ISAIAH WILSON III AND LTC SCOTT A. SMITSON AFTER MOSUL · Beyond and After Mosul Once again, Mosul serves as a place of grand geostrategic importance to begin to enlarge the context

ISAIAH WILSON III AND LTC SCOTT A. SMITSON

AFTER MOSULEnlarging the Context of the Syria-Iraq Conflict(s)

APRIL 2017

About the Authors

Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III, Ph.D., is a colonel (retired) in the United States Army and an Army strategist. He served as chief, Commander’s Initiatives Group (CIG), at U.S. Central Command from 2013 to 2016, with prior assignments as chief of plans, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) in Northern Iraq (2003-2004), as a theater war planner and strategic adviser in Afghanistan, and as professor and director of American politics, policy and strategy with the Department of Social Sciences at West Point. He is a visiting professor at George Washington University and a Fellow with New America.

LTC Scott A. Smitson, U.S. Army, Ph.D., is an Army strategist currently serving on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. He served in the Commander’s Action Group (CAG), at U.S. Central Command from 2014 to 2016, with prior assignments as a US-UK Planner in the UK Ministry of Defence, and as a faculty member of the Department of Social Sciences at West Point.

About New America

New America is committed to renewing American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age. We generate big ideas, bridge the gap between technology and policy, and curate broad public conversation. We combine the best of a policy research institute, technology laboratory, public forum, media platform, and a venture capital fund for ideas. We are a distinctive community of thinkers, writers, researchers, technologists, and community activists who believe deeply in the possibility of American renewal.

Find out more at newamerica.org/our-story.

About the International Security Program

The International Security program aims to provide evidence-based analysis of some of the thorniest questions facing American policymakers and the public. We are largely focused on South Asia and the Middle East, extremist groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda and affiliated groups, the proliferation of drones, homeland security, and the activities of U.S. Special Forces and the CIA. The program is also examining how warfare is changing because of emerging technologies, such as drones, cyber threats, and space-based weaponry, and asking how the nature and global spread of these technologies is likely to change the very definition of what war is.

Funding for the International Security program’s efforts is provided by a number of organizational grants, as well as the generous donations of several individuals on the program’s Advisory Council.

Organizations include: Arizona State University, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Open Society Foundations, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. Individuals on the Advisory Council include: Fareed Zakaria, Steve Coll, Gregory Craig, Tom Freston, Robert H. Niehaus, George R. Salem, and Fran Townsend.

Find out more at newamerica.org/international-security.

Contents

Executive Summary 2

There and Back Again: The Continuing Saga of Iraq and Syria 3

Dealing With the Bigger Map’s Larger War 5

Failing to See a ‘Peace’ Beyond Our Wars 7

Conclusion 10

Notes 13

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY 2

There is a long-standing credo in strategic theory and practice that American war planners, strategic advisers, and decision-makers need to revisit and relearn from time to time: When faced with what appears to be an intractable problem … enlarge the context.1

Today is one of those times. The United States and the international community of democracies, led by the United States, find themselves once again stuck between Iraq and a hard(er) place: Syria.

Part of the difficulty the United States faces in Iraq and Syria results from its tendency to approach regional and global security challenges far too narrowly and too piecemeal. As a consequence, our attempts to solve complex challenges often prove anemic, even exacerbating existing problems. This problem knows no partisan political preference; it has plagued both Republican and Democratic administrations and their national security and defense apparatuses alike. The core and vital national security interests of the United States do not lie within either Iraq or Syria, but rather between them — at the nexus of one failed state (Syria) and one critically flawed and pathologically weak state (Iraq).

We should not expect the Syrian or Iraqi states to have the capacity to secure the respective sides of their border, including large tracts of Sunni-

dominated territory, in the foreseeable future. Additionally, the presence of Kurdish autonomy movements and external actors keenly interested in the outcomes of Kurdish ambitions in both countries will ensure the possibility of conflict. Meanwhile, U.S. policy toward the greater Middle East lacks a clear and confident footing.

Failing to identify and deal with the larger conflict delegitimizes the United States’ position as the leading global power and worsens the security dilemmas threatening to unravel the long-standing and stable Western-liberal world order.

A “treat the symptoms” approach is necessary, but insufficient to cure the “compound security”2 ills plaguing world-system order, stability, and legitimacy today. While such treatments may make us feel better in the short term, this approach could stoke false hopes. The body politic could be dying of the more chronic disease.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

When faced with what appears to be an intractable problem … enlarge the context

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY After Mosul: Enlarging the Context of the Syria-Iraq Conflict(s) 3

There is no clearer demonstration of the limits of a “treat the symptoms” approach than the unfolding narrative of the Mosul operation and the start of operations to liberate Raqqa, Syria, which risks narrowly defining the conflict as an end to the U.S. task and presence in the region rather than as a beginning of a new phase in a longer, and larger conflict.

