| 来源类型 | Report |
| 规范类型 | 报告 |
| Competing visions for Syria and Iraq: The myth of an anti-ISIS grand coalition | |
| Frederick W. Kagan; Kimberly Kagan; Harleen Gambhir; Katherine Zimmerman; Jennifer Cafarella; Hugo Spaulding; Christopher Kozak | |
| 发表日期 | 2016-01-21 |
| 出版年 | 2016 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | Editor’s note: The next president is in for a rough welcome to the Oval Office given the list of immediate crises and slow-burning policy challenges, both foreign and domestic. What should Washington do? Why should the average American care? We’ve set out to clearly define US strategic interests and provide actionable policy solutions to help the new administration build a 2017 agenda that strengthens American leadership abroad while bolstering prosperity at home. What to Do: Policy Recommendations for 2017 is an ongoing project from AEI. Click here for access to the complete series, which addresses a wide range of issues from rebuilding America’s military to higher education reform to helping people find work. Why the need for this series? The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute conducted an intensive multi-week exercise to frame, design, and evaluate potential courses of action that the United States could pursue to defeat the threat from the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) and al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. ISW and CTP will publish the findings of this exercise in multiple reports. The first report examined America’s global grand strategic objectives as they relate to the threat from ISIS and al Qaeda. This second report will define American strategic objectives in Iraq and Syria, identify the minimum necessary conditions for ending the conflicts there, and compare U.S. objectives with those of Iran, Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia in order to understand actual convergences and divergences. The differences mean that the U.S. cannot rely heavily on international partners to achieve its objectives. Subsequent reports will provide a detailed assessment of the situation on the ground in Syria and present the planning group’s evaluation of several courses of action. Learn more about this series. DOWNLOAD THE REPORT The key findings of this second report are: The U.S. must accomplish four strategic objectives in Iraq and Syria to achieve vital national interests and secure its people: 1) destroy enemy groups; 2) end the communal, sectarian civil wars; 3) set conditions to prevent the reconstitution of enemy groups; and 4) extricate Iraq and Syria from regional and global conflicts. Any American strategy must take urgent measures to strengthen Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi and prepare contingency efforts for his fall. The collapse of the Abadi government and return of his predecessor Nuri al Maliki would be disastrous for the fight against ISIS. Ongoing international negotiations within the Vienna Framework are bypassing essential requirements for long-term success in Syria. Re-establishing a stable, unitary Syrian state that secures American interests requires the U.S. and its partners to 1) destroy ISIS, Jabhat al Nusra, and foreign Salafi-jihadi groups in Syria; 2) identify and strengthen interlocutors representing the Syrian opposition; 3) facilitate a negotiated settlement between the Syrian regime and opposition; 4) obtain regional acceptance of that settlement; 5) establish peace-enforcement mechanisms; and 6) reconstruct state institutions. The Salafi-jihadi militant base in Syria poses a threat to the U.S., but the U.S. must not simply attack it because that would put the U.S. at war with many Sunnis who must be incorporated into a future, post-Assad inclusive government. The U.S. must separate reconcilable from irreconcilable elements. These other Salafi-jihadi groups must meet the following conditions essential for core U.S. security objectives in order to participate: 1) break with Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS; 2) accept the principle of a future pluralistic and unitary Syrian state; 3) reject violent jihad; 4) commit to disarming to a policing and defensive level; 5) and commit to the elimination of the current shari’a court system and the establishment of political institution-based governance. The superficial convergence of Iranian, Russian, Turkish, and Saudi strategic objectives with those of the U.S. on ISIS as a threat masks significant divergences that will undermine U.S. security requirements. Iran and Russia both seek to reduce and eliminate U.S. influence in the Middle East and are not pursuing strategies that will ultimately defeat al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria or Iraq. Turkey’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, some linked to al Qaeda, stem from the ruling party’s intent to reestablish itself as an independent, Muslim, regional power. Finally, Saudi Arabia’s objectives remain shaped by perceived existential threats from Iran and a growing succession crisis, causing key divergences, especially over