The United States has now been actively at war with terrorism movements since 2001. Throughout that time, it has struggled to find ways to develop some form of meaningful strategy, measure its progress, and give that progress some degree of transparency and credibility to the Congress, the American people and our strategic partners, and the media.

So far, its success has been erratic at best. On most occasions, the U.S. has issued policy statements that set broad goals, but did not really amount to a strategy. There was no real assessment of the situation and the reasons for selecting a given course of action, there was no real plan and set of milestones to measure progress by, there were no real details as to the required resources, and any supporting measures of effectiveness have often added up to little more than political justification and spin.

The United States has had particular problems in describing its counterterrorism strategy in Iraq and Syria, and members of Congress have quite correctly called for a far more explicit statement of what U.S. strategy is, its justification, and some measures of effectiveness. On June 17, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey attempted to respond by outlining the Department of Defense’s counterterrorism strategy in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.

To put it politely, they failed. In fact, if one grades their efforts by the increasingly partisan standards of todays U.S. politics, Democrats in Congress could at best give them a D minus, Republican no higher grade than an F plus, and any mythical moderate could not go higher than an F.

The Outline of a Strategy is Not a Strategy

A summary of Secretary Carter’s testimony issued by the Department’s news service focused on nine key areas of action – most of which were little more than a paraphrasing of the same generalities the White House had issued in its fact sheet on November 7, 2014:

The United States will not let up until it has destroyed ISIL and al Qaida affiliated terrorists that pose dangers to the homeland, friends and allies in the region, the secretary said…Today, 35,000 U.S. forces are postured in the region, allowing the military to "strike ISIL and al-Qaida terrorists and check Iranian malign influence."

U.S. core interests also assure Israel's "continued qualitative military edge, and why we're working with our Gulf partners to make them more capable of defending themselves against external aggression," he added.

Those interests also are why the United States is supporting efforts for political settlements to crises throughout the region, from Yemen to Libya to Syria, the secretary said.

ISIL presents a "grave threat" to U.S. friends and allies in the Middle East and around the world, from Africa and Europe to parts of Asia...because of its "steady metastasis." It also threatens the U.S. homeland, he added, based on its avowed intentions to strike and recruit in the United States.

President Barack Obama's counter-ISIL strategy draws from all U.S. national security agencies to degrade and defeat ISIL…The strategy and military campaign make up a global coalition that reflects a worldwide consensus to counter the ISIL threat. The counter-ISIL strategy is based on nine lines of effort that reflect the "breadth of this challenge and the tools needed to combat it,"

• First, the crucial political effort to build more effective, inclusive, multi-sectarian governance.
• Second and third are the DoD-led efforts to deny ISIL safe haven and build partner capacity in Iraq and Syria. DoD, alongside coalition partners, is conducting a bombing campaign from the air, advising and assisting Iraqi security forces on the ground, and training and equipping trusted local forces.
• Fourth is enhancing collection of intelligence on ISIL.
• Fifth is disrupting ISIL's finances.
• Sixth and seventh are to counter ISIL's messaging and disrupt the flow of foreign fighters to and from the extremists.
• Eighth is providing humanitarian support to people displaced by or vulnerable to ISIL.
• Ninth is protecting the homeland by disrupting terrorist threats.

As Secretary Carter testified, the “effective execution of all nine of these lines of effort by the United States and its coalition partners is plainly necessary to ensure overall success.”

In a separate DoD news report, Chairman Dempsey was quoted as saying, “The nine lines of effort should be considered in the aggregate...This campaign focuses on building partners who are taking responsibility for their own security. As I've said before, this is an Iraq-first strategy, enabled by the coalition, but not an Iraq-only one. And, again, certainly not a military-only one.”

The news report went on to say that, “The chairman stressed the need for patience several times in his testimony. He said the U.S. military is at the beginning -of a complex, nonlinear campaign that will require a sustained level of effort over an extended period of time to promote durable regional stability over the long term.’”