Consider America’s now 14-year odyssey in Iraq — or, depending on how you count it, a 26-year odyssey that began with the Persian Gulf War, which Saddam Hussein himself warned would be “the mother of all battles.”3 President Trump will be the fifth straight commander in chief (representing the eighth consecutive term of office) faced with managing the use of lethal force in Iraq.

The guarded optimism over the seemingly rapid successes of the operation to retake Mosul from the group called the Islamic State (IS, or “ISIL” when referring to the specific IS threat in Iraq and the Levant) in late 2016 and early 2017 has turned sour. Despite the recent liberation of the eastern environs of this northern Iraqi city, tactical stalls and occasional stalemates are now a recognized and accepted reality. Meanwhile, to Mosul’s west, the situation in Syria remains dire without a clear resolution in sight. These are warning signs of the potential for optimism over the treatment of the symptom of ISIL’s particular holdings to turn sour quickly.

Today, the United States and the wider West see their collective Syria troubles as an intractable problem, with Russia, Iran and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad holding all the cards. Only about a year or so prior, however, the operational and strategic momentum was with the United States and its willing and able counter-ISIL coalition, with Assad’s government on the brink of a precipitous fall.4

In early summer 2015, the United States had a significant degree of strategic leverage over Assad and Russia in northern Syria. Concerns were centered on whether coalition anti-ISIL operations across northern Syria were progressing too quickly, raising the specter that a collapse of the Assad regime might come about by displacing the ISIL threat westward toward Damascus, ahead of our plans and capacities for managing and advantaging such a regime change. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s doubling-down, militarily, in northwestern Syria at that same moment in many ways validated our earlier concerns and provided evidence of the U.S. strategic leverage.

Today, the United States no longer has the strategic advantages it had in 2015. All moments of strategic advantage are fleeting, and arguably, we squandered that leverage by failing to see Russia’s increased military presence in northwestern Syria as a potential sign of weakness that we could exploit rather than merely a setback to our own operational plan.

THERE AND BACK AGAIN: THE CONTINUING SAGA OF IR AQ AND

SYRIA


The failure was also a result of the growing tendency of coalition member states to fail to see and approach what is a collective security problem in collective ways. This phenomenon reflects a worrisome trend in international relations — one that finds the character of geopolitical competition in global affairs shifting away from traditional balance-of-power interactions toward less stable and more strategically ambiguous neo-mercantilist “beggar thy neighbor” transactional relations.5 The slowness in efforts to translate almost three years of military successes on the ground toward a political-strategic endgame has worsened this trend.

Again, this suboptimal outcome is due, in large part, to a failure to “see” the moment for the promise and potential it offered. How could conditions on the ground, seemingly going so well back then, have turned sour so rapidly?

Beyond and After Mosul

Once again, Mosul serves as a place of grand geostrategic importance to begin to enlarge the context and to “get it right.”

While the battle for Mosul may prove to be the “last” battle against ISIL in Iraq, it could simultaneously develop into the “first” battle of a much broader and protracted regional conflict with significant transregional and global implications. An essential next step toward getting it “right” in Mosul this time is for the United States and the international community to have and execute a winnable plan for political resolution not only for Mosul, but for the wider and widening Syria crises.

As the headline of a 2016 Washington Post op-ed by retired Gen. David Petraeus stated, the challenge in

Mosul “won’t be to defeat the Islamic State. It will be what comes after.”6

Thus, the most significant challenge in Mosul will not be to defeat the Islamic State; rather, it will be the task we faced there in 2003: to ensure post-conflict security, reconstruction and, above all, governance that is representative of and responsive to the people. All of this will have to be pursued largely by Iraqis, of different allegiances, without the kinds of forces, resources and authorities that we had.7 (Emphasis added.)

Although Petraeus’ triage of the challenge, “then” and “now,” correctly diagnoses the immediate acute illness afflicting the people of Mosul, and Iraqis more broadly, limiting the diagnosis and recommended treatment plan to his prescriptions, while temporarily soothing, would prove woefully inadequate — an underdose — to defeat the full disease the situation in Mosul represents.8

The present moment in which the coalition counter-ISIL campaign finds itself — on the brink of clearing Mosul of ISIL fighters, on the precipice of the decisive actions of holding and rebuilding public administration, governance, and civil society in the city-state, but in want of a deliberate plan for doing so — in many ways echoes our country’s earliest experiences in the Iraq War during the spring of 2003. Then, as now, even as U.S. troops continued to reestablish order, the crucial task was determining how to reestablish governance and a working and reliable public administration system of delivering goods and services. As Petraeus put it:

That entailed getting Iraqi partners to help run the city of nearly 2 million people and the rest of Nineveh Province — a very large area about which we knew very little. … The challenge of Mosul and Nineveh is the considerable number of ethnic groups, religious sects, tribes and other elements that make up the province.9

And not only in Mosul. These early experiences and lessons gathered in what it takes to secure a peace

How could conditions on the ground, seemingly going so well back then, have turned and soured so rapidly?


