Let us speak today of what should be done if someone wanted to actually bring peace to Syria.
First: Airpower not in support of ground troops is largely, though not entirely, worthless. This has been demonstrated over and over again since, and including during, World War II. It does not significantly degrade the your opponent’s fighting ability, and disproportionately harms civilians.
So, if you want to do something even remotely productive or effective in Syria, you need ground troops.
However, foreign ground troops have not been able to bring peace to Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s safe to say that Western ground troops, while good at open field battle, are terrible at creating peace. The reason for that is too long to go into, but let’s not pretend otherwise; there is an extensive track record.
Right now, the French are bombing abandoned buildings in Raqqa (doing nothing of significance). If they actually tried to bomb ISIS they would kill civilians, a non-productive response to ISIS killing French civilians.
So, air power must be used in support of ground troops. The other consideration, if you want to defeat ISIS, is that you have to support its enemies. This means supporting the Syrian army, Hezbollah, the Kurds, Iran, and Iraqi troops.
Notice that this is essentially the strategy Russia is pursuing.
You also can’t play both, or all sides. Being against Assad and against ISIS, and allied with Turkey, who hates the Kurds and bombs them (when the Kurds are some of the most effective people fighting ISIS) is crazy.
Make an alliance and stick with it.
The West is caught between multiple allies with different interests. The Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel all want Assad gone, for different reasons.
But Assad wasn’t executing terrorist attacks in France, was he? Nor was he bombing those nations who have supported ISIS and various al-Qaeda affiliates, the people who are sponsoring attacks in the West.
Strategic confusion is the core problem. The West wants to eat its cake and have it too. The people who are fighting ISIS are people the West mostly doesn’t want to support, the people supplying ISIS are mostly people the West regards as allies.
The West is confused. Does it want ISIS (and al-Qaeda) defeated more than it wants to be rid of Assad or not?
This is a choice which must be made. The West can’t have both.
(Nov 18: Article corrected to indicate French bombing empty facilities.)
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