A Weary Hercules: The United States and the Fertile Crescent in a Post-Caliphate Era

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

A Weary Hercules: The United States and the Fertile Crescent in a Post-Caliphate Era April 2018 By Dominic Tierney Dominic Tierney is a 2018 Templeton Fellow in the Program on National Security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College. He is the author of Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics (Harvard University Press, 2006), with Dominic Johnson; FDR and the Spanish Civil War: Neutrality and Commitment in the Struggle that Divided America (Duke University Press, 2007); How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires, and the American Way of War (Little, Brown and Co., 2010); and The Right Way to Lose a War: America in an Age of Unwinnable Conflicts (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2015). Abstract: Since the 9/11 attacks, the United States has tended to engage in regime change missions with a short-term and improvisational approach that focuses on removing adversaries from the battlefield rather than achieving consolidated political gains. Today, Washington may repeat the same mistake by prioritizing the military destruction of ISIS, rather than creating a tolerable political order. The policy challenges are particularly acute because, like a weary Hercules, Washington is confronted with endless labor, but limited capability. The answer is to pursue a longterm strategic approach that aligns the ends and means of war, seeks ugly stability rather than illusory goals, accepts that nation-building in some form is inevitable, and wins the narrative war. This article is part of a special project conducted by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, titled: “After the Caliphate: Reassessing the Jihadi Threat and Stabilizing the Fertile Crescent,” which includes a book, a thematic issue of Orbis: FPRI’s Journal of World Affairs (Summer 2018), and a series of podcasts. Each element of the project can be found here: https://www.fpri.org/research/after-the-caliphate-project/.

“N

ow that the New Order is past, and the Thousand-Year Reich has crumbled in a decade, we are able at last, picking among the still smoking rubble, to discover the truth about that fantastic and tragical episode.”1 With these words, British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper began his book on the fall of Nazi Germany, The Last Days of Hitler. Seven decades later, another Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 53.

1

© 2018 Published for the Foreign Policy Research Institute by Elsevier Ltd.

Summer 2018 | 1 doi: 10.1016/j.orbis.2018.05.001

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

TIERNEY

group based on ideological extremism and slavery, ISIS, launched a lightning war that seized vast territory, took on a grand allied coalition, and was ultimately pushed back to the charred ruins of its capital. In October 2017, U.S.-backed Kurdish militias captured Raqqa in northern Syria, the headquarters of ISIS’s self-declared Caliphate. By early 2018, the extremist group had lost 98 percent of the territory it once held. The Third Reich lasted a decade; the Caliphate survived for barely three years. U.S. President Donald Trump declared that, “The defeat of ISIS in Raqqa represents a critical breakthrough in our worldwide campaign to defeat ISIS and its wicked ideology.”2 Does the collapse of the Caliphate represent the kind of decisive victory seen in 1945? Or will the ISIS Götterdämmerung in Raqqa echo the Nazi downfall in Berlin only in the scale of devastation? Today, in the Fertile Crescent, the United States is a weary Hercules. The labors required to tackle the root causes of ISIS are virtually limitless. But the available resources are finite and probably declining, with domestic pressure to turn the page on endless Middle East quagmires, as well as competing security challenges in East Asia, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Given this mismatch between need and capacity, how can Washington prevent battlefield success from proving to be a hollow victory? One approach is to consider the destruction of the Caliphate as a regime change operation. The campaign against ISIS shares a number of similarities with earlier U.S. missions to topple governments in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, while also exhibiting distinctive features. This analytical perspective raises an immediate red flag. Washington has a long record in regime change operations of achieving initial kinetic feats, but failing to secure consolidated political gains. There is a risk of repeating this mistake today because U.S. officials are often focused on a narrow mission to destroy ISIS rather than a broader agenda to build a sustainable order or engage in the dreaded task of “nation-building.” It is certainly tempting to declare victory and walk away from the smoking ruins of Raqqa. But the war is not over. The retreat of ISIS is just one chapter in a broader conflict that has killed 400,000 Syrians and displaced more than half the population of Syria and shows few signs of ending. Critical decisions are being made that will establish the contours of the new regional system. For Washington, the best approach is to broaden the conception of victory, adopt a long-term horizon, and deploy finite capabilities in an efficient manner to protect core interests and achieve limited but valuable goals. The Stakes With the Caliphate largely dismantled, and ISIS seemingly on the run, the United States may seek to downsize its commitment to the region or even abandon the Fertile Crescent to its own devices. Washington could finally end an era of military intervention in the Middle East, which has cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. After all, historically, the United States had two “Raqqa May Have Fallen, But Syrian Humanitarian Group Still Fears Instability,” CBS News, October 30, 2017.