There is no indication that Dempsey explained what this broader campaign would be. If anything, the Department of Defense reporting on Dempsey’s testimony seemed to indicate that he was calling for a strategy where the critical effort consisted largely of unilateral changes in the policies and actions of regional states:

We seek a region that is inhospitable to our enemies and that promotes and protects our core national interests...It’s my military judgment that an enduring victory over ISIL can only be accomplished by those nations and stakeholders in the region who have as much and actually more to gain or lose than we do…

The U.S. military has responsibility for just two of what are a total of nine lines of effort, he noted: bombing ISIL targets in support of indigenous ground forces and training and equipping Iraqi security forces.

In all nine areas of action there seem to important areas where the U.S. still has no strategy and/or has little credible chance of effective execution of an action plan.

1. The crucial political effort to build more effective, inclusive, multi-sectarian governance

The key problem with the “crucial political effort to build more effective, inclusive, multi-sectarian governance” is that simply setting a broad goal is not a strategy. It is not clear what action that United States. is taking to create “more effective, inclusive, multi-sectarian governance” in Iraq.

The DoD press release stated that Carter’s testimony focused on the following points,

Despite the challenges, positive signs exist, the secretary said, noting that he has met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Iraqi Kurdistan Regional President Masoud Barzani, and last week with Speaker Salim al-Jabouri of Iraq's parliament. "They fully understand the need to empower more localized, multi-sectarian Iraqi security forces and address persistent organizational and leadership failures," the defense secretary told the House panel.

Because a sovereign, multisectarian Iraq is more likely to seal a lasting defeat of ISIL, the United States must continue working with and through the Iraqi government in all actions, including Kurdish and Sunni tribal forces support, he said.

U.S. efforts must reinforce inclusivity and multi-sectarianism and not fuel a reversal to sectarianism, which would make the lasting defeat of ISIL harder, not easier, Carter noted.

…Syria's battle with ISIL extremists is more complex, Carter said, citing the lack of a legitimate government partner and many competing forces in that country." Our train-and-equip mission in Syria has been challenging…but the requirement for a capable and motivated counter-ISIL ground force there also means we must persist in our efforts."

… Despite the challenges, positive signs exist, the secretary said, noting that he has met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Iraqi Kurdistan Regional President Masoud Barzani, and last week with Speaker Salim al-Jabouri of Iraq's parliament. "They fully understand the need to empower more localized, multi-sectarian Iraqi security forces and address persistent organizational and leadership failures," the defense secretary told the House panel.

Because a sovereign, multisectarian Iraq is more likely to seal a lasting defeat of ISIL, the United States must continue working with and through the Iraqi government in all actions, including Kurdish and Sunni tribal forces support, he said.

U.S. efforts must reinforce inclusivity and multi-sectarianism and not fuel a reversal to sectarianism, which would make the lasting defeat of ISIL harder, not easier, Carter noted.

Like the other statements by senior U.S. officials to date, the Carter and Dempsey testimony did not come close to presenting a comprehensive strategy for Iraq. It did not address the lack of progress in bringing Arab Sunnis back to support of the government, the tensions between Kurd and Arab, the role of Shi’ite militias and Iran, the problems Abadi and al-Jabouri face in taking effective action, the need for supporting civil and civil-military activities by the United states. and other outside states, any conditionality in U.S. aid, or any other key aspect of U.S. action.

More broadly, Carter’s testimony virtually admitted that the United States. had no strategy for Syria. Moreover, it did not address the need to deal with other terrorist and extreme groups like the Al Nusra Front. It did not address the critical issue of Iranian influence in Iraq and Syria, or discuss any aspect of U.S. cooperation with its Arab allies and other states. It did not address the problem of Russia, or deal with the growing humanitarian nightmare in Syria and Iraq and the destabilizing impacts of the fighting and refugees on neighboring states.

Dempsey largely highlighted key problems without describing a strategy or solutions:

The situation on the ground in Iraq and Syria is the result of three converging issues, Dempsey told the panel. The first, he said, is that “several governments are struggling for political legitimacy, because they are not sufficiently pluralistic or they are not sufficiently accountable to their citizens.” The Iraqi government has pledged to create a unity government, he added, but has been unable to do so yet.

