US treads on Islamic State minefield

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-080914.html



US treads on Islamic State minefield
By Ehsan Ahrari
Sep 8, '14

Only a couple of weeks ago, President Barack Obama in a moment of candor admitted that his administration does not yet have a strategy to fight the Islamic State (IS). That statement triggered a storm of criticism even from the friendly circles inside the United States. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies of the United States responded in the form of discomfited silence, because they were an indirect party to America's sustained unpreparedness.

According to figures from 2013 from one source, no NATO state, save the United States and the United Kingdom, spends even 2% of their GDP on defense. This lackadaisical attitude has a lot to do with the fact that, with the end of the Cold War, the possibility of armed conflict was becoming a distant memory for all European nations. For the United States, on the contrary, the terrorist attacks on its homeland necessitated the declaration of a "global war on terror", and its related high defense spending. And the United Kingdom, as a constant supporter of America in that war, kept also its own defense spending slightly over 2% of its GDP.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's military takeover of Crimea and his ensuing overtures to create at least an autonomous republic in the eastern part of Ukraine shocked the strategic thinkers of the NATO countries. However, any palpable increases in military spending were not expected because Europe has been suffering its own serious economic problems since 2008. The possible lasting outcome of Putin's militarism toward Ukraine is that the European states would be jolted into rethinking their Pollyannaish proclivities about the supposed anachronistic nature of military conflict.

This is the general strategic environment in which President Obama is attempting to formulate an anti-IS strategy. Otto Von Bismarck, Prussian Statesman from 1860 and 1890s, famously observed, "people with an appetite for law or for sausage should not watch them being made." Keeping that sage advice in mind, one should read the following intricate aspect of formulating an anti-IS strategy.