2

2 | Orbis

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

The U.S. and the Fertile Crescent in a Post-Caliphate Era

critical interests in the Middle East: preventing a peer competitor like the Soviet Union from becoming regional hegemon and protecting the supply of energy. But there is no prospect of a regional hegemon emerging, akin to the USSR, and surging U.S. shale oil and gas production has reduced the importance of Middle East energy. Meanwhile, other strategic issues—like competition with China and Russia, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and global warming—all vie for Washington’s attention. But turning away from the Middle East would be a serious mistake. Ultimately, victory is not about battlefield success, but the achievement of consolidated political gains. Therefore, routing ISIS from Raqqa and elsewhere does not represent success unless a tolerable political order emerges. And the character of this order is very much an open question. As the Iraqi regime seeks to reestablish control of Sunni areas of the country, Turkish forces engage Syrian Kurds, Bashar alAssad’s troops advance on rebel areas, Iran expands its influence in Iraq and Syria, Russia seeks to buttress its image as a great power and play kingmaker, and Israel looks warily from the Golan Heights at the kaleidoscope of militias in Syria, the foundations are being laid for peace, or a continuation of war—with or without the United States. Furthermore, Washington retains significant interests in the region: preventing nuclear proliferation, checking an alignment of Russia and America’s NATO ally Turkey (which could represent a catastrophic threat to Washington’s premier alliance), limiting Iranian influence, averting an intensification of Sunni- Shi‘a regional competition or a full-blown Saudi-Iranian war, containing international jihadism, and maintaining the security of allies like Israel and Jordan. In addition, the United States has humanitarian obligations to care for those who have borne the battle, most often civilians, and to share the burden of the refugee crisis. U.S. policymakers cannot wash their hands of the Middle East because, in a globalized world, threatening events tend not to stay within the boundaries of a single state. Instead, terrorism, insurgency, and refugee flows can spill over readily into neighboring and even distant countries. From 2014 to 2016, for example, the perpetrators of 38 out of 42 terrorist attacks in the West were linked to ISIS.3 Indeed, walking away from the region may mean having to return later on. In 2011, the Barack Obama administration removed U.S. combat forces from Iraq and sought to pivot to East Asia. In 2014, however, the Iraqi military fled in the wake of ISIS’s advance, and Obama deployed thousands of troops back to Iraq to stem the tide. Furthermore, U.S. actions since 2003, including the invasion of Iraq, at least partly were to blame for triggering or worsening key threats, and therefore Washington is responsible for making a good faith effort to undo the damage.

European Commission, Radicalization Awareness Network, July 2017, 5, https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/ran_br_a4_m10_en.pdf.

3

Summer 2018 | 3

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

TIERNEY

The Challenges The war against ISIS may appear to be sui generis. The United States has never fought an enemy that evolved from a terrorist group, to an insurgency, to a Caliphate. It is useful, however, to consider the overthrow of the Caliphate as a de facto regime change operation. Of course, the Caliphate only existed for a short time and was not recognized internationally as a state. Nevertheless, it had many of the trappings of statehood, including control of contiguous territory as large as the United Kingdom, a leader, a military, a police force, an intelligence service, a governance structure, and a taxation system. Viewed from this perspective, the antiISIS campaign is the fourth U.S. regime change operation since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, following the missions in Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), and Libya (2011). Indeed, the campaign against the Caliphate triggers many of the classic policy dilemmas of regime change missions, notably the need to determine a post-war governance structure. The current campaign against ISIS also has strong operational parallels with the interventions in Afghanistan and Libya, where Washington provided air power and specialist capabilities and local allies deployed ground forces. At the same time, the anti-Caliphate mission has several distinctive features. First, unlike prior regime change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, a political entity—the Caliphate—has been annihilated, and territory will return to the control of two states, Syria and Iraq. Therefore, stabilization operations must encompass neighboring countries that vary significantly in ethnic and religious makeup, as well as in their relations with the United States. Iraq is a fragile U.S. ally. Syria is in the midst of full-blown civil war, and Washington has called for the ousting of the Assad regime and applied sanctions on investments in Syria by U.S. persons (waved in opposition-controlled areas). Second, following the collapse of the Caliphate, ISIS is likely to transition back to its former status as an insurgency and terrorist group. In the short run, ISIS may launch attacks from its desert sanctuaries in eastern Syria and western Iraq, seek to regain the initiative with spectacular strikes in the West, or encourage lone wolf operations. The territorial Caliphate may become a virtual Caliphate, with the prioritization of online operations and information warfare. In the longer term, the extremists may try to resurrect the Caliphate. After all, ISIS has a playbook for recovering against the odds. In 2006-2007, during the “surge” era in Iraq, ISIS’s forerunner, al-Qaeda in Iraq, endured a near-death experience when the United States allied with Sunni tribes. The militants subsequently went underground, rebuilt their infrastructure, sought to drive a wedge between Sunnis and Shi‘is, and benefited from Baghdad’s sectarian agenda. Given the continued existence of ethnic cleavages and poor governance in the region, repeating this playbook is a viable strategy. ISIS has been dealt punishing blows, but it maintains a core of committed fighters as well as a basic administrative capacity. Third, jihadism abhors a vacuum, and therefore, if ISIS were to falter, other extremist groups stand ready to fill the breach. The emergence of the Caliphate was, in many respects, symptomatic of wider conditions of civil war and Sunni disaffection, which can be tapped by rival actors. ISIS competes with hundreds of Salafi jihadist entities in a Darwinian “survival of the fittest” process. Furthermore,