support to Salafi-jihadi groups. The U.S. must lead efforts to resolve the crisis in Syria and cannot outsource them to partners. Editor’s note: The following is a brief excerpt from the second report in the US Grand Strategy Series. Download the complete report at the link above or read the report on your desktop computer at the bottom of this page. American strategic objectives in Iraq and Syria The United States is at risk of an escalating wave of terrorist attacks at home and against American targets abroad. Europe faces an even greater risk of such attacks. The tide of refugees from Middle Eastern wars combined with the terrorist threat is undermining central pillars of the European idea, particularly the free movement of peoples throughout the European Union. Fear of Salafi- jihadi attacks is fueling anti-Muslim sentiment in both the U.S. and Europe, threatening the ideals of tolerance and diversity that are core tenets of both societies. Growing anti-Muslim sentiments will cause more Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic to feel marginalized and alienated, which will drive even more terror attacks. This cycle is precisely what the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) is counting on to allow it to bring its fight into the heart of the West. Al Qaeda will benefit as well. The West must act thoughtfully and decisively to avert the danger now confronting us. Eliminating the threat to American security from Iraq and Syria requires that Jabhat al Nusra, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, and ISIS be destroyed and conditions set to prevent them from being reconstituted either in their present forms or as new groups with the same objectives. America cannot ensure the security of its territory and people from the threat of Salafi-jihadist military organizations while these organizations control extensive terrain, population, and resources in the Middle East. Such organizations organically possess the capabilities needed to conduct numerous and serious attacks within the West, as we have seen. The Salafi-jihadi ideology, moreover, generally inclines them to support such attacks. Defensive measures will not see us through this crisis, as we have seen in our examination of the nature of the enemy and of our own grand strategic objectives in the first report of this series, Al Qaeda and ISIS: Existential Threats to the U.S. and Europe. We cannot close our borders so thoroughly that the skilled operatives of al Qaeda and ISIS cannot penetrate them. We must not adopt the police-state measures that would be needed to monitor all the communications and activities of all of our people all of the time, for that action would destroy our free society faster than any number of bombs. Sensible border policy and a rational, deliberate, and accountable expansion of the ability of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to collect and analyze information are needed, but they will not suffice. As long as our enemies have military organizations and control significant territory and populations they will be able to throw attacks at us faster than we can hope to catch them. Considering the current threat of al Qaeda and ISIS in this context enabled the planning group to define a clear endstate with regard to that threat. American efforts against al Qaeda and ISIS will have succeeded when: The United States and Europe can assure the physical security of their peoples and preserve their values and way of life while controlling the continued threat from Salafi-jihadi military organizations through the normal law-enforcement means appropriate for democratic societies at peace. Translating these objectives and this endstate into specific strategic requirements demanded a detailed examination of the nature of the enemy groups, which we presented in Part I. That examination made it clear that meeting America’s vital security requirements and achieving our grand strategic goals requires eliminating the regional support bases that al Qaeda and ISIS currently enjoy in Iraq and Syria as the top priority. Efforts to disrupt or stop attacks against the West through network targeting, law enforcement, and immigration controls will fail as long as the enemy has regional bases in which to reconstitute attack groups, conduct research and development, gather intelligence, plan, and amass resources on a large scale. The planning group assesses that local governments or regional forces will be unable to eliminate these support bases in a timeframe or a manner acceptable for American security. America’s experiences with these enemies over the past 25 years demonstrate the critical importance of follow-through, moreover. Clearing Salafi-jihadi groups out of safe havens temporarily is not an acceptable goal, for they have repeatedly shown the ability to reconstitute and emerge stronger after American forces and attention are withdrawn. Thus al Qaeda and the Taliban grew into the void left by the withdrawal of U.S. interest and non-military support from Afghanistan after 1989. The Islamic State of Iraq (formerly known