DEALING WITH THE BIGGER MAP’S LARGER WAR

Aggressively attacking the cancerous tumor in and around the question of Mosul’s future11 is an essential step. But achieving ultimate defeat over the self-proclaimed Islamic State demands a holistic approach, through the delivery of a strong cocktail of political-military treatments, focused on major diseased “tumors” weakening not only Iraq and Syria, but also an increasing number of nation-states. The causes and underlying conditions and currents at the root of the growing pathological weakening of nation-states (from within and without) will need to be dealt with and overcome. This defines the winning prescription to ultimately defeating the disease now threatening the Western-liberal order in existential ways.

Whether or not the United States, and the international community, will accept the costs (in dollars and cents, public and political will, and manpower and materiel) of the prescribed solutions is a policy choice with clear political risks. But whatever the decision-makers choose to do, the diagnosis is what it is. A better, healthier, long-range prognosis for the “Westphalian” community of democratic states, grounded in the 1648 treaty’s prioritization of nation-states as the primary actors of international politics, depends on the same kinds of treatments, applied at a global scale.

Just as the tactical military stalemate in the city of Ramadi in 2015 was more reflective of the political impasses that demanded time to resolve than it

in the wake of battles and engagements — to hold and build, after clearing and retaking, are vitally important lessons that held, and still hold, hard truths for the future stability, order, and legitimacy of statehood in Afghanistan.10 They also hold keys to future successes in the Iraq-Syria merged conflict, across the greater Levant and Middle East, spanning the Eurasian-Middle Eastern-Northern African trans-region and more widely — even globally — with respect to re-securing a collective faith and confidence in the Western-liberal international compact.

In essence, the United States must lead an effort to take the early Iraq War experience and approach to Mosul to grander scale for the entire region, enlarging the context to solve a problem that is not, and has never been, confinable to the city limits of Mosul or to the political-territorial boundaries of either Iraq or Syria.


was about military capabilities, it is much the same regarding the present military-political stalemate in Mosul.

What’s different is that the consequences of the political impasse, while determinative of the future of Iraq proper, are not limited to Iraq. The politics demanding redress here extend trans-regionally, and demand a commitment to grappling with the unresolved political questions upon which the future stability of the entire greater Levant hinges. Specifically, this will require redress of at least three unanswered strategic questions: the Turkey Question, the Kurdish Question and the Syria-Next Question.

As a recent Washington Post article by Ishaan Tharoor and Laris Karklis acknowledges and illustrates with historical maps, what happens after the fighting ends in and around Mosul is perhaps more significant than the ongoing grinding battle. While pacifying Mosul is a necessary step, it is only the first in a series of vital steps toward achieving the ultimate victory over ISIL. These authors place the current state of play in Mosul in its grander context:

Mosul is now at the center of a regional conflagration: It’s occupied by an extremist Sunni organization that rose to power as the Iraqi and Syrian states imploded. An Iraqi government backed by pro-Iranian Shiite militias is seeking to retake the city with the aid of Kurdish peshmerga forces, whose fighters are well aware of their own people’s long, bitter quest for an independent Kurdish homeland. And it’s eyed by Turkey, wary of

the growing aspirations of Kurdish nationalists in the region and eager to reassert its own influence in a part of the world that was once under its sway.12

This larger reality brings the problem closer to the larger war of which we are speaking, playing out on a much bigger map. We need to recognize this grander context and begin to address it in a more durable way if we are to genuinely defeat the Islamic State and other revisionist adversaries threatening the international order.

This begins with how we choose to proceed (if at all) toward brokering an effective, mutually agreeable and conditional grand bargain — potentially even with adversaries such as Putin’s Russia and Iran — over the future of Syria as well as the futures of other weak and failing states in the region.

What happens after the fighting ends in and around Mosul is perhaps more significant than the ongoing grinding battle.