4 | Orbis

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

The U.S. and the Fertile Crescent in a Post-Caliphate Era

ISIS itself is a coalition of actors, including ultra-extremists who condemned the ISIS leadership for being too moderate, and internal power struggles could produce a fundamentally new entity. Fourth, there is the challenge of foreign fighters. Since 2011, around 40,000 Sunni Muslims joined ISIS. Hundreds of fighters have returned to Britain, France, Germany, and a handful have traveled back to the United States. Returnees were partly responsible for terrorist attacks in Brussels (2014 and 2016) and Paris (2015).4 ISIS veterans could form the nucleus for new extremist groups. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, for example, foreign fighters who had battled the Soviet Union in Afghanistan were influential in the founding of al-Qaeda as well as the Groupe Islamique Armé in Algeria. Fifth, the anti-ISIS coalition is extraordinary in its breadth of membership, with around 80 countries formally represented, including NATO, the European Union, and the Arab League, together with de facto partners like Russia, Syria, Iran, and Lebanese Hezbollah. On paper, this deep bench should ease the American burden in terms of stabilizing captured territory. Unfortunately, the coalition is also the most disunited in history and is liable to disintegrate once the Caliphate ceases to exist. For example, Russian and U.S. operations against ISIS mask broader geopolitical rivalry. Meanwhile, Washington is allied with two actors—Turkey and the Syrian Kurds—that fought each other in the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. These alliance fissures mean that the United States could be caught in the midst of a fullscale showdown between Damascus and the Syrian Kurds, or even be drawn into a militarized conflict with Turkey, a NATO partner. The Dangers What are the prospects that Washington can overcome these challenges and consolidate victory in the Fertile Crescent? Unfortunately, the past U.S. experience of toppling governments provides a cautionary tale. All three regime change missions after 9/11 resulted in strategic failure. In Afghanistan in 2001, U.S. forces quickly removed the Taliban from Kabul, and the Islamist group retreated south. But the Taliban recovered in sanctuaries in Pakistan, and seventeen years later, the war is stalemated. In Iraq, the overthrow of Saddam’s regime triggered instability, a wave of looting, and full-blown civil war. In 2011, after Muammar Gaddafi was deposed in Libya, the country collapsed into anarchy, rival militias competed for power, and ISIS became established in Sirte and elsewhere. Obama described the failure to prepare for the consequences of regime change in Libya as his “worst mistake.”5 “Beyond the Caliphate: Foreign Fighters and the Threat of Returnees,” The Soufan Group, October 2017, http://thesoufancenter.org/research/beyond-caliphate/. 5 “Exclusive: President Barack Obama on ‘Fox News Sunday,’” Fox News, April 10, 2016, http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2016/04/10/exclusive-president-barack-obama-onfox-news-sunday.html. 4

Summer 2018 | 5

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

TIERNEY

Two key dynamics impeded Washington’s pursuit of victory: a short-term vision of success and a lurch from over-commitment to under-commitment. As a result, U.S. regime change operations tend to trigger a power vacuum that is filled by chaos and disorder, or by rivals like Iran. Short-termism. One reason for the failure of U.S. regime change missions is an endemic short-termism in American strategic thinking. In his classic work Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that democracies were ill-suited to diplomacy because they “abandon a mature design for the gratification of a momentary caprice.”6 Indeed, U.S. officials do not tend to view war as a “mature design” or a long-term project for political gains and instead focus on immediate kinetic operations, “capturing the hill,” or “killing bad guys.” Historian Russell Weigley, for example, described the American way of war as more of a way of battle, which prioritized winning engagements rather than creating enduring strategic success.7 Similarly, scholar Frederick Kagan labeled the U.S. vision of war as a “target set” that ignores, “what the enemy’s country looks like at the moment the bullets stop flying.”8 One reason for American short-termism is overconfidence about the consequences of regime change. Extensive planning for the aftermath is deemed to be unnecessary because U.S. forces can pass the baton to local allies and go home. Another explanation is the traditional aversion to nation-building in the U.S. military and broader American society.9 Historian Conrad Crane wrote that “the U.S. military would rather not deal with [stabilization operations] or would like to quickly hand them off to other U.S. Government agencies or international organizations.”10 The result of short-termism is an improvisational model of war. In every regime change operation since 9/11, the United States fell into the “Mission Accomplished” trap, by declaring victory prematurely and giving inadequate attention to larger issues of post-war stabilization. In 2001, the United States resisted serious preparation for post-Taliban Afghanistan. Early in the campaign, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith sent a memo to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, stating that Washington “should not allow concerns about stability to paralyze U.S. efforts to oust the Taliban leadership. . . . Nation-building is not our key strategic goal.”11 In his memoir, President George W. Bush wrote, “In retrospect, our rapid success with low troop levels created false comfort, and our desire to maintain a light military footprint left us short of the resources we needed.”12 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Colonial Press, 1899), 238. Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1973). 8 Frederick W. Kagan, “War and Aftermath,” Policy Review 120 (August 2003). 9 Dominic Tierney, How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires, and the American Way of War (New York: Little, Brown, 2010). 10 Conrad Crane, “Phase IV Operations: Where Wars are Really Won,” Military Review (May/June 2005): 12. 11 Gideon Rose, How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle; A History of American Intervention from World War I to Afghanistan (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 283. 12 George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown, 2010), 207. 6 7

