On September 19, six weeks after the US began air strikes on Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) targets, France announced that a Rafale fighter jet had destroyed a terrorist supply depot in northeastern Iraq. From that one air strike, the multinational military coalition attacking Daesh emerged. Since then, eight other countries have either bombed suspected Daesh targets in Iraq or Syria or declared that they will in the future. The relatively sudden formation of the coalition — a group that otherwise agrees on little else — participating in the kinetic military element of the international campaign against Daesh is remarkable, though unsurprising. Many of these governments had been eager to intervene in Syria’s civil war for years and, more recently, to attack Daesh. Yet, it was only once US President Barack Obama authorised the first air strikes that the rest signed up, having secured the full weight of US military power to backstop the effort.
The White House has touted the emergence of this military coalition as evidence that it is avoiding the mistakes of the George W. Bush administration’s more unilateral approach to the Iraq war. As US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel declared: “A broad coalition has been and will continue to be a cornerstone of our strategy against [Daesh].”
Obama deserves credit for pursuing this approach. If he believes military intervention is a good idea, then sharing the burden and broadening its political legitimacy is wise. US officials even acknowledged that Syria would not have been bombed without the overt participation of other countries.
That said, given that Pentagon officials now say openly that the military component of the war against Daesh will take several years, Americans should view the praise that the administration has showered on this coalition with caution. The contributions and commitments of partners inevitably dwindle over time as they recalculate their national interests, perceive a diminishment in threats or run out of money and bombs. There is every reason to believe that this will be the case with the US’ nine military partners as well.
First, while the Obama administration rightly emphasises that air strikes alone will not defeat Daesh, the commitment of kinetic military power is the most meaningful and consequential action that coalition members can take. The effect of bombing people and things is immediate, graphic and easy to document. Unlike with less concrete activities, such as preventing the spread of extremist ideology, each country should be responsible and accountable for any collateral damage caused or noncombatants harmed by the bombs it drops. Thus, while the US State Department has emphasised the nonmilitary contributions of 55 countries in countering Daesh, pay particular attention to those that willingly participate in actual combat operations — the current total is nine.
Second, watch for military participants to scale back their commitments or leave the coalition altogether. In April 1991, a US-Britain-France coalition was formed to enforce a no-fly zone over the territory of Iraq, north of the 36th parallel. One year later, it established another no-fly zone south of Iraq’s 32nd parallel. However, in practice, only US aircraft attacked Iraq’s air-defence radars and surface-to-air missiles when the coalition was threatened. Moreover, in 1996, when Washington and London announced that the southern no-fly zone would expand to the 33rd parallel, France refused to patrol within this area. Soon after, France quit both no-fly zones altogether, on the grounds that what had begun as a primarily humanitarian mission had become a tool to punish Saddam Hussain.
Similarly, the March 2011 air war over Libya began with eight countries participating in air strikes against the security forces of Muammar Gaddafi. But five of the countries had to reduce the tempo of their air strikes at various times when they ran out of munitions. Denmark was limited in what it could bomb, as it lacked targeting intelligence. France and Italy withdrew their aircraft carriers after five months and Norway stopped participating after six months; its defence minister announced it couldn’t “maintain a large fighter jet contribution during a long time.” Unsurprisingly, given its vastly superior military and intelligence capabilities, the US eventually played both the supporting and lead roles in Libya, and we should expect this with regard to Daesh as well.
Third, beware of the national caveats — those rules of engagement that restrict what militaries can do within a foreign country. In Afghanistan, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) countries were deployed with an elaborate set of instructions about where, when and how they could operate, which included: No night operations, no combat patrols beyond a certain distance from bases or hospitals, no air strikes and no joint patrols with Afghans. A US Army colonel who had commanded a brigade combat team in the eastern part of Afghanistan in 2009 later explained to me how his staff laboured to carefully craft narrow tasks that ISAF militaries could actually perform. Because these were largely noncombatant roles by design, this significantly increased the risks faced by US ground troops — some of whom rebranded ISAF as “I Saw Americans Fight”.
As expected, there appear to be national caveats built into the anti-Daesh coalition. European countries have declared that they will only conduct air strikes in Iraq, while Arab countries bombing Syria, so far, have almost exclusively attacked static targets, such as storage buildings, training compounds and oil refineries. If the bulk of Daesh resources and fighters retreat to Syria, will European air forces agree to attack them there? As Daesh becomes more mobile and widely dispersed, the targets will become more dynamic and time-sensitive. Will the Arab governments agree to commit additional combat aircraft and assume additional risks to noncombatants by bombing the adaptive Daesh forces?
As Cornell University government professor Sarah Kreps found in her excellent book on this topic, two primary factors determine why states assemble and participate in military coalitions: “(1) A state’s time horizon, which is a function of the directness of threat; and (2) the operational commitment, or how resource-intensive the intervention is expected to be.” If one considers this, it was no coincidence that only the US bombed the Khorasan group, because none of the other coalition members apparently perceived these handful of militants as a threat.
Americans should welcome, but be sceptical, about what Obama described as “an unprecedented international coalition”. In the months after 9/11, the then US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, often pointed out how 90 countries were participating in “the largest coalition in human history” in the global war on terrorism. That initial level of commitment dissipated as time passed and as the US pursued its war on terrorism in a manner that many former coalition members fundamentally opposed. Rumsfeld also liked to say: “The mission determines the coalition; the coalition must not determine the mission.”
An easy prediction is that at some point, some members of this coalition will want to redirect their air strikes against Bashar Al Assad’s regime. When that becomes the mission, what becomes of the coalition?
— Washington Post
Micah Zenko is a fellow with the Centre for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations.