as al Qaeda in Iraq) recovered from a crippling defeat in 2007 through 2010 after the departure of American troops and political attention in 2011. The Taliban and al Qaeda are both regaining strength in Afghanistan as U.S. troops have been drawn down to minimal garrison levels and U.S. political and diplomatic effort has been focused elsewhere. The pattern of history is clear: the U.S. must not only destroy the enemy groups, but must also commit to the effort needed to create conditions that will prevent their return or reconstitution. Strategic objectives in Iraq and Syria To achieve its vital national interests and secure its people, the United States and its partners must accomplish the following objectives in Iraq and Syria: Destroy enemy groups. The military doctrinal definition of “destroy” is to “render an enemy force combat-ineffective until it is reconstituted” or to “damage a combat system so badly that it cannot perform any function or be restored to a usable condition without being entirely rebuilt.” This concept differs from defeat, which means to deprive the enemy of the will or ability to continue to fight, in that defeat is a temporary condition. An enemy that has lost its will or ability to fight can regain either with time, in principle. An enemy that has been destroyed, however, must be reconstructed before it can fight again. The requirement to achieve an enduring resolution to the threats from ISIS and al Qaeda translates into the objective of destroying those groups in this technical sense. Salafi-jihadi groups such as Ahrar al Sham that are not formally part of Jabhat al Nusra but are deeply intertwined with it pose a dilemma. Such groups have significant popular support and provide governance in parts of Syria. Attacking to destroy them risks mobilizing a substantial part of the Sunni Arab population against the West while pushing them into an even tighter embrace with. The Salafi-jihadi ideology of these groups will create conditions propitious to the reconstitution of Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS, however. Simply adding groups such as Ahrar al-Sham to the list of Salafi-jihadi organizations that must be destroyed would entail unwisely going to war with a sizable part of the Sunni Arab population of western Syria. Doing so would make nding a political settlement acceptable to Syria’s Sunnis nearly impossible. Fragmenting these Salafi-jihadi groups in order to separate the hard-core leadership committed to the Salafi-jihadi ideology from the mass of members who support the groups for other reasons, therefore, is by far the preferable alternative if it is feasible. The planning group assesses that it is. Ahrar al Sham in particular is large and complex enough that it may be possible to splinter the group into factions willing to give up jihad and specific forms of governance in return for internationally- accepted participation in a post-Assad government. The strategic objective toward these groups, therefore, is to persuade and coerce as many of their members as possible to renounce jihad; abandon governance through sharia courts; reject ISIS, Jabhat al Nusra, and other foreign Salafi-jihadi groups; expel the members of those organizations from Syria; expel their own al Qaeda-linked leadership; and prevent their return. Some members of Ahrar al Sham will refuse to accept these conditions. These members will then fall into the category of groups that must be destroyed alongside al Qaeda and ISIS. The rest of the group may be reconcilable and the U.S. should pursue its integration into other opposition structures once the conditions listed above are met. End the communal, sectarian civil wars in Iraq and Syria. The continuation of sectarian warfare in Iraq and Syria will prevent the U.S. from destroying ISIS and Jabhat al Nusra and preclude their return or reconstitution. The wars will continue to generate ungoverned spaces and security vacuums in which ISIS and Jabhat al Nusra or their successors will concentrate even if they are severely defeated in their current safe havens. Ongoing large-scale military conflict will also make it impossible to establish reliable non-sectarian military and police forces that could sustain a defeat of the Salafi-jihadi groups and translate it into the permanent destruction of those groups. The brutal sectarian nature of the con ict, which has become an existential communal struggle in many areas, will remain an extremely powerful force driving passive and active support for al Qaeda and ISIS. These groups intentionally exploit such conditions by portraying themselves as the only reliable defenders of the Sunni Arabs in both countries. The atrocities the Assad regime is committing against Syria’s Sunni majority are in fact mobilizing the global Sala movement to support Salafi-jihadi groups such as Jabhat al Nusra and Ahrar al Sham, as we discussed in the rst report. The continuation of sectarian war in Iraq and Syria will create headwinds strong enough to drive any strategy aimed only at destroying our enemies completely off-course over time. Set conditions