During the 2016 US presidential race, Donald Trump did not speak much about the national security policy and foreign policy, except for his promise to defeat the "Da'ash" organization. But when he was elected, he stepped up the military campaign against the former President Barack Obama. In the end, this campaign was successful. Through a military campaign led by these organizations and the Iraqis, he lost most of the areas he controlled in Iraq. And Sur Of.
About a month ago, Trump declared victory over a "preacher" and wrote in a tweet: "We have defeated us and that is the only reason we are there." He pointed out his intention to withdraw military forces from Syria. Finally, Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo of the Davos Economic Forum said that the United States "was defeated in Syria and Iraq through the coalition that it established and is made up of dozens of countries."
But many security experts have rejected the Trump administration's claims, arguing that although the Da'ash organization is in a bad state, it is too early to say that it has been defeated. Like many insurgent movements, the Da'sh organization adapts to changing circumstances.
It began as a "secretive" organization, based on terrorist attacks and guerrilla warfare, and then turned into a parallel force using conventional military methods, and now seems to be returning to its roots and beginnings. Although he controls a small part of the land in Syria, he still has 30,000 armed men. The organization migrates to different parts of the world, fighting government forces from Nigeria to Afghanistan and the Philippines, while its terrorist attacks and criminal operations continue in Iraq. Ilan Berman, a member of the US Foreign Policy Council, warned of the dangers of believing in the defeat of a "preacher," saying: "Victory is over, and if it seems tempting, it is very early to announce it."
History Lessons
As always, history presents evidence of what might come next. In the past, the total defeat of an ideological-driven enemy required three things:
First, hostility must end completely on the battlefield and in areas controlled by the enemy. Given the enormous American military power, such a condition would be easy to achieve.
Second, confidence in the same ideology as that of the enemy must be weakened. This is even more difficult, especially when this ideology depends on religion.
Thirdly, the political, economic and social factors that helped the enemy to grow and become a large force must be changed at first, otherwise the enemy will emerge again.
During the Second World War, the United States was able to do the three things. Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan were defeated militarily and then occupied. This allowed the occupation forces to uproot and delegitimize the expansionist ideologies of the two countries and to restructure the political regimes in Germany and Japan to prevent the return of those Ideologies, and the United States must change its concept of conflict with the "preacher" not as a war in which the outcome should be decisive, but a permanent threat.
But the counterinsurgency is different. The United States is not in a position to fully control the territory and can not guarantee the implementation of the three steps. It can defeat the enemy's military forces, but it does not have the proper influence to delegitimize extremist ideology comprehensively or change the conditions Led to their emergence. This is exactly the situation in Iraq and Syria now. The step of victory is there, but the first and second steps do not exist and may never be present.
The United States should decide whether it has achieved what it has achieved so far, and whether harming it is enough for it, although less gratifying than overt victory, it may be enough. Although it is the brutality of the Da'sh organization that prompted America to confront it, the basic strategic rationale for the US intervention was the belief that if a "target" organization achieved its goal, it would carry out more violent actions, some of which would target US targets abroad or Maybe at home too. "We have to fight them there so that we do not have to confront them here in the United States," former US President George W. Bush said.
Even if the above is true, which is uncertain, it is no longer the case. The local powers in the Middle East, whether governmental or militia, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces, are unlikely to allow the organization to initiate attacks against US targets from their land, Because they realize that this could lead to an American response to it, but at the same time the United States is unable to achieve its decisive defeat for reasonable strategic costs.
Changing the concept of war
That is why the United States must change the concept of its war with a "preacher," not as a decisive war, but as a permanent threat. America must continue to support its government partners and militias to ensure their military supremacy over extremists. Washington must press its partners to address the political, economic and social factors that strengthen the organization's presence, while at the same time understanding that they are unlikely to change the system they are benefiting from. But in general Trump is wrong. The organization of Da'ash has not been defeated, His threat is still present, albeit less than before.
America's long-standing involvement in Iraq, which began in 2003 and finally in Syria, shows that it can not fundamentally change the environment of extremism. A "cheerleader" or something like him will survive, and his bad ideology will continue to grow in areas where Characterized by a vacuum of power and dark corners of the Internet, encouraging terrorist attacks regardless of the circumstances in Syria and Iraq, no matter what the United States can do there.
Stephen Metz, a writer at the World Politics Review