WASHINGTON—The Paris terrorist attacks seem likely to compel President Barack Obama to consider military escalation against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria. But that probably will not mean dramatic moves like launching a U.S. or international ground offensive or accelerating aerial bombing in hopes of eliminating the global threat of violent extremism.
“You aren’t going to bomb ISIS back to the Stone Age,” Anthony Cordesman, a longtime Middle East analyst, said Saturday.
Cordesman and other American defense analysts said Obama may deepen U.S. involvement incrementally by, for example, embedding U.S. military advisers closer to the front lines of battle with Iraqi forces and with anti-ISIS fighters in Syria. But that and similar moves to intensify U.S. support for local forces is unlikely to produce quick results.
As Cordesman sees it, years of tragic terrorist attacks like Paris are almost inevitable, and there are no near-term solutions.
Stephen Biddle, a George Washington University professor of international affairs, said the Paris attack may create a political imperative to do more militarily against ISIS, but he thinks it would be a mistake to launch a U.S. ground war.
“To defeat ISIS decisively would require hundreds of thousands of Western ground troops, but nobody thinks the ISIS threat warrants that scale of commitment, and in fact it doesn’t,” Biddle said.
At the core of the U.S. strategy in Iraq is a belief that unless local forces are empowered to retake and secure their own territory, any military gains the U.S. could make by leading the charge would be short-lived. In Syria, Obama had been unwilling to get more involved in a civil war, although he recently agreed to send a few dozen special operations forces.