to prevent the reconstitution of enemy groups. The destruction of Salafi-jihadi groups in Iraq and Syria must be lasting. Neither the U.S. nor the region can a ord the price of a continual cycle of American engagement and disengagement that is accompanied by the defeat and resurrection of Salafi-jihadi groups. Each engagement will be more di cult and fraught than the last; each disengagement will increase the mistrust and resentment of Americans who will come to be seen as completely unreliable. Allowing al Qaeda and/or ISIS to create a phoenix-like mythos—which they are already trying to cultivate—will make ultimately destroying either group an order of magnitude more difficult. People will come to expect the groups to rise from their own ashes each time the cycle is repeated, likely creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of resurrection. These considerations impose four requirements on American strategy in Syria and Iraq: Ensure that security forces are established and expanded that are sufficient to prevent the return of Salafi-jihadi groups; Ensure the composition, organization, and behavior of the security forces will strengthen negotiated political settlements and will not generate grievances among the population that would tend to unravel them; Directly support and facilitate the reconstruction of local economies; and Facilitate the return of refugees, the resettlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs), and the efforts of local governments and international organizations to assist in that process. The risk that local security forces could be organized or behave in ways that undermine a negotiated settlement is obvious. The risks that mismanaged or ill-conceived efforts at rebuilding local economies and helping refugees return could do so is less obvious to many. Yet the experiences of the international community in Afghanistan in particular have shown how much damage can be done to a political settlement by well-intentioned but poorly thought-out economic and refugee-resettlement assistance. People traumatized by brutal communal warfare are even quicker than most to perceive and resent apparent injustices in the provision of humanitarian assistance. Aid organizations nonetheless generally seek to provide help wherever they can without recognizing that rivals on the ground often attempt to create conditions that will drive them to give aid disproportionately to one side at the expense of another. Syrian President Bashar al Assad, for example, is attempting to shape the provision of aid in this manner at this very moment, allowing food and other forms of relief into some areas and preventing it from going into others. Local security forces can often manipulate the provision of aid simply by deliberately allowing violence to continue in areas they wish to deprive of help. Armed groups meanwhile leverage humanitarian aid deliveries to achieve local legitimacy, using this legitimacy in some cases to undermine attempts to reach a negotiated settlement as Jabhat al Nusra is doing. Humanitarian assistance efforts must therefore be developed and executed in direct support of the political settlement and in close coordination with all local actors and with international actors—such as the U.S. and its allies—seeking to strengthen that settlement. Large-scale economic reconstruction is even more difficult to keep neutral. Rebuilding power grids, road systems, water and sewage systems, agricultural areas, and other large infrastructure projects require some considerable degree of central and local government involvement. Americans learned the hard way in Iraq, however, that providing aid to ministries controlled by sectarian actors is one of the fastest ways to unravel a settlement and fuel sectarian violence. That problem has re-emerged in Baghdad as Iranian-proxy Shi’a militia groups now control important ministries. The emergence of a cross-sectarian post-Assad government in Damascus will surely pose similar challenges. The cooptation of local governance by Salafi-jihadi military organizations in signi cant portions of Syria poses the same problem at a lower level. Flowing aid through Alawite-controlled ministries will fuel Sunni resentment. Sending help through Salafi-jihadi-controlled local governance will empower precisely those who must be defeated. Humanitarian aid and reconstruction efforts will require the development and execution of a detailed and coherent strategy that will be at least as complex and difficult as any military plans. The same comments apply to refugee-resettlement efforts. Extricate Iraq and Syria from regional and global conflicts. The deployment of Iranian military forces into Syria and Iraq and the establishment of a major Russian military base in Syria has transformed those countries into theaters of competition and potential conflict among external actors. This phenomenon is not accidental, as we shall see when we examine the objectives of Moscow and Tehran in the following sections. Both Putin and the Iranian regime intend to marginalize and ultimately expel the U.S. from the