Army Spc. Michael McMiller, 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, meets with an Iraqi Army unit at the Saddam Mosque prior to conducting a joint operation patrol in Al Zarai, Iraq. Photo: U.S. Army / Flickr


In many respects, we are right back where we started, in 2002-03, in our planning and efforts for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Then, despite our having a plan to win all the military battles along the way, our failures to craft and implement equally winning strategies to secure the peace found us faced with a catastrophic success and a wider and more complicated war of insurgency, largely as a result of how we fought and won the preceding battles. This approach left us unbalanced in posture and under-prepared for completing Phase IV13 stabilization and reconstruction in the wake of those military victories.14

In Iraq and Syria, we are again on the brink of another “catastrophic win,” when (not if) ISIL is finally eradicated, militarily, from Mosul. Phase IV, the securing of the peace, once again will prove the real decisive action. While we may be achieving a series of battle victories, these victories may not only fail to add up to a strategic victory, but actually exacerbate and accelerate losing the larger war, playing out on a much bigger map.

This narrowcasting is manifest in three troubling ways: first, in our limiting the context and meaning of ‘defeat’ (in general) to merely a fight; second, as

a campaign limiting such a defeat to the geography of Iraq and Syria, and the greater Levant fight within Iraq or, at most, to the greater Levant (i.e., a campaign against IS in Iraq and the Levant — IS’s “core” territorial holding (its self-declared capitol) of at least six world-wide IS “provinces”, rather than against the full physical and virtual Islamic State threat); and third, in our limiting of the enterprise as merely a contest against violent, radical, Islamist, extremist, non-state organizations.

The real lesson that needs to be learned is not merely that a Phase IV plan for Iraq is needed to win beyond the day in Iraq, but rather that there must be a Phase IV stabilization and reconstruction grand design for dealing with those persistent underlying currents and root causes that sicken the larger Westphalian body politic.

Dealing with the Compound Conflict

Simply recognizing the larger map on which the conflict plays out is insufficient. Syria is not a simple civil war; it is a compound war, a composite of at least four wars, with contagion potential of transregional consequences for the future stability and security of NATO’s southern flank, the European Union’s confederated unity, the strength

FAILING TO SEE A “PEACE” BEYOND OUR WARS


of the transatlantic alliance and the legitimacy of the U.S.-led Western-liberal international order. Nothing less than a lasting strategy, based on “grand bargaining,” is required to resolve the United States’ Syria and Iraq troubles in durable, lasting, and sustainable terms.

While such a grand bargain is a precondition to our ability to achieve the ultimate defeat of ISIL, the success of such a strategy is contingent upon recognizing the contours of the four-level compound war and developing a strategy to address all four levels:

1. The international war against ISIL and other transregional terrorist organizations, which is priority number one for the United States, based on our core and vital national interests.

2. The Syrian insurgency war against the Assad regime, the outcome of which is priority number one of all of the U.S. regional partners (including Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council), as well as Iran and Russia.

3. The still-budding Syrian civil war,15 priority number one for the Syrian opposition forces, and a probable future full-blown civil war that will center on addressing and answering the question “Who governs next?” if and after the insurgency war against Assad is “won.”

4. A “contagion humanitarian war” against the Westphalian southern flank by way of fast-paced “weaponized”16 mass migration of Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan and even Yemeni refugees into Europe. This is a crisis that many still fail to see as a form of war when it is exactly that —

“a continuation of politics by other means,” with vectored, forced migrations aimed at overburdening and eventually “breaking the nations” of Europe. It is part of Russia’s deliberate strategy of disruption.17

A winning grand bargain-based strategy for achieving the ultimate defeat of ISIL would be one that, (1) contains regional and trans-global threats while (2) building an international effort to set the conditions essential for successful negotiated political settlements to defeat ISIL and prevent a full-blown Syrian civil war and (3) simultaneously integrating Turkey,18 the EU nation-states, and the key middleweight powers of Russia and Iran into a temporary accord-facilitated political solution. Such an accord might contain the contagion to the territorial confines of the greater Levant, leading eventually to a reestablished statehood (or future multiple “statehoods”) of Syria and in so doing, arrive at a negotiated settlement that moderately satisfies all the stakeholders’ core/vital interests short of a great power war.

The future of Iraq — whether as a unitary nation-state, some form of loose but still unified confederated state, or a failed state — is codependent on the outcomes of this grand bargain. The problems inherent to both Syria and Iraq are not confined by their borders, but are interconnected.

Unless an enlargement of the context of our actions, and inactions, is achieved in both Syria and Iraq, we are likely facing yet another episode of “catastrophic (military) success” in the Middle East.

Time Is of the Essence: The Emerging Contours of a Potential Grand Bargain

The future reputation and power of the United States to shape events pivots on this strategic conflict, but time may no longer be on the side of the United States.