“Second, the centuries old Shia-Sunni rivalry has come to the fore,” the chairman said. “Weak states are less able to assert independence amid the tug-of-war between sectarian regional powers.”

Third, there is increasing competition between religiously moderate Muslims and more radical elements, Dempsey said.

“These three challenges, as they intersect, make for an environment that will test the resolve of the region’s security forces,” the general said. “Enduring stability cannot be imposed from the outside in. Stability must be cultivated from the inside out and, importantly, owned by regional stakeholders.”

2. and 3. DoD-led efforts to deny ISIL safe haven and build partner capacity in Iraq and Syria. DoD, alongside coalition partners, is conducting a bombing campaign from the air, advising and assisting Iraqi security forces on the ground, and training and equipping trusted local forces.

The Carter and Dempsey testimony on “DoD-led efforts to deny ISIL safe haven and build partner capacity in Iraq and Syria, the bombing campaign from the air, advising and assisting Iraqi security forces, and training and equipping trusted local forces was curiously lacking in substance and depth.

It did little more than make some vague claims about airpower, and raise serious questions about the ability to recruit adequate numbers of Iraqis for the train and assist mission. It ignored the lack of progress in the Syrian train and assist mission – an effort that had all of 90 Syrian recruits in March 2015 for a training effort with a goal of training 3,000 to 5,000 in calendar 2015, and that had at most 180 men who had stated training in June 2015 – out of some 6,000 recruits, 2,000 who had been vetted, and 1,500 who had made it through screening.

DoD's airstrike campaigns in Iraq and Syria have "produced some clear results in limiting ISIL's freedom of movement, constraining its ability to reinforce its fighters, and impeding command and control," Carter said. Airstrikes also helped local forces make key achievements, such as the success of anti-ISIL forces that took the key town of Tal Abyad over the weekend…The airstrikes are also buying critical time and space required to carry out DoD's second line of effort -- developing the capacity and capabilities of legitimate local ground forces," Carter said.

Carter said a combination of disunity, deserters and "ghost soldiers" -- who are paid on the books but don't exist -- have greatly diminished the capacity of Iraq's security forces. Given such challenges, ISIL's lasting defeat requires local forces on the ground which…the U.S. military will continue to develop and enable.

Putting U.S. combat troops on the ground as a substitute for local forces will not produce enduring results," he said. Both anti-ISIL campaigns in Iraq and Syria require capable, motivated, legitimate, local ground forces to seize, clear, and hold terrain for a lasting, enduring defeat, he said.

After Ramadi's fall, DoD and White House officials determined that the existing strategic framework was still the correct approach, but enhanced training of the security forces was needed and the process to equip them was too slow, Carter said.

Essential equipment deliveries, such as anti-tank capabilities and equipment to counter improvised explosive devices have since been expedited to Iraqi security forces and Kurdish and Sunni tribal forces, he said.

…"We also determined that we could enable Iraqi security forces with more tailored advice and assistance, including critical outreach to local Sunni communities"… And based on DoD recommendations, the president authorized deployment of 450 personnel to Iraq's Taqqadum military base in Anbar province to establish an additional site for advising and assisting the Iraqi security forces, Carter noted.

U.S. forces will also provide much-needed operational advice and planning support to the Iraqi security forces Anbar Operations Center…"We expect that this move will open a new dimension in our and Iraq's efforts to recruit Sunnis into the fight and to help the Iraqis coordinate and plan the critical effort to roll back ISIL in Anbar province,"

…But the lack of Iraqi security forces recruits has slowed training, the secretary said, adding that while 24,000 recruits were anticipated by this fall, only 7,000 were trained, in addition to 2,000 counterterrorism service personnel…All sectors of the Iraqi government must make a greater commitment to the recruitment and training effort, he said.

