Daily Times

As the US lurches into a ‘war’ with the Islamic State (IS), debate on President Barack Obama’s vow to “degrade and destroy IS” is just beginning. As a first order of business, this debate should delve deeply into why the US has failed in most of its post-World War II military interventions and why it succeeded in winning the existential Cold War, preventing it from going ‘hot’. Unfortunately, this assessment will not happen.

The White House has no appetite for this type of reflection. Congress is ambivalent. It is worried that any authorisation to use force could be another “slippery slope” trapping the nation in what becomes a larger and deeper war. Yet, Congress understands that public opinion strongly supports action against IS. Hence, the path of least resistance will likely be through minimal steps and not include understanding what has won and lost past wars and applying that knowledge to defeat IS.

One predictable result of failing to learn from history is that, as with the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003, the US government will repeat past strategic blunders increasing the chances of failure and shortening the odds for success. In Vietnam, hubris and arrogance on the US’s part and ignorance of both the North Vietnamese enemy and the South Vietnamese ally made defeat inevitable. Furthermore, misplaced fear over escalation triggering Chinese and possibly Soviet military intervention precluded a widening of the war through an earlier mining of the North’s harbours or a land campaign in North Vietnam to interdict supply lines south.

Today, outside military intervention by a major power to assist IS will not happen. Ironically, however, as politics prevented wider military options against North Vietnam, politics will constrain the Obama administration from exploiting Bashar al-Assad’s and Iran’s common interest in defeating IS. My enemy’s enemy is no longer my ally. And without concerted effort by Assad and Iran against IS in Syria, the effort to degrade and destroy will be made far more difficult if not impossible.

The first war against Iraq was a campaign to liberate Kuwait and not a full-fledged war. In essence, it was a replay of the Korean War conducted competently and correctly. Not only was an international coalition formed that included troops from the UK, France, Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Syria among others. That coalition paid for the war. In fact, this was the first war in US history in which the country made money.

We failed in Afghanistan and Iraq the second time around for many of the same reasons we lost in Vietnam. The Bush administration was seduced in part by the prowess of the US military. That the Taliban could be overthrown in a matter of weeks with virtually no US presence on the ground and the Iraqi army routed and destroyed even more decisively than in 1991 reinforced false expectations of success. The incomprehensible and derelict failure to consider the “what next” question will remain an indelible stain on Bush’s presidency.

Success in the Cold War began with the Marshall Plan of 1947 to rebuild and democratise the defeated enemy while assisting our allies to recover and the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) two years later. Huge economic and technological advantages favoured the west. Despite the ideological conflict and subsequent crises between east and west, the irrational nature of the Soviet system ultimately would cause it to implode.

IS is not the Soviet Union. But as Russia was deterred and contained, so too can IS while a range of actions is taken to force its self-destruction. A 21st century reincarnation of the Marshall Plan funded by regional states and Iraqi oil revenues is a first step. A new regional version of NATO should also be created and directed against violent Islamic extremism, particularly IS and al Qaeda. A long-term, counter-narrative campaign that declares IS an enemy of Islam needs to be implemented now.

All must be Arab- and Muslim-led initiatives because neither the US nor any external power can be a surrogate for regional leadership. The Arabs and Muslims can deal with Syria’s Assad and Iran in the battle to contain and defeat IS more readily than any western power.

One of the political realities in any White House is the constraint on thinking strategically and innovatively. Time and the press of thousands of competing issues crowd out both. In winning World War II and the Cold War, we were able to think strategically and innovatively. Whether Mr Obama can follow those examples will largely determine the outcome in the battle with IS.

The writer is chairman of the Killowen Group that advises leaders of government and business and senior advisor at Washington DC’s Atlantic Council. His latest book, due out this fall, is A Handful of Bullets: How the Murder of an Archduke a Century Ago Still Menaces Peace Today