The problems inherent to both Syria and Iraq are not confined by their borders, but are interconnected.


A December 2016 Reuters article richly described the broad strokes of a three-party grand bargain presently underfoot among Russia, Turkey, and Iran. This effort, led by Putin, came the same day as a scheduled cease-fire was put in place. Though the first major piece of this oddly constructed political bargain was the source of much derision, it represented, however flawed, a deliberate Russian-led attempt to broker a settlement along the coincidences of interests among the major stakeholder states, albeit without the United States.19

Many experts see such a deal as highly unlikely to succeed. And while we, the authors, tend to agree — at least on the point that a political settlement brokered among these three major players, and led by Putin’s Russia, is unlikely to be sufficient for securing a lasting settlement — we disagree with the dismissal of the effort; while Putin and this triumvirate may not have what it takes to finish their endeavor, this peculiar grouping may be able to get a potential grand bargain started.

Drawing Lessons from the Dayton Peace Accords Process

Our country’s long experience in the Balkans, roughly from 1990 to 2008, holds many valuable parallels and lessons useful as principles and guideposts toward a collective security way ahead for Syria-next solutions.20 Of the many lessons the Balkans case study has to offer, three in particular deserve consideration and reveal the potential of emerging efforts at a grand bargain.

First, the achievement of the Dayton Accords was not a single, discrete, and immediate outcome. It resulted from a gradual, fitful, conditions-based transitory process — moving from periods of war-torn factionalization, through fragile third-party refereed cease-fires and political dialogues, then through multinational military-enforced “zones of separation,” and finally leading to a “federated” political rearrangement. Implementing Dayton

demanded a U.S.-led shifting of the ground security situation, from a U.N. “blue-helmeted force” to a Kevlar-helmeted Implementation Force (the 60,000-troop IFOR), with robust rules of engagement able to compel all parties, if necessary, to comply with Dayton prerequisites.

Second, the Balkans conflict could not be contained, much less resolved, by air power alone. It required a long and heavy commitment of troops on the ground, with the United States in the lead, contributing the heftiest portion of the ground force for the multiyear, multinational enforcement mission. Working with Russia and Turkey, and even with the Iranians in limited ways, was key. Figuring how to go forward in ways that contained and solved the actual problem, while not triggering a wider regional conflagration with Russia at a delicate stage on the edge of the end of Cold War, was essential to eventual success and proved to be the shaky beginnings of the eventual Partnership for Peace.

Third, the United States and the international community’s 20-year pregnancy with the Balkans gave birth not to a new unified state of Yugoslavia, but instead to quadruplets: the new sovereign states of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, while reshaping fifth and sixth states, Serbia and Montenegro. It is possible, if not probable, that achieving an eventual mutually acceptable and stable “new normal” across the greater Levant will result in the birth of whole new nations and states, including loose confederations in what was once a unitary state of Syria and a unitary state of Iraq. Being open to such outcomes might even be a necessary precondition to securing a durable peace.

The above lessons demonstrate three key factors that helped set the conditions for success in the Balkans:

1. The need for strategic vision and patience in implementing the accord.


2. Acceptance of the possible necessity for moves through transitory forms of fragile statehoods, including periods of temporary partition and loose confederation. In the case of the Balkans, partition proved to be the right intermediate prescription, despite long-range hopes of a more united political arrangement.

3. The presence and active participation of American leadership, which proved the necessary ingredient to bind the many parts together into an agreeable whole solution.

Are There Limits to the United States’ Ability to Solve?

The recipe that worked in the Balkans might also hold true for Syria. A U.S. role may be essential for

the finishing. But in this case (as with the early years of the Balkans crises), American involvement so far may have been a hindrance to getting the initial steps toward a grand bargain on the table and moving forward.

This can be traced to our collective unwillingness (or inability) to (a) work dual- or multitrack strategies along areas of coincidences of interests, to (b) compromise on our absolutist stance that only “unitary state” forms for Syria-next futures are acceptable, and to (c) cooperate, in a transactional nature, with Russia and Turkey, beyond operational “de-confliction” (restrictions brought to the table by the United States).

CONCLUSION

As the United States and its 68-nation international coalition prepare for the final push to liberate Mosul, it is imperative that we understand this is merely a beginning of larger efforts to come, and not the latest in a series of recurring moments in America’s long (14 to 26-year) war in Iraq, where it is once again fashionable to identify a discrete and convenient point to declare a premature victory and an end to our political and military commitments.

Mosul is the important, and in many respects unavoidable, way in to the larger war — the challenge to the rules-and-values-based Western-liberal order — that is existential to our global collective security interests.