Syria's battle with ISIL extremists is more complex, Carter said, citing the lack of a legitimate government partner and many competing forces in that country." Our train-and-equip mission in Syria has been challenging…but the requirement for a capable and motivated counter-ISIL ground force there also means we must persist in our efforts."

Carter vowed to continue airstrikes against ISIL forces in Syria, and to work with Syrian neighbors to impede the flow of foreign fighters into and out of Syria and Iraq. "Success in this campaign can and must be assured…It will take time and require consistent effort on everyone's part -- the entire U.S. government, our entire international coalition, and most importantly, the Iraqi and Syrian peoples."

As for Dempsey, he was quoted as saying, “We are on path to deliver that which we’ve committed to delivering, which is security forces -- not just the [Iraqi security forces], but also the peshmerga and now the Sunni tribes -- we are on path to deliver to them the capability to confront ISIL inside of their sovereign territory.” He did not provide any “whens,” “hows,” or “whats” to explain what this meant, or how the U.S. would\ implement this area of action.

Neither Carter nor Dempsey were reported to have provided any indication that meaningful numbers of Iraqi Sunnis could be recruited and trained. They did not show that the United States has a credible approach to limiting or reducing to the tensions between Iraqi government Shi’ite forces and Kurdish forces, or that it has a clear strategy for dealing with Iraq’s dependence on Shi’ite militias and the Iranian Al Quds force. They did not show that there was a clear plan to reequip and restructure Iraqi ground and air forces.

As for Syria, the testimony did not indicate how the United States would “persist” and do in given efforts, to a given end and over some estimate of time. There no projected cost, or indication of what Arab and other outside aid will be provided. There is no indication of what level of capability would be provided relative to what balance of ISIL, Al Nusra, and other violent extremist forces. No mention was made of Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, the Arab Gulf states, or the broader Kurdish problem in spite of the fact that United States seems to be providing air support to Syrian Kurdish forces.

Creating the Right Kind of Train and Assist Missions

As for specific problems in the U.S. strategy for the train and assist efforts, Carter and Dempsey did not address two long-standing problems. The first is the fact that the train and assist mission is now sharply limited in character and does not involve direct aid to combat troops.

This cedes a critical aspect of the mission to Iran and ensures longer-term Iraqi government dependence on Shi’ite militias and Kurdish forces. It also ignores the fact that key challenge in making the train and assist mission effective does not lie in providing Iraq with more weapons or with forward air controllers – although both steps are necessary. The U.S. needs to act upon a key lesson from Vietnam – and from all past train and assist efforts. Generating or rebuilding forces in the rear is not enough, and is an almost certain recipe for failure. New or weak forces need forward deployed teams of advisors to help them actually fight.

Insurgents cannot be allowed to have a massive intelligence advantage on the ground, to learn the weakest links in the government forces and their defense, attack them, roll-up the weaker units, expose the flanks and position of the better units, and then force them into what as best is partially organized retreat.

No one can create effective combat leaders and forces from the rear. New and weak units need to have a small, but experienced team of combat leaders embedded with them. New combat leaders and units need months of on-the-ground help in getting the essentials of combat operations right. Modern forward air control is critical, and the use of drones can make it effective far beyond the line of sight, but so are human intelligence, and the constant assessment of tactics, defensive positions, and patrol activity.

Forward deployed train and assist teams – usually Special Forces or Rangers – are necessary to spot good combat leaders and warn against weak, ineffective, or corrupt ones. They are needed to provide intelligence backwards that static or inexperienced Iraq leaders and units can’t. They are needed to be a voice for active patrolling. At the same time, they needed to be a second voice when resupply, reinforcement, regrouping, and relief are truly needed. Someone has to bypass the barriers, rigidities, and sectarian/ethnic prejudices in the chain of command and send the right signals to the top. The Iraqis can’t do this yet.

Forward deployed train and assist teams are needed to encourage effective civil-military action in cases where the Iraqi unit has a different ethnic or sectarian bias or simply thinks in tactical terms rather than how to create a local capability to hold, recover, and build at both the military and civil levels.