6 | Orbis

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

The U.S. and the Fertile Crescent in a Post-Caliphate Era

In Iraq, the U.S. war plan also focused on the regime change phase rather than the subsequent stabilization operations. According to the official U.S. Army history of the campaign: “It is questionable whether . . . [U.S. officials] . . . conducted a thorough, coordinated, and realistic evaluation of the probable force levels required for Phase IV based on the realities of the new Iraq that were emerging in front of them.”13 Similarly, in Libya in 2011, the Obama administration was determined to avoid involvement in nation-building and failed to think multiple steps ahead or ask the tough questions about who exactly would rebuild the country. Today, following the retreat of ISIS, the same short-term mindset is evident. The 2017 National Security Strategy focused on the physical removal of ISIS fighters rather than the long-term work of rebuilding devastated Iraqi and Syrian cities: “We crushed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorists on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, and will continue pursuing them until they are destroyed.”14 In 2017, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson bluntly stated that “we are not in the business of nation-building or reconstruction.”15 The White House has showed little interest in the Syrian peace talks in Geneva and willingly has let Russia take the lead. Jamie Jarrard, the Special Operations commander for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria, captured the kinetic mindset: “I think our main concern is that anything that disrupts everybody’s focus on ISIS and eliminating the complete physical caliphate—and we’re close, we’re very close—something people couldn’t have imagined a year ago—anything that disrupts us or takes our eye off that prize, is not good.”16 In March 2018, Trump promised that U.S. forces would be withdrawn from Syria “very soon.”17 A short-term vision is also evident in the U.S. alliance with the Syrian Kurds, who form the core of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alongside Arab partners. U.S. officials embraced a “Kurds versus ISIS” model of the war. Gen. Joseph L. Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, told Congress that the SDF is “the most effective force on the ground in Syria against ISIS.” He added, “And we need them to finish this—to finish this fight.”18 But only the Americans see dislodging ISIS from Raqqa and elsewhere as finishing the fight. The Syrian Kurds view the defeat of ISIS as a stepping stone in a broader campaign to create an autonomous or independent government. By focusing on the short-term battlefield 13 Donald Wright and Timothy R. Reese, On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2008), 142. 14 “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” The White House, December 2017, 1, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-182017-0905-2.pdf. 15 Gardiner Harris, “Trump’s ISIS Plan, as Described by Tillerson, Sounds Like Obama’s,” New York Times, March 22, 2017. 16 Rod Nordland, “On Northern Syria Front Line, U.S. and Turkey Head into Tense Faceoff,” New York Times, February 7, 2018. 17 Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Trump Drops Push for Immediate Withdrawal of Troops from Syria,” New York Times, April 4, 2018. 18 Eric Schmitt and Rod Nordland, “Amid Turkish Assault, Kurdish Forces Are Drawn Away from U.S. Fight with ISIS,” New York Times, February 28, 2018.