We need to have this bigger war in clearer view as we continue the counter-ISIL campaign. Enlarging the context in this way can help us to: form and hold flexible coalitions together, recognize and


Two U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircrafts fly over northern Iraq Sept. 23, 2014, after conducting airstrikes in Syria. Photo: U.S. Department of Defense / Flickr

appreciate transition points and conditions in our campaign, and appreciate the root causes and temporal underpinnings of the campaign. In so doing, it will increase our understanding of the need for strategic patience.

We need to see beyond the self-imposed limits of our own boundaries just as we take actions to re-legitimize those very boundaries. Operationally, despite the compounded nature of the Iraq-Syria problem, the United States still needs to follow and promote a strategy that remains focused on “ISIL First” because the Islamic State represents the current and most virulent new form of the larger movement against the Westphalian system. As such, this threat provides a crucial common denominator upon which the international community of democratic states can be formed into an effective force of common cause. Territorially, we need to focus on “Iraq First.” Within the Iraq theater of conflict, getting Mosul right is the essential task of that keystone state.

Just as the United States must not allow the likes of ISIL to break the sovereign statehood of Iraq, and threaten the future viability of a Syrian statehood (one or many), we also cannot permit an anti-Eurasian world order power, or consortium of powers, to become dominant, especially in this critical geostrategic trans-region. If we do, ISIL and the wider movement it represents will gain influence over a series of historically important and geostrategically key crown-jewel states, enhancing its wider anti-Westphalian global cause.

This grand strategy of strategic defense (of the foundational principles, values and rules of behavior of the Western-liberal order) and active containment and engagement is critical for achieving the first, essential task of halting the adversaries’ momentum — tactically, operationally, strategically and, perhaps most importantly, ideationally.21

As revisionist state adversaries are once again compelled to move back more toward the defense of their core territorial and human terrain holdings and spheres of influence, the Western coalition of

nation-states needs to continue to beat them at the public administration and governance game. We must individually and collectively demonstrate in measurable ways the willingness and capacities to govern better, more fairly and more responsively than our adversaries.

Simultaneously, the Western-liberal community needs to, as individual states, improve the reliability, fairness, and prosperity-generating aspects of their own public administration systems and behaviors; they must do the same collectively as well. This will help rob revisionist powers, including ISIL and the counter-movement it represents, of fuel for its cause. In this same vein, Westphalia should make effective adjustments to its own boundaries (territorial, legal, policy, etc.) in ways that make these nations and their compact more inclusive.

Particular to the greater Levant and Middle East regions, an inherent flaw persists in the legacies and artifices born out of the five Paris Peace Treaties of 1919, the British and French mandates and the Sykes-Picot mappings of these regions that remain unresolved. In many respects, the persistent compound wars raging in Iraq, in Syria, and beyond are the outcomes and continuing outcries of the chronically dispossessed, disenfranchised, and disaffected left wanting by the original drawings of political territorial state boundaries.


As a final thought, it is helpful to reflect on a recent offering from Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations:

… The chief cauldron of contemporary disorder is the Middle East. For all the comparisons that have been made to World War I or the Cold War, what is taking place in the region today most resembles the Thirty Years’ War, three decades of conflict that ravaged much of Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century. As with Europe back then, in coming years, the Middle East is likely to be filled with mostly weak states unable to police large swaths of their territories, militias and terrorist groups acting with increasing sway, and both civil war and interstate strife. Sectarian and communal identities will be more powerful than national ones.22

Haass refers to this as a “great unraveling,” a description these authors find most apt in expressing the gravity of the geostrategic moment we now face. Addressing the eternal need for inclusive, representative, and responsive governance, especially across this critical region, must begin in places like Mosul, Raqqa, and Aleppo, and in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as in places such as Sirte, Libya — not only for achieving a durable, balanced and lasting stability in the greater Middle East and across the Levant, but for securing and preserving our own most vital collective interests in a stable, legitimate Western-liberal order.

The choices we make in our approach, through a deliberate attempt to enlarge the context of these problem sets, will be essential to arresting and rolling back the “great unraveling” playing out in the most consequential region of the world.


Notes

1 The credo is generally attributed to the late Jean Monnet, a French political economist and diplomat. As an advocate of European unity, he was a strong influence in the founding of the European Union.