Middle East and are using their forces to further this aim, as well as to accomplish local objectives in Iraq and Syria. They are also both wholeheartedly backing Assad and the more radical Iraqi Shi’a groups that are fueling sectarian conflict in both states and preventing the emergence of viable political settlements. The Iranians are doing so because radical sectarian Shi’a (and Alawites, whom they regard as Shi’a for this purpose) are their most reliable allies and tools. The Iranian regime is also unable to escape from a very strong pro-Shi’a pull despite its pan-Islamist rhetoric. Putin does not have any particular sectarian or ethnic preference, but he is supporting Assad and the Alawites unequivocally because only they can provide the strategic objective he is seeking through his intervention—an air and naval base on the Mediterranean coast. He is readily falling in with Iranian support for sectarian Shi’a actors in Iraq because his interests there are secondary, and Iran is his essential partner. Constructing a settlement in Iraq and Syria that will be stable and will support America’s vital national security interests, however, requires that the external guarantors of that settlement be seen as neutral among the parties. The very fact that the Iranians and Russians are so completely committed to one side of the conflict makes their participation in the conflict’s resolution damaging if not fatal to international attempts to negotiate a settlement of the war. Russian aggression in Europe and against Turkey, moreover, is regrettably shifting Russo-American relations back toward a Cold War model of hostility. Iran’s repeated violations of the UN Security Council Resolution endorsing the nuclear deal, particularly the sections calling on Iran not to develop, test, or eld nuclear-capable missiles, are increasing tensions between Tehran and Washington despite the nuclear agreement. The recent storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran and consulate in Mashhad by angry crowds after the Saudis executed Shi’a cleric Sheikh Nimr al Nimr has led a number of Arab states to follow Riyadh’s lead in breaking o or downgrading diplomatic relations with Iran. Iraq and Syria are unlikely to be able to establish stable and durable political settlements while they remain in the middle of all of these tensions and conflicts with the military forces of all of the players operating on their territory. Withdrawing all American forces would be one option for resolving this dilemma, of course, but it would do so at the expense of all other American national security requirements. The alternative is that the U.S. insist on the withdrawal of Russian military forces from Syria and Iranian military and law enforcement forces from both Syria and Iraq. That is the alternative the U.S. must pursue. The very argument with Russia and Iran about such a withdrawal, if there is one, will be informative about the true motivations of the various actors for their military involvement in these conflicts. Putin should, according to his own rhetoric, be satisfied with a political settlement acceptable to the Alawites as well as to the Sunnis and Kurds, and should happily remove his ships, planes, and troops from Syria when it has been completed. The Iranians should be equally willing to pull back the elements of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Law Enforcement Forces now deployed in Syria, and to curtail the activities of the Qods Force in both countries, if their current rhetoric is honest. Neither Tehran nor Moscow is likely to be amenable to such withdrawals, however, particularly if a military force of American troops and allies is to remain. The Russians and the Iranians are likely to make arguments based on fairness, equity, parity, and, in the case of Iran, the principle that extra-regional powers should have no presence in the Middle East. The U.S. and its partners must reject and defeat these arguments, which are actually without merit. Russian and Iranian policies in Iraq and Syria are themselves unequal, unfair, and favor one group at the expense of others in a way that will cause peace to fail. The U.S., however, can and should maintain neutrality, but Americans cannot accept the premise that Iran has a unique right to deploy its forces into the Arab world in pursuit of its aim of expelling the U.S. from the region entirely. The Iranians are likely to make one reasonable counter-demand, however, which the U.S. should accept and support— namely that the Gulf States cease supporting Salafi-jihadi groups in Iraq and Syria and focus their assistance instead on inclusive governance structures set up to strengthen and perpetuate a peace settlement. The U.S. should make that demand on its own initiative, even if Tehran somehow does not. Extricating Iraq and Syria from the regional and global con icts is not simply a matter of expelling Iranian and Russian forces, but also requires destroying foreign Salafi- jihadi organizations that are operating in Syria. There are distinctive Chechen, Uzbek, Uighur, Moroccan, and other military