Summer 2018 | 7

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

TIERNEY

gains, Washington may neglect the longer-term political ripple effects. The advance of the SDF fundamentally altered the expectations of all actors. In particular, Turkey views Syrian Kurdish forces as allies of Kurdish terrorists inside Turkey and a selfgoverning Kurdish zone on its southern border as an existential threat to Turkey’s territorial integrity. Focusing on the next move risks solving one issue, only to create a new and more dangerous challenge. Lurching from Enthusiasm to Neglect. The second problem with recent U.S. regime change missions is that the American commitment tends to follow an arc from hyper-engagement to disinterest and a “forgotten war.” Initially, Americans may begin hostilities with crusading fervor and an idealistic vision of the campaign as good against evil. Washington may commit vast resources to the endeavor and offer a blank check for aid to allies, potentially even disproportionate to U.S. interests. But over time, Americans switch from seeing the campaign as a crusade to viewing it as a quagmire; war weariness sets in, concern with the survival of allies starts to wane, and the dominant narrative switches to getting the boys home. In 1951, the diplomat George Kennan claimed that the United States was like a “prehistoric monster” that was slow to be provoked, but once aggravated, “lays about him with such blind determination that he not only destroys his adversary but largely wrecks his native habitat.”19 To continue the metaphor, the monster eventually tires of the exertion and looks to resume his docile ways. In Afghanistan, during the surge phase in 2009-2011, the United States tripled U.S. troop levels to 100,000 and spent around $100 billion per year, even though there were just a few dozen al-Qaeda fighters in the country. But Obama quickly became disillusioned with the campaign, reflecting broader public skepticism, and the administration sought to dramatically scale down the U.S. commitment. The administration considered a “zero option” where all troops left Afghanistan by 2014, before eventually leaving in place a small successor force. Similarly, Washington was intensely focused on Iraq as long as American troops were engaged on the ground. But when U.S. forces withdrew in late 2011, the Obama administration sought to shift focus to the Pacific and reconfigure the military away from nation-building. In 2012, the Pentagon stated, “U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations.”20 American attention waned, however, just as Iraqi politics entered a critical phase. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pursued a sectarian agenda that alienated Sunnis, and the civil war in neighboring Syria seeped across the border. As a consequence, ISIS swept into northern Iraq, and the United States was forced to redeploy forces to Iraq. Crucially, the current campaign against ISIS has occurred during the quagmire phase of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with widespread elite and public skepticism about nation-building and a desire to shift focus to other regions and issues. In 2016, just 37 percent of Americans said the United States “should help George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 66. 20 “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense,” Department of Defense, January 2012, 6, http://www.defense.gov/news/defense_strategic_guidance.pdf. 19

8 | Orbis

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

The U.S. and the Fertile Crescent in a Post-Caliphate Era

other countries deal with their problems,” whereas 57 percent believed that Washington should “deal with its own problems and let other countries deal with their problems the best they can.”21 The quagmire mood does not imply that the United States must withdraw its forces from the Fertile Crescent immediately. After all, Washington has battled ISIS for three years without major domestic opposition. Congress and the public will tolerate restricted operations including drone strikes and Special Forces raids. But the quagmire mood constrains the scale and scope of U.S. intervention, specifically limiting the prospect for nation-building activities, the deployment of ground forces, or increased foreign aid. Public and elite skepticism about military intervention presents a fundamental dilemma for the post-Caliphate mission. The United States is a weary Hercules, with seemingly limitless labors but finite available resources. Washington and its allies face endless work in tackling the underlying causes of ISIS, including resolving the Syrian Civil War, building non-sectarian states in Syria and Iraq, reconstructing Sunni areas destroyed in the fighting, checking the strain of puritanical Wahhabi Sunni Islam, spurring economic growth, handling the “youth bulge” in Iraq and Syria, and even dealing with the consequences of climate change. Meanwhile, the U.S. capabilities available to complete these tasks are limited and probably declining. There are 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and around 2,000 American soldiers in Syria (covering an area the size of Indiana and dependent on air and land access through Turkey). If Washington was unable to force Baghdad to reconcile Iraqi factions when 150,000 American troops occupied Iraq, the White House cannot impose plausibly a regional settlement with a 95 percent reduction in its footprint. Indeed, in determining the contours of the post-Caliphate Middle East, the United States may be a less important actor than Iraq, Syria, Iran, and perhaps even Russia. The Solution What is the answer? Washington must rethink its conception of victory by focusing on consolidated political gains rather than the act of destruction. Therefore, capturing Raqqa, or even suppressing ISIS, does not represent success, if a new and more dangerous jihadist threat emerges, or a Turkish-Russian alignment occurs. In addition, stabilization operations are not “post-war,” but a fundamental part of the war effort, and are just as important, or even more important, for victory than kinetic activities. Furthermore, Washington must display long-term strategic thinking even in a highly constrained domestic and international environment. Given its status as a weary Hercules, Washington should deploy the limited capabilities available in a rational manner designed to maximize long-term utility. “Public Uncertain, Divided Over America’s Place in the World,” Pew Research Center, May 5, 2016, http://www.people-press.org/2016/05/05/1-americas-global-role-u-s-superpowerstatus/.

