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The_Jaded_One comments on [Link] A rational response to the Paris attacks and ISIS - Less Wrong Discussion
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Has anyone ever won a war with air power alone? Arguably the 1999 bombing campaign of Serbia - but then you could argue that that is notable specifically as an exception, and had some special circumstances surrounding it which don't seem to be present with IS. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia#Arguments_for_strategic_air_power
There are boots on the ground, it's just that they are not Western. Having Assad, the Kurds, and the Iraqi government finish off ISIS weakened by air strikes looks like an acceptable solution to me.
Most likely, Assad (with Russian help) will finish everyone else first.
Russia's goal is to have Assad as the winner, and they will optimize for that. Fighting against ISIS would be a waste of resources for them -- other countries will do that for them, so they can focus on the remaining Assad's enemies.
And the other big players know that. This is why the situation is so difficult to solve, although in theory it should work just as proposed (weaken ISIS by bombing, and let their enemies do the rest).
Um, ISIS controls large chunks of Syria and their capital, Raqqa, is a Syrian town which, I assume, Assad would like to have back.
Moreover, as far as I understand, ISIS wants to have a major battle with the Western/Christian/Crusader army by the Syrian town of Dabiq (to kick-start the Apocalypse) and will, presumably, commit all its forces to it.
Sure. Maybe I didn't express myself clearly. Assad has multiple goals. Destroying ISIS (and getting the capital back) is one of them. Destroying the rebels is another. Destroying Kurds is yet another.
If you have three goals, A, B, C, and you know that most of the world will support you with A, it makes sense to spend your resources (such as the army) on B and C first.
Scenario 1: Assad destroys ISIS first. Other countries will help him, but he will still pay a significant part of the cost. After ISIS is gone, most countries are no longer interested in helping Assad. Some of them may even object against his fight against the rebels and Kurds. Some of them may even start supporting the rebels again.
Scenario 2: Assad destroys the rebels and Kurds first. Then he looks at the rest of the world and says: "You guys are still interested in helping me destroy ISIS, right?"
Yes, and the first and most important goal is to survive. I don't think Assad has that much latitude in choosing which enemies to go after and which to ignore for the time being. He has been amazingly tenacious, but it's far from a foregone conclusion that he'll be the only one left standing at the end.
Yes, and that means he won't focus on ISIS as ISIS mostly doesn't fight against him but against rebel groups that fight him.
I suspect who is fighting who at the moment is mostly driven by tactical considerations and just plain physical proximity. ISIS, basically, fights everyone it comes into contact with. If there are rebels between it and Assad, it will fight the rebels. If Assad pushes the rebels back and comes into direct contact with ISIS, it will fight Assad.
But IS seems to be winning or at least surviving, presumably because its opponents are not really that powerful and/or not motivated to finish the job.
Whatever you think is really going on, one cannot deny that It has been a few years now. To me, that seems unacceptably long.
So, what are you willing to pay to accomplish the goal?
Technically, it's not hard -- just repeat either of the Iraq wars. But if you take just a slightly wider view, those wars were not successful in making the region West-friendly and stable, and the overall cost, in both lives and money, was very high. What makes you think another military excursion into the region will fare any better?
The second was until Obama decided to unilaterally pull out prematurely for no particularly good reason.
He promised that to his voters, if I remember correctly.
May be not a good reasons strategically, but still a good reason politically.
You're going along with a blatant and partisan lie. GW Bush accepted a deadline for withdrawal after the Iraqi government made noise about Iraqi sovereignty. Obama technically tried to negotiate a new deal to keep troops there, but could not reach agreement about legal immunity. If you squint and turn your head you could try to see this as Obama choosing to withdraw, but to say he did it "unilaterally" is a bald-faced lie.
Only in the most technical sense, as soon as the Iraqi's made a counter-offer different from his first one he called of negotiations.
I think it depends on the quality of the nation-building that happens afterwards.
IMO merely defeating IS shouldn't be that expensive, but I can imagine the nationbuilding bit being very expensive and I can imagine IS going underground and executing a suicide bombing campaign, just like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Still, militarily defeating IS counts under the "benefits" column of the analysis - as a pure point of rationality - even if the cost is too great.
Why would the answer be any different from "the usual"..?
True. And just as true for North Korea.
ISIS doesn't have nukes and isn't being implicitly backed by a neighboring superpower.
The neoconservative attempt at nationbuilding in Iraq may, in fact, count as "worse than usual" for this purpose...
Actually, are there any positive examples of Western nationbuilding after the poster children of post-WW2 Japan and Germany? I don't know if South Korea would count, but for clarity let's take the last 50 years. Is there anything?
The French intervention in Mali comes to mind. Sierra Leone also. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_military_intervention_in_the_Sierra_Leone_Civil_War#Impact
That's not nationbuilding. That's just old Western powers keeping their former colonies from disintegrating into failed states. You can also read it as picking a side and propping it up with military force.
If Mali is a successful example of nationbuilding, thank you, I'll pass.