units inside of Syria. Such groups are sometimes aligned with ISIS or Jabhat al Nusra, but they nevertheless represent a distinct threat. They seek to bring their ghters back to their home countries enhanced by the training they received in Syria and enriched by resources earned from their support of a global movement. They pose a distinct danger, and their destruction, rather than their expulsion, must be sought. The insistence on the departure of Russian and Iranian troops from Iraq and Syria will seem to some an extraneous and even unreasonable demand. It is, on the contrary, an essential prerequisite for the long-term settlement of conflicts in those states. Iraq and Syria will not survive a Cold War-style partition by the great powers. The requirements for stabilizing the disintegrated, partitioned components are high and tend to exacerbate the likelihood of safe havens for ISIS and al Qaeda, because Sunni political and social structures are weak and under threat from both Sunni and Shi’a extremists. Germany, in contrast, boasted no skilled and violent insurgency after World War II to take advantage of the seams and tensions partition created. Americans must equally resist the doctrines of moral equivalence that will be advanced against any insistence on maintaining a U.S. and NATO presence while excluding that of Russia and Iran. There is no moral equivalence here, for the aims of Western strategy are very different from those of Moscow’s or Tehran’s. Our aim is to destroy Salafi-jihadi groups and mediate and then support a stable peace acceptable to all sides. We have no other interest in Iraq and Syria. That is why we must insist on a predominant role in that mediation and support while marginalizing those with particularistic objectives. Conclusion American strategic objectives in Iraq and Syria are easy enough to write down. They were not easy to define precisely, however. The immense complexity of these conflicts, particularly the war in Syria, make determining exactly what the U.S. must accomplish in order to fulfill the requirements for its own security against al Qaeda and ISIS very difficult. Even choosing the right verb for the objective of destroying (rather than defeating) ISIS and Jabhat al Nusra required careful consideration and explication. Deciding how to approach the heavily-radicalized Syrian opposition is even more complicated and open to debate. The planning group hypothesizes that fragmenting Ahrar al Sham and reconciling many of its members to an acceptable post-Assad state is possible, but there can be no certainty until conditions are set and the attempt is made. Arguing for a possible American and European military presence but insisting on the withdrawal of Russian and most Iranian forces will surely be controversial in Tehran and Moscow, and probably in Washington and Brussels as well. Some readers may question whether this demand is truly necessary and whether it does not needlessly force confrontation over secondary matters with Russia and Iran. The planning group has considered this matter in considerable detail and finds that the continued presence of Russian and Iranian troops in Syria, and of powerful Iranian-controlled militias in Iraq, is incompatible with a stable settlement of either conflict. It also assesses that driving the U.S. out of the region is one of the main purposes for those deployments, and so finds them also incompatible with core American interests beyond resolving these wars. The frustration of many Americans attempting to find a policy to advocate in Syria and, to a lesser extent, Iraq, is palpable and understandable. The challenge is difficult enough that this planning group has chosen to articulate its path to such a policy clearly and deliberately rather than cutting to the chase as the best practices of Washington report-writing would have suggested. Agreement on the strategic objectives the U.S. must achieve in Iraq and Syria is a vital prerequisite for any sensible discussion of what the U.S. should do. The group thus invites reasoned argument regarding the objectives advanced above as it continues its work. © 2016 by the Institute for the Study of War. All rights reserved. |
| 主题 | Defense ; Terrorism |
| 标签 | Al Qaeda ; Counterterrorism ; Iraq ; Syria ; The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) ; US Grand Strategy Series ; What to do policy recommendations on terrorism |
| URL | https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/competing-visions-syria-iraq-us-grand-strategy/ |
| 来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States) |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/206212 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Frederick W. Kagan,Kimberly Kagan,Harleen Gambhir,et al. Competing visions for Syria and Iraq: The myth of an anti-ISIS grand coalition. 2016. |
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| 文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
| competing_visions_fo（1993KB） | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 | ||
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