21

Summer 2018 | 9

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

TIERNEY

First of all, Washington should select carefully its goals by engaging in a sober assessment of its interests and by aligning ends with the available means. Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said, “No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.”22 The same principle holds true when military campaigns transition into a new phase: The United States must be clear what it intends to achieve in the post-Caliphate era. Washington often mismatches the objectives and capabilities by establishing grandiose war aims, but deploying only limited resources, for example, trying to create a beacon of freedom in Iraq with a “small footprint” occupation force. Similarly, in January 2018, Tillerson announced that U.S. troops would stay in Syria to prevent ISIS from reemerging, check Iranian influence, and encourage a diplomatic process that leads to a peace agreement and the ousting of Assad’s government. A total withdrawal of American personnel at this time would restore Assad and continue his brutal treatment against his own people. A murderer of his own people cannot generate the trust required for long-term stability. . . . The departure of Assad through the UN-led Geneva process will create the conditions for a durable peace within Syria and security along the borders for Syria’s neighbors.23 One, then, must ask: How are such majestic goals, including the toppling of Syria’s victorious leader, to be achieved with 2,000 U.S. troops based in the north of Syria? Bringing the ends and means of war into alignment means establishing a modest and sustainable set of aims directed at protecting core interests. The psychologist Abraham Maslow famously outlined a “hierarchy of needs” for individuals, ranging from basic physiological requirements to an ultimate need for the realization of one’s individual potential. In the same vein, Washington has a hierarchy of needs: protecting the homeland, or the physical defense of American citizens and U.S. territory; avoiding great power conflict; preventing a peer rival from achieving hegemony; countering non-great power threats; and pursuing moral aims. Policymakers also must assess the probable costs of each prospective goal, especially ambitious objectives, which are likely to trigger resistance from other actors in the region. Are the aims realistic given the available assets? If an objective is achieved, will the gains be sustainable? What will happen if the aim is not achieved? Given all of these considerations, Washington’s overarching goal in the postCaliphate era should be ugly stability, or a messy but tolerable political order. Ugly stability is a middle path between a grandiose program to rebuild Syria and Iraq, with unlimited costs and risks, and a narrow and highly kinetic approach that neglects broader political issues. The pursuit of a minimally acceptable political settlement Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 579. Rex Tillerson, “Remarks on the Way Forward for the United States Regarding Syria,” U.S. Department of State, January 17, 2018, https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2018/01/277493.htm. 22 23

10 | Orbis

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

The U.S. and the Fertile Crescent in a Post-Caliphate Era

reflects an appreciation of both continued U.S. interests in the region and the limited cards available in Washington’s hand. Critically, in Syria, ugly stability is likely to mean the continuation of the Assad regime in some form. A multiparty democracy may be the optimum outcome in Syria, but the days are long gone when this was an achievable goal. In 2015, with Russian and Iranian support, Assad regained the military initiative and has now consolidated power in the urbanized parts of the country. But Washington should not accept simply Assad’s victory as a fait accompli. The United States has a degree of bargaining leverage in terms of offering a withdrawal of its ground forces, tacit or explicit acceptance of Assad’s continuation in power, and a loosening of sanctions on the regime to facilitate reconstruction efforts. This influence can be deployed to shape the political settlement and establish a degree of decentralized governance, for example, for the Syrian Kurds. Unlike other rebel groups, the Syrian Kurds have never insisted on regime change as a goal. And crucially, on this issue, U.S. interests are in partial alignment with those of Russia, which maintains cordial relations with the Kurds. Despite the broader geopolitical competition between Washington and Moscow, and Russian interference in U.S. elections, the two countries should cooperate on a political deal in Syria. After all, Washington has worked with Russia in other areas, like creating a de-escalation zone in southwest Syria. Such a deal would probably need to accommodate Ankara’s concerns by limiting Kurdish control in non-Kurdish areas west of the Euphrates and by instituting political reforms to distance the Kurdish leadership in Syria from Kurdish separatist groups in Turkey. Ugly stability in Syria will require a highly pragmatic approach, including negotiations with the Assad regime and most rebel groups. The United States is often reluctant to talk to evil adversaries in wartime. U.S. power can encourage the view that Washington does not need to parley with wicked actors. The moralistic strain in American society also means that negotiation often is viewed as sullying national values. George W. Bush claimed that America’s enemies “will not be stopped by negotiation, or concessions, or appeals to reason. In this war, there is only one option—and that is victory.”24 But if the United States cannot destroy its enemies, what is the alternative to negotiation? The U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke defended the act of bargaining with people who act immorally: “If you can prevent the deaths of people still alive, you’re not doing a disservice to those already killed by trying to do so.”25 The value of negotiations was demonstrated during the Sunni Awakening movement in Iraq in 2006-2007, when U.S. outreach to Sunni tribes dramatically reduced the violence. The civil war in Syria has always involved simultaneous fighting and talking, with complex relationships forming between the regime and rebel groups, alliances emerging and collapsing, and tacit deals being made to create spheres of influence. George W. Bush, “Commencement Address at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland,” May 27, 2005, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=63919. 25 Matthew Lee, “Veteran Diplomat Holbrooke Dies at Age 69,” The Washington Times, December 13, 2010. 24

