November 22, 2015

Hillary Clinton gave a comprehensive antiterrorism speech at the Council on Foreign Relations

The speech was very impressive. Clinton offered a multi-layered but coherent framework, not only dealing with ISIS but also putting that threat within the crosscutting conflicts that are inflaming the Middle East.
For example, instead of just issuing a generic call to get tough on the terrorists, she pointed to the reality that ISIS will be toppled only if there is an uprising by fellow Sunnis. There has to be a Sunni Awakening against ISIS in 2016, like the Sunni Awakening that toppled al Qaeda in Iraq starting in 2007.
That will not happen while Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria is spreading mayhem, terror and genocide. As long as they find themselves in the grips of a horrific civil war, even sensible Sunnis will feel that they need ISIS as a counterpoint to the butchery coming out of Damascus.
Clinton therefore gestured to the reality that you can’t really deal with ISIS unless you are also willing to deal with Assad. Assad is not some secondary threat who we can deal with after we’ve tamed the ISIS monster. Assad created the failed state and the power vacuum that ISIS was able to fill. Assad serves as chief recruiter for ISIS every time he drops a barrel bomb on a school or a market. Assad, as Clinton pointed out, has murdered even more Syrians than ISIS has.
Clinton seems to understand that if we end up allying with Russia in a common fight against terrorism, we will end up preserving Assad, preserving ISIS and making everything worse.
Going hard on Assad, creating no-fly zones for sanctuaries for Syrian refugees to limit his power, ratcheting up pressure on Iran and Russia to force his departure, while on the other hand, supporting institutional reform throughout the Arab world, to revitalize nations as functioning units, would be the answer to the current conflict in Syria. Not an unsustainable stab at nation-building, but better governance from top to bottom.
Before Paris it was possible to argue that time was on our side, that we could sit back and let ISIS collapse under the weight of its own craziness. The Paris attacks refuted that. ISIS is becoming an ever more aggressive threat. The FBI already has over 900 active Islamic State investigations on-going. Lord knows what sort of biological or other weapons the group can get its hands on.
Candidate Clinton laid out a supple and sophisticated approach. The next president will have to provide the action.