These teams are needed now! They have been needed in Iraq and Afghanistan from the start. The same is true of a larger and more aggressive air campaign to support them and the overall efforts in both Iraq and Syria. There are times when support from the rear is enough. Several thousand years of military history is a warning that there are no times when leading from the rear is adequate in actual combat.

Making Effective Use of Airpower

The U.S. has shown that airpower can have a critical tactical effect in some cases in both Iraq and Syria. But, it has failed show it has anything approaching a credible strategy for using air power, and the public data it is providing on the overall nature and effectiveness of its use of air strikes seems to be little more than vacuous spin.

The same DoD news article that describes the Carter and Dempsey testimony references a report on Special Report: Operation Inherent Resolve - Targeted Operations Against ISIL Terrorists .

This report presents two tangible pieces of information. One is a map that has been designed to exaggerate gains again ISIL by drawing lines based on its peak areas of advance and that shows the areas where it has actually consolidated power. As a result, it claims that, “ISIL can no longer operate freely in roughly 25 to 30 percent of populated areas of Iraqi territory where it once could. These areas translate into approximately 13,000 to 17,000 square kilometers (or 5,000 to 6,500 square miles).” The latter part borders on the ridiculous since much of the area is desert and no one controls in on a day-to-day basis because no one is there.

The second consists of damage claims as of May 8, 2015. It has no particular strategic value and does nothing to explain or justify the strategy behind the US use of airpower. It simply reports totals by category: exactly 6,278 targets damaged or destroyed, including 77 tanks, 288 HMMWVs, 427 staging areas, 1,779 buildings, 1,415 fighting positions, 152 oil infrastructure targets, and 2,140 other targets.

These numbers have often been surprising static over time, and it is far from clear what value damaging a building, staging area, or fighting position really has, much less hitting 2,140 “other targets,” which make up more than a third of the total. It has no more value than various claims by U.S. officials that U.S. airpower has killed some 10,000-12,500 ISIL and other extremist fighters—claims that raise serious question when other U.S. background briefings indicate that ISIL only had had some 20,000 to 32,000 volunteers as of March 2015.

AFCENT has separately updated its sortie data to cover the entire air campaign through May 31, 2015. These data show that the U.S. had flown a total of 16,164 strike sorties and 5,578 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sorties in Iraq and Syria since the start of the air campaign in August 2014. It had also flown 5,872 airlift and air drop sorties, and 10,701 refueling sorties. This is a total of 21,742 strike and ISR sorties, and 38,315 sorties of all kinds.

These data provide a rough picture of total activity, but say nothing about effectiveness and strategy. Moreover, only 3,837 sorties actually released a weapon. This is roughly 1 in 4 strike sorties that actually hit a target, 1 in 6 releases per strike and IS&R sorties, and 1 in 10 ten strikes per sortie of all kinds.

Peak weapons releases have varied sharply by month, but reached a peak of 2,308 in January 2015 and then dropped back to a low of 1,600 in March 2015 before rising back to 2010 in May. The unclassified data on the key targets is uncertain, but most (80 percent or more) seem to have been flown in close support of active ISIL operations in areas like Kobane, Bajii, and the Mosul Dam areas where there was little risk of killing civilians and relatively few seem to have been “strategic” in the sense they struck at ISIL directly.

To repeat points made in earlier Burke Chair studies, the end result is an air campaign whose overall strategy and effectiveness is unclear, and that is strong on total sorties flown (and cost), and weak in terms of both combat power and strategic effect.

It is not the kind of air campaign that can build Iraqi morale, deal with the collapse of weaker units, destroy key ISIL and al Nusra cadres, and cover the period in which Iraqi forces must be rebuilt or provide the kind of force necessary to support a more effective strategy in Syria. If the U.S. wants to limit Iranian influence, increase its influence in Iraq and Syria, buy time for Iraqi force development, and put real pressure on ISIL and Al Nusra, it is going to have to do more.

