? I Am Not A General, but I’d bet on it.
There is no good outcome. That’s an illusion at best.
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Once the illusion is dispelled, the best solution is stopping the export of terror. The rest don’t matter.
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Mew
is there a problem that needs killing? yes. America can’t or won’t do the killing because Obama. Israel won’t, short on manpower. who else would do it? gonna be a long bloody mess in any case.
Bush wouldn’t do killing either, at least not enough.
You don’t win wars by killing the opponents in the field, you win wars by hitting their supporters.
The goal of the Iranian sanctions should not be coercion, it should be cannibalism. When they’ve finished eating their pets (sorry), finished eating their shoes, and start looking at each other with visions of grape and goat cheese garnish, you’ve won.
First, embrace the power of “and” – as in killing and cutting support..
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Second, the trouble with sanctions remains keeping our allies in europe from violating them.. Should we use more firm enforcement against, say, France?
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Mew
There are less obvious means of arm twisting, leverage, or tit for tat exchanges. For instance France has a lot more core interests in West Africa than any gains it can hope for with Iran. There’s a lot of things the U.S. does for free (or rather at the expense of the U.S. Taxpayer) in the region whose primary benefit is reaped by France both in resources and notably banking through the CFA Franc
The problem of course is the U.S. really hasn’t done any major league arm twisting since Mitterrand and President Obama (and his proxies) says a lot of things but follows through with very little.
Re France, etc – very aggressively so.
cutting off ISIS support, yes. who supports Iran? my humble suggestion is to make their oil exporting depots on the coast into little versions of Vesuvius. will it annoy the right people? is the world awash in oil? and smack their power grid a bit too