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In this report, Eric Edelman and Whitney McNamara expand upon the histories, cultures, and foreign policies that have brought the United States to its current juncture in the Middle East. This is the last of four reports that provide detailed regional recommendations based upon the defense strategy outlined in Andrew F. Krepinevich's Preserving the Balance: A U.S. Eurasia Defense Strategy.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) announced the appointment of Whitney M. McNamara as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow. Ms. McNamara, currently an Associate Vice President at Beacon Global Strategies, will support CSBA’s ongoing work on defense innovation, future operational concepts, and emerging technologies.
Eric Edelman, who was the Pentagon’s top policy official during the George W. Bush administration, said one way would be to continue using U.S. special operations forces and air power to advise and back up the same Kurdish and Arab militias alongside which they’re already fighting — only now with an aim toward empowering them against attacks from Iranian-backed forces. “You have to have your own forces there behind them so they have leverage in any political negotiation,” he said.
Former ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman, much in the vein of Dubowitz and Shapiro, advises via email that the administration should “1) make clear that the whole world is watching and will judge the regime by how it responds to peaceful protesters and 2) harness via overt and perhaps covert means print, radio, TV, and social media to highlight the costs of Iran’s cronyism, corruption, economic misrule and foreign adventurism — all the subject of protest slogans raised by the demonstrators, and 3) as part of this effort targeted sanctions against regime figures, particularly IRGC who profit at the people’s expense.” As to the last item, he explains, “The U.S. was very good at this kind of political warfare in the Cold War but we have shown much less ability to wage this kind of struggle since it ended. If ever there were a time to repair that deficiency — this is it.”
As ISIS goes down to military defeat, the United States requires a longer-range plan and an enduring force presence to deny Iran total victory in Syria. Otherwise, the United States risks losing influence as a new Middle Eastern order is being forged.
In addition, some US think-tanks have backed a continued US troop presence in Iraq. A report by the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments called for the presence of 5,000-20,000 US troops in Post-ISIS Iraq to ensure that another ISIS-like insurgency does not emerge.
The U.S. may need to keep as many as 20,000 troops and other military personnel in Iraq, even after the Islamic State is driven out, to stabilize the country, the former head of the Pentagon’s policy shop said Thursday. A postwar force of between 4,000 to 8,000 American troops “is probably sufficient” to help local security forces ensure security in Iraq as ISIS faces defeat in its final stronghold in Mosul, Eric Edelman, the Pentagon’s top policy official during the George W. Bush administration, said in an interview. The U.S. forces would likely be deployed as advisers, not combat troops, to support Iraq’s police and military forces, he said. “We are dealing with an an ISIS that is severely, severely weakened” after nearly two years of constant war against U.S.-backed Iraqi and Kurdish forces, said Mr. Edelman, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a Washington-based defense think tank.
