Offshore Balancing in the Middle East, Dealing with ISIS
Offshore Balancing in the Middle East, Dealing with
ISIS
Por: Francis Fukuyama
The
starting point for a sensible policy rests on the realization that the U.S. and
other democratic countries have no reason to favor one religious sect over
another in the Sunni-Shiite war.
Democratic
countries, when faced with round-the-clock coverage of a media-savvy group like
ISIS with its horrific beheadings, almost always over-react. The September 11
attacks led America to invade Iraq in 2003, causing heavy casualties and the
waste of hundreds of billions of dollars in pursuit of policies that arguably
made the situation in the country worse. While we need to contain ISIS, we also
need to recognize that it does not pose anything close to an existential threat
to the interests of the United States or other democratic countries. The
international press is finally catching up to the fact that the Islamic State
is a bit of a paper tiger. The cover of this week’s Economist is
titled “Spreading Fear, Losing Ground”; there has been continuing coverage of
the Iraqi government’s offensive against Fallujah that has put ISIS on the
run.
By
spilling out of Syria and conquering much of northern Iraq, ISIS at one point looked
like an unstoppable juggernaut. But this group is in fact an organization with
tremendous vulnerabilities. The word “state” in its title is more of an
aspiration useful in recruiting new militants than a description of reality on
the ground. Being a state implies the ability to deliver basic public services
like water, electricity, sanitation, and schooling, things that ISIS has not
been able to provide. It is landlocked and its territory extends over barren
desert vulnerable to air attack; what few resources it has like oil must be
smuggled out through Turkey and Iraq. ISIS has almost no external supporters:
China, Russia, Europe, the United States, Iran, and virtually all of the Arab
world agree that it is an evil organization. Its manpower comes from an
unnatural alliance between a bunch of young, unhappy misfits from abroad, and
well-trained Baathists who were supporters of the dictator Saddam Hussein.
Why then
does ISIS appear powerful and menacing? It is because all of the states
surrounding them are so weak. Syria, of course, has collapsed as a state. Iraq
was governed by one of the most incompetent leaders in recent memory, Nuri
al-Maliki, who did everything he could to alienate the country’s Sunni
minority. ISIS is following a broader pattern where terrorists flow into weakly
governed territories, like Boko Haram today in northern Nigeria. There is no
other long-term solution than for the other regional powers to develop their
own state institutions and acquire the ability to take back territory from this
group.
The
primary target of ISIS is not foreign democracies, but Shiites in Iraq, Syria,
and other parts of the greater Middle East. It is part of a spreading sectarian
civil war between Sunnis and Shiites, a war that has been fed by support from
Saudi Arabia and Iran. ISIS poses an acute military threat to its Shiite
neighbors, and it acts as a magnet for unemployed young men in other countries
lacking girlfriends or job opportunities. These latter will attempt violent
acts like the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, but they should be regarded more
as dangerous criminals than as national security threats to countries outside
the region.
The
starting point for a sensible policy rests on the realization that the U.S. and
other democratic countries have no reason to favor one religious sect over
another in the Sunni-Shiite war. None of the major players shares significant
values with democracies in the developed world; both sides have been guilty of
fomenting terrorism and destabilizing their neighbors. The outside world does
have an interest in a stable settlement of the conflicts in Iraq and Syria. But
if there was any lesson to be drawn from the American experience in Afghanistan
and Iraq, it is that no one in Washington or any other outside capital has the
wisdom to construct a stable and just political order in the Middle East any
time in the near future.
What the
outside world does have is an interest in keeping the conflict from spilling
over into other countries, and in protecting innocent people from butchery to
the extent we can. This implies that our optimal policy should be one of containment.
That is, the U.S. and its friends should use airpower and military assistance
to ensure that no one group, whether ISIS or the Assad regime, gets so strong
that it can impose its will on the region.
There is
a historical model for such a policy, which is called “offshore balancing.”
This is the policy that Britain classically followed vis à vis Europe.
Britain had no permanent friends or enemies, and would throw its weight against
whichever great power looked like it was going to dominate the continent. Over
the centuries, it opposed Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and the
Soviet Union; up until the World Wars in the 20th century, it was
very reluctant to put troops on the ground and influenced events primarily
through naval power and economic policies.
This is
the type of policy that outside democracies should follow toward ISIS. They
should avoid setting firm and likely unattainable goals like “Assad must go” or
“degrade and destroy ISIS,” in favor of a policy of balancing these powers off
against one another. They should not develop permanent friends or enemies, in
the manner of the NATO alliance or the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, but rather
retain the flexibility to work with or oppose different parties at different
times. There has been a lot of fear that the Shiite militias engaged in the
battle for Fallujah will exact retribution on the Sunni population there, and
that they are being commanded by an Iranian general. These are reasonable
concerns, and if the Shiites turn into aggressors, the U.S. should shift sides
and back the Sunnis. In the process, however, we should not put troops on
the ground, but use airpower and military assistance to lean against whichever
actor looks like it is getting dominant.
Avoiding
deeper military intervention is critical if we want countries in the region to
build strong institutions and take responsibility for their own security. The
heavy U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Iraq encouraged “free riding”: the
Iraqis in particular never felt they had to build a strong state or national
security force because the Americans were always there to do the heavy lifting.
American commanders need to restrain themselves and recognize that their stake
in this battle is much smaller than that of the government in Baghdad.
A policy
of containment and offshore balancing is hard to justify to publics in
democratic countries. It does not promise a final settlement of the problem of
terrorism and seems cynical in its willingness to let Assad and ISIS fight each
other to the death. But the alternatives—either to do nothing, or to leap into
the conflict with massive military force as the US did Afghanistan and Iraq—are
much less attractive. This should be the lesson we clearly draw from the
experience of the past decade.
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