Summer 2018 | 11

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

TIERNEY

The pursuit of ugly stability also means the United States must overcome its allergy to nation-building. Tillerson wrote, “We must be clear: ‘Stabilization’ is not a synonym for open-ended nation-building or a synonym for reconstruction.”26 In March 2018, Trump ordered the suspension of over $200 million in aid to Syria, even though this money had already been committed at a meeting in Kuwait just weeks before.27 But stabilization operations, such as helping local actors to provide basic services, are an inherent form of nation-building and reconstruction. The scale will be very different from prior missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the United States remains in the nation-building game. Indeed, given the mammoth reconstruction needs in Iraq and Syria, Washington will need to provide significantly more than $200 million as part of a coordinated regional effort. Here, Washington can seek to engage other actors like China, given Beijing’s ambitious “One Belt, One Road” development and infrastructure program. Second, as a weary Hercules, Washington should hedge its bets in the broader regional competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is playing out from Syria to Yemen. In May 2017, the Saudi Minister of Defense, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, declared that the battle for power and influence in the Middle East ought to take place “inside Iran.”28 Washington should seek to contain growing Iranian influence in Syria and Iraq because it provokes ISIS and other extremist Sunni groups. But Washington should not put the flag down on the Saudi side of the contest. A close alignment with the Saudis may alienate Shi‘i actors and push Iran and Russia closer together. Meanwhile, Iran pursues its national interests more than a revolutionary program and is willing to reach negotiated deals with the West, for example, over its nuclear program. Therefore, the United States ought to provide weapons and other support to the Gulf states, while seeking opportunities to engage Tehran and encourage moderate actors within Iran. Third, Washington should try to utilize diplomatic resources to facilitate lowcost but high pay-off moves. U.S. aims, including making battlefield advances, stopping ISIS financing, preventing foreign fighters from reaching the Caliphate, managing the humanitarian crisis, and exposing the real nature of ISIS, cannot be achieved alone, but instead require broad international backing. The problem is that the coalition is extraordinarily diverse and disunited. Therefore, the need for diplomatic assets to keep an alliance glued together has rarely been more evident. Furthermore, diplomacy can help achieve specific policy goals. For example, Washington can check Iranian influence in Baghdad by encouraging Iraq to develop economic and diplomatic ties with Sunni actors like Saudi Arabia. In 2017, a Saudi foreign minister visited Baghdad for the first time since the first Gulf War. 26 Rex Tillerson, “Remarks on the Way Forward for the United States Regarding Syria,” Delivered at Hoover Institute at Stanford University, Accessed U.S. Department of State, January 17, 2018, https://www.state.gov/secretary/20172018tillerson/remarks/2018/01/277493.htm. 27 Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, and Alissa J. Rubin, “Trump Orders State Dept. to Suspend Funds for Syrian Recovery,” New York Times, March 30, 2018. 28 Sami Aboudi and Omar Fahmy, “Powerful Saudi Prince Sees No Chance for Dialogue with Iran,” Reuters, May 2, 2017.

12 | Orbis

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

The U.S. and the Fertile Crescent in a Post-Caliphate Era

Washington should halt or reverse the recent hollowing out of the State Department, which lost about one-sixth of its veteran workforce (those with over 25 years of service) from 2016-2017. Fourth, the United States can maximize the efficient use of resources by prioritizing unique capabilities that other actors do not possess. For example, it can provide intelligence to partners, such as Egypt, threatened by ISIS, including imagery of jihadist locations and monitoring of the extremists’ electronic communications. Similarly, NATO could take a greater role in the counter-Caliphate operation, for example, using its organizational resources to establish long-term training missions in Iraq and elsewhere. Fifth, the United States needs to win the narrative war with ISIS. Historically, Washington has struggled to defeat the messaging of radical Islamist actors. Long-time al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, for example, was able to reach key audiences through videos and audio recordings despite being in hiding. “How can a man in a cave,” wondered Holbrooke, “out-communicate the world’s leading communication society?”29 In 2015, a review of State Department countermessaging efforts highlighted the problems faced by the United States in reaching Muslim audiences, as well as the debatable payoff from engaging with militant sympathizers online, known as “tweeting at terrorists.”30 The battlefield defeat of the Caliphate has eroded ISIS’s media capabilities significantly. According to the Global Coalition, ISIS propaganda had fallen by 85% from 2015-2017.31 Ironically, however, U.S. battlefield success may alter expectations and make it easier for ISIS to propagate a narrative of victory in the future. As long as the Caliphate physically existed, it was challenging for ISIS to spin the loss of Mosul and Raqqa as anything other than a retreat. But now that ISIS is evolving into an insurgency and terrorist group, which has supposedly been defeated, the bar for success is dramatically lowered. Virtually any ISIS bombing can be labeled as a success, especially if ISIS strikes liberated cities like Fallujah and Ramadi, or targets in the West. Scholars Charlie Winter and Haroro Ingram described how ISIS is adept at branding even failed attacks as successes. In September 2017, an ISIS bombing in London did not kill anyone, but ISIS described it as the fourth attack in Britain in six months.32 It is possible to discern already the outlines of an ISIS comeback narrative, where jihadist messaging downplays the physical Caliphate. In May 2016, the ISIS Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), 230. 30 Mark Mazzetti and Michael R. Gordon, “ISIS Is Winning the Social Media War, U.S. Concludes,” New York Times, June 12, 2015; and “Panel Casts Doubt on U.S. Propaganda Efforts Against ISIS,” The Washington Post, December 2, 2015. 31 Global Coalition, “Countering Daesh’s Propaganda,” February 3, 2017, available at: http://theglobalcoalition.org/en/countering-daeshs-propaganda/?lang=en. 32 Charlie Winter and Haroro J. Ingram, “Why ISIS is So Good at Branding Its Failures as Successes,” The Atlantic, September 19, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/isis-propaganda/540240/. 29