2 By “compound” we are referring to the increased interaction – interconnectedness and collision – of otherwise once separate policy issues reflective of this new, post-Cold War (and now post-9/11) international security environment. Where there was once a brighter line dividing those policy issues of a limited domestic context and scope of impact and consequence, there is today less of a relevant and viable division between the national and the international; there is no longer a “water’s edge” to domestic and foreign policy and policymaking. Traditional security concerns over material resources (i.e., access to oil and other scarce resources) are less divorceable from issues of human security (local concerns and challenges over food shortages, health concerns, human rights protections, etc.). Old concepts of domestic politics and policies, such as energy policy and immigration policy, now take on a global context. We now must think of these policy issues and concerns in a security context (i.e., energy security policy, immigration and security policy). The rising threats of natural and manmade biological threats (pandemic flu, HIV/AIDS. etc.) now make health policy – traditionally an issue relegated to domestic concerns and jurisdictions – a global security policy issue. This compounding character of 21st century public policy issues heralds a new kind of security dilemma: compound security dilemmas. For more on “compound security challenges” and the “compound security” dilemma and concept, see Hugh Liebert, John Griswold and Isaiah Wilson III, eds., Thinking beyond Boundaries: Transnational Challenges to U.S. Foreign Policy, New York: Johns Hopkins University Press, November 2014, and Isaiah Wilson III and James J. F. Forest, eds. and contributing authors, Handbook of Defence Politics: International and Comparative Perspectives, New York: Routledge Press, July 1, 2015.

3 On Jan. 6, 1991, in a speech marking the 70th anniversary of the modern Iraqi army, then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein boasted that Kuwait was eternally part of Iraq and predicted a long struggle in the Persian Gulf against the “tyranny represented by the United States.” Saddam told the people of Iraq, “The battle in which you are locked today is the mother of all battles. … Our rendezvous with victory is very near, God willing.” See

“The Mother of All Battles,” This Day in Quotes, Jan. 6, 2015, accessible at: www.thisdayinquotes.com/2010/01/saddam-hussein-and-mother-of-all.html. Also see, Dominic Tierney, “‘The Mother of All Battles’: 20 Years Later,” The Atlantic, Feb. 28, 2011, accessible at: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/02/the-mother-of-all-battles-20-years-later/71804/. And see, Kevin M. Woods, The Mother of All Battles: Saddam Hussein’s Strategic Plan for the Persian Gulf War. Book review by Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2009, accessible at: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2009-03-01/mother-all-battles-saddam-husseins-strategic-plan-persian-gulf-war.

4 See Armin Rosen, “Assad’s regime is in huge trouble,” Business Insider, April 27, 2015, accessible at http://www.businessinsider.com/the-assad-regime-is-in-huge-trouble-2015-4; “Syria’s Friends and Enemies Share Fears of Regime Collapse,” Syrian Observer, May 28, 2015, accessible at http://www.syrianobserver.com/EN/Features/29243/Syria_Friends_Enemies_Share_Fears_Regime_Collapse. Also see, Orit Perlov and Udi Dekel, “Syria: Is a Substantive Change in the Balance of Power Emerging?” INSS Insight No. 702, May 29, 2015, accessible at http://www.inss.org.il/index.aspx?id=4538&articleid=9595, and Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt, “Russian Moves in Syria Pose Concerns for U.S. ,” New York Times, Sept. 4, 2015, accessible at https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/05/world/middleeast/russian-moves-in-syria-pose-concerns-for-us.html?_r=0.

5 Dr. Richard Haass has recently referred to this as a return to a propensity toward a “self-help” approach to international relations. See Richard N. Haass, A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order. New York: Penguin Press, Jan. 10, 2017.

6 David Petraeus, “The challenge in Mosul won’t be to defeat the Islamic State. It will be what comes after,” Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-challenge-in-mosul-wont-be-to-defeat-the-islamic-state-it-will-be-what-comes-after/2016/08/12/ce972904-5f2a-11e6-af8e-54aa2e849447_story.html?utm_term=.8e53bae56635

7 Ibid.


8 The adoption and application of the biological sciences metaphor of cancer and metastasis as a descriptive of both the threat of the Islamic State as well as its potential “treatment” was a concept tool and framing device originally conceived at U.S. Central Command (June 2014). By 2015, it was adopted and used more formally and publicly to describe the “diagnosis” of the IS threat and treatment regimen and future “prognosis” of the same by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.

9 David Petraeus, “The challenge in Mosul won’t be to defeat the Islamic State. It will be what comes after,” Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2016.

