{"id":17499,"date":"2014-12-16T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T19:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=17499"},"modified":"2014-12-17T11:00:40","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T00:00:40","slug":"strike-from-the-air-the-campaign-in-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/strike-from-the-air-the-campaign-in-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Strike from the air: the campaign in 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>Below is an extract from ASPI\u2019s publication released today,<\/em>\u00a0Strike from the air: the first 100 days of the campaign against ISIL<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s apparent that the campaign to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL is going to last for years. Apart from a steady squeezing of ISIL, which has slowed its advance and destroyed quantities of American military equipment, the coalition\u2019s strategy has achieved little. ISIL\u2019s position at the end of 2014 remains strong. Among its strengths is its continuing capacity to develop effective propaganda that helps to recruit foreign fighters. ISIL continues to have a substantial funding base and is well armed. Core areas of territory remain solidly under its control in Syria and Iraq. ISIL\u2019s broader weaknesses include the unattractiveness of its ideology to any but a small minority of potential recruits. The organisation\u2019s shift to more conventional military capability has overextended it and caused it to suffer significant casualties, which mightn\u2019t be sustainable for long.<\/p>\n

The US\u2019s position is strengthened by its unparalleled capacity to use air power, which will degrade ISIL over time and prevent it from making easy gains of territory. However, that strength has to be offset against a set of broader problems and challenges for the US. First, it\u2019s clear that President Obama will keep the US military role limited. Washington won\u2019t deploy large-scale ground forces. Second, there\u2019s no credible longer-term strategy to address the Syrian crisis. In effect, Obama has created a holding strategy that contains ISIL in Iraq and hits obvious targets in Syria, and is waiting for a new US President in 2016 to develop a more definitive strategy.<\/p>\n

In Iraq, some early signs in October and November suggest that some units in the Iraqi military are regaining confidence and the capacity to take the fight to ISIL. On paper, the Iraqi military is large enough to make short work of ISIL, but that \u2018strength\u2019 must be offset by the reality that ISIL remains firmly in control of much of the Sunni areas in Iraq. There\u2019s yet to be a turning point in the campaign. Baghdad remains under regular terrorist attack and vulnerable to the same psychological pressure that caused much of the Iraqi military to throw down its weapons in mid-2014. It\u2019s not yet clear that the Iraqi Government has turned a corner in maintaining a firm grip on power or in persuading Sunnis that their interests are fundamentally helped by Iraqi unity.<\/p>\n

Syria is a humanitarian disaster, in the midst of which ISIL remains the most effective anti-Assad force (with Jabhat al-Nusra and its Islamic Alliance a close second). The US strategy<\/a> for \u2018expanding ongoing assistance to the moderate Syrian opposition to develop their capacity to provide local security for communities\u2019 is the least developed and least credible part of the anti-ISIL campaign. In the absence of a more thorough-going and credible international response to the Syrian disaster, there\u2019s no supportable case that victory against ISIL is assured.<\/p>\n

The international coalition against ISIL is holding together in the sense that a number of countries are prepared, at least for now, to support a constrained campaign of airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. Support for training the Iraqi military is much more limited, and so far the plan to train a Syrian \u2018moderate\u2019 force could best be described as an idea looking for friends. There\u2019s no obvious international mechanism allowing the coalition to plan a longer-term strategy to counter ISIL. The coalition was flung together in great haste in September, and the challenge will be for it to survive into 2015.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s role in the international coalition is limited to airstrikes on targets in Iraq and an evolving commitment to training elements of the Iraqi Army. On 25\u00a0November, the ADF Chief of Joint Operations, Vice Admiral David Johnston, briefed the media about a series of RAAF strikes<\/a> against \u2018a large, well-established and hidden network of caves and bunkers that were concealed in a hill side\u2019 near Kirkuk. Around a hundred ISIL militants were reportedly killed in that operation, which involved a ground attack by Kurdish fighters. Admiral Johnston said that Defence was \u2018scoping options\u2019 to increase ADF training numbers, should the government want to make a further commitment to the operation. Overall, his realistic assessment was that progress against ISIL had been \u2018modest\u2019 and that the situation in Baghdad was \u2018fairly fragile\u2019. Both Australian roles\u2014airstrikes and training\u2014are indefinitely sustainable, given the ADF\u2019s capacity to rotate forces. The broader challenge for Canberra will be to explain how this fits into a credible international strategy with a realisable political objective.<\/p>\n

Peter Jennings is executive director of ASPI and a co-author of <\/em>Strike from the air: the first 100 days of the campaign against ISIL.\u00a0Image (c) Demap. Used with permission.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Below is an extract from ASPI\u2019s publication released today,\u00a0Strike from the air: the first 100 days of the campaign against ISIL. It\u2019s apparent that the campaign to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL is going to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":17500,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[743,17,275,191,993,837,895,274,31],"class_list":["post-17499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-airpower","tag-australia","tag-foreign-fighters","tag-iraq","tag-isil","tag-isis","tag-islamic-state","tag-syria","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStrike from the air: the campaign in 2015 | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/strike-from-the-air-the-campaign-in-2015\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Strike from the air: the campaign in 2015 | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Below is an extract from ASPI\u2019s publication released today,\u00a0Strike from the air: the first 100 days of the campaign against ISIL. 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