Summer 2018 | 13

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

TIERNEY

spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, said: “O America, would we be defeated and you be victorious if you were to take Mosul or Sirte or Raqqa? . . . Certainly not! We would be defeated and you be victorious only if you were able to remove the Quran from Muslims hearts.”33 Like Mao Zedong’s “Long March” in China, the jihadists’ retreat into the desert can be portrayed as a stage on the road to ultimate victory. This dynamic creates an inherent dilemma. Policymakers in Washington are tempted to propound a narrative of victory for domestic political benefit and to encourage fence-sitters in the region to abandon ISIS. In a tweet in October 2017, for example, Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, claimed that ISIS is “now pathetic and a lost cause.” History suggests, however, that policymakers should be wary of triumphalism. In 1967, during the Vietnam War, the White House engaged in a “progress campaign” to talk up success, and U.S. public backing for the war ticked upward. In January 1968, however, the Vietcong insurgents launched the Tet Offensive, a series of attacks across South Vietnam. In military terms, the offensive was a debacle for the Vietcong. But for American audiences, the attacks looked like a catastrophe relative to heightened expectations. Similarly, ISIS may be tempted to launch its own Tet Offensive in the coming months with a number of simultaneous strikes. Therefore, the need for counter-messaging continues. Indeed, battlefield success creates its own communication conundrums. The answer is to balance confidence in ultimate success with a realistic view of the enduring challenges and the likelihood of continued ISIS strikes and to find credible local actors to deliver the narrative, including Muslim religious leaders and scholars and Arab news sources. The coalition requires a coordinated communication hub to push the same message that ISIS is discredited and failing—but the path to victory will be long. Sixth, the United States must pursue humanitarian goals. Given the struggles of a weary Hercules, moral responsibilities should be balanced against other, higher priority, security needs. From 2011 to 2017, the United States spent about $7.4 billion on humanitarian assistance in the Syrian crisis. Washington is the single largest donor, although other countries like the United Kingdom have given more relative to their GDP.34 There are areas where Washington can step up its contribution dramatically, including initiatives that advance humanitarian as well as security goals. For example, funding education programs for youth populations in refugee camps can improve economic opportunities and potentially diminish terrorist recruitment.

Daniel L. Byman, “What Happens When ISIS Goes Underground?” The Brookings Institution, January 18, 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2018/01/18/what-happenswhen-isis-goes-underground/. 34 U.S. Department of State, “U.S. Humanitarian Assistance in Response to the Syrian Crisis,” September 21, 2017. 33

14 | Orbis

ORBIS 969 No. of pages 15

The U.S. and the Fertile Crescent in a Post-Caliphate Era

The Value of Strategy “In war the result is never final,” said Clausewitz.35 Time and again, the United States has engaged in regime change missions with a short-term and improvisational approach, which fixates on removing the evildoers and neglects the broader political consequences. Washington is in danger of repeating the same mistake by prioritizing kinetic operations and the military destruction of ISIS, rather than seeing victory in terms of consolidated political gains. The retreat of the jihadists has created a power vacuum, which will be filled by other regional actors, and will spur new challenges, some of which are highly dangerous like a potential U.S.-Turkey conflict. The policy challenge is particularly acute because, like a weary Hercules, Washington is confronted with endless labor and limited capability. The solution is a long-term strategic approach that recognizes the political basis of victory; aligns the ends and means of war in a rational manner; seeks ugly stability rather than a grand but illusory political settlement or a limited kinetic result; accepts that nation-building in some form is inevitable; involves outreach to regional actors; tries to seize the narrative; and steps up the humanitarian contribution. For the United States, there will be no definitive outcome like the ending of World War II. Nevertheless, there is the prospect for incremental but tangible gains in a region where success has recently been elusive.

35

Clausewitz, On War, 80.

Summer 2018 | 15