10 See Andrew J. Bacevich, “‘Government in a box’ in Marja,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 17, 2010 (accessible at: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/17/opinion/la-oe-bacevich17-2010feb17), which spoke to the anticipated and hoped-for promise of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s major operation focused on clearing the provincial capital of Marja in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province, Afghanistan. The op-ed forewarned the problems with implementing the “government in a box” approach for Marja during the first year of McChrystal’s ISAF command. Bacevich’s forewarning, then, and in the context of political-military campaigning in Afghanistan, unfortunately proved prescient: “Yet what matters in Marja is not the fight itself – in that regard, the coalition’s superior forces mean the outcome is foreordained – but what comes next.” This same question, as a cautionary warning, holds as true today as the counter-ISIL coalition looks toward the retaking of Mosul and Raqqa; the real proof lies not in the “retaking” but rather in the “remaking” and the “holding.” Also see, Sue Pleming, “Afghan government-in-a-box is tough sell,” Reuters, Feb. 10, 2010, accessible at: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-government-box-analysis-idUSTRE61M10G20100223 .

11 Again, see note 5 for the genesis and utility of this metaphor.

12 Ishaan Tharoor and Laris Karklis, “The history of Mosul, in five maps,” Washington Post, Oct. 21, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/10/21/the-history-of-mosul-in-five-maps/?utm_term=.26927025db03

13 In U.S. military campaign planning parlance, Phase 1 refers to status quo ante presence and ‘preparatory’ activities (steady-state), Phase 2 refers to deployment and pre-combat ‘shaping operations’, and Phase 3,

traditionally regarded as the “decisive phase,” refers to ‘major combat operations’ (“Execution” phase).

14 See Thomas E. Ricks, “Army historian cites lack of postwar plan for Iraq,” Washington Post, Dec. 24, 2004. Also see, George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Oct. 15, 2005, Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Adventure in Iraq. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006, and Isaiah Wilson III, Thinking beyond War: Civil-Military Relations and Why America Fails to Win the Peace, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 (and 2013 revised edition).

15 Kenneth M. Pollock and Barbara F. Walter, “Escaping the Civil War Trap in the Middle East,” Washington Quarterly, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Summer 2015, pp. 29-46. https://twq.elliott.gwu.edu/sites/twq.elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/Pollack-Walter_Summer%202015.pdf The authors note that, historically, a negotiated settlement to a civil war has required three key conditions. The first is that all of the parties to the civil war must believe that they cannot win a military victory. The second is that the peace agreement must offer all major fighting factions an equitable and sustainable distribution of political power. And third, all of the warring parties need to believe that the terms of the peace agreement will be enforced over time. Also see, Barbara F. Walter, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement,” International Organization 51, no. 3, (Summer 1997), https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/the-critical-barrier-to-civil-war-settlement/AF2E36B866EC5E658266D01C5B00B42F.

16 See Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2011. Also see, “Migrant crisis: Russia and Syria ‘weaponising’ migration,” BBC News, March 2, 2016, accessible at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35706238, and Lisa Ferdinando, “Breedlove: Russia, Instability Threaten U.S., European Security Interests,” U.S. Department of Defense (Defense.gov), accessible at https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/673338/breedlove-russia-instability-threaten-us-european-security-interests.

17 Geoff Dyer, “Nato accuses Russia of ‘weaponising’ immigrants,” Financial Times, March 1, 2016, accessible at https://www.ft.com/content/76a52430-dfe1-11e5-b67f-a61732c1d025.

18 Given all of the problems within Turkey, it will be


important to show how getting the ultimate defeat “right” also helps address that nation’s chronic weaknesses (before full-on implosion occurs).

19 Andrew Osborn and Orhan Coskun, “Russia, Turkey, Iran eye dicing Syria into zones of influence,” Reuters, Dec. 28, 2016. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-deal-idUSKBN14H12V

20 The U.S. experience with the Balkans wars (1991-95) and conflicts (1989-2008) represents a valuable and appropriate most-similar case for use in charting possible pathways forward for resolving the Syria conflict. The parallels between the two cases are starkly real, especially when we consider that the ultimate resolution in the Balkans was based on enlarging the context. For background, see John Zametica, The Yugoslav Conflict (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1992); Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War (London: Penguin, 1992); Samantha Power, Breakdown in the Balkans: A Chronicle of Events, January, 1989 to May, 1993 (Washington: Carnegie Endowment, 1993 ); James B. Steinberg, “International Involvement in the Yugoslavia Conflict,” in Lori Fisler Damrosch, ed., Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in Internal Conflicts, New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993; and Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War, Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press, 1995.

21 Ideationally, that is,… “of, relating to, or produced by ideation; broadly : consisting of or referring to ideas or thoughts of objects not immediately present to the senses.” (according to Merriam-Webster dictionary)

22 Richard N. Haass, “The Unraveling: How to Respond to a Disordered World,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2014.

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Documents

ISAIAH WILSON III AND LTC SCOTT A. SMITSON AFTER MOSUL · Beyond and After Mosul Once again, Mosul serves as a place of grand geostrategic importance to begin to enlarge the context