The U.S. also needs to rethink the steady rise in limits to its rules of engagement, and restrictions on the use of airpower. And, in its strategic communications in describing what it does. The U.S. cannot afford to make avoiding all civilian casualties a strategic objective. It ends in making human shields a constant in every form of irregular and potentially conventional war as well. It also ignores the grim realities of war.

There is nothing humanitarian about saving a small number of civilian lives and opening whole towns and cities up to prolonged occupation by threats like ISIL. There is nothing humanitarian about prolonging wars, producing far higher net casualties, and adding to the massive totals of displaced persons and refugees. The horrors of war are not shaped by a single target or moment in time, but by the cumulative impact of a conflict. There also is nothing cowardly about using force at a distance to strike at forces that butcher minorities, civilians with different religious beliefs, and prisoners of war.

4. Enhancing collection of intelligence on ISIL

Neither Secretary Carter nor Chairman Dempsey seem to have provided any indication of a strategy for enhancing intelligence collection. Media reporting indicates that the current actual trend may be negative because of problems in maintaining the sorties rates for drones. There is no open source data on Iraqi and Syrian rebel intelligence efforts, or on others aspects of U.S. and allied intelligence efforts to explain this aspect of U.S. strategy.

It is also clear from talking to intelligence experts and officials that there is no coherent guidance to the US defense intelligence community, or the intelligence community in general, as to how to collect intelligence on the ideological efforts of ISIL and Al Qa’ida, or produce net assessments of how the efforts of extremist groups like ISIL compare to the efforts of governments and other rebel organizations and efforts. The focus remains threat oriented around actual hostile activities in a war where strategy requires as much attention to threats posed by the inadequacies and repression of local and host governments, and U.S. misperceptions of the local situation and tactical mistakes, as intelligence about actively hostile movements and forces.

5. Disrupting ISIL's finances

There are no open source data on the effectiveness of U.S. efforts to disrupt ISIL finances. There is limited media reporting to indicate that ISIL may have growing financing problems but the scale of any such problems is unclear and other reports indicate that ISIL and other extremist movements have found other ways of raising the =funds they need. . The overall U.S. strategy, methods, allied cooperation, and effectiveness are not addressed in the reports on the strategy hearing.

6. Counter ISIL's messaging

Media reports suggest that State Department efforts to counter ISIL messaging have had little effect and been disrupted by internal bureaucratic problems. Other reporting indicates that the Department of Defense has done no better. It is unclear that the U.S. has any coherent strategy or effort in this area.

Statements like the testimony of Justin Siberell – the Principal Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism in the State Department's Bureau of Counterterrorism: Budget, Program, and Policies – to the House Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade on June 2,2015 – deserve far more attention. The current effort is at best evolving far too slowly and under-resourced.

Similarly. A statement by Undersecretary of State Richard Stengel to Secretary Kerry on June 9, 2015 – following a meeting in Paris on international cooperation -- warns that fundamental changes are required in both the US effort and international cooperation,

When it comes to the external message, our narrative is being trumped by ISIL’s. We are reactive – we think about “counter-narratives,” not “our narrative.” The external message of Pairs, which was summarized in the press as “stay the course” and “the strategy is working, was not well received…We prepared a playbook going into the meeting for inter-agency use and use by the partners, which said the meeting was not going to be business as usual.” This was not reflected in the meeting itself or its outward messaging.

Once again, a policy goal is not a strategy. There is a lack of clear direction from the White House and NSC, as well as interagency coordination, cooperation, and consistency of effort.[1] Senior intelligence officials lack a clear set of priorities to deal with the ideological threat and challenge, both inside and outside the defense intelligence community.

[For examples of reporting on such problems, see Anne Gearan, “ U.S. attempts to combat Islamic State propaganda ,” Washington Post, September 7, 2014,; Paul D. Shinkman, “ What Is the Point of This Week's Terror Summit? ,” USN&WR, Feb. 16, 2015, Jim Sisco, “ Some thoughts on how to change the narrative on violent Islamic extremism ”, Foreign Policy, January 29, 2015,; Eric Schmitt, “ U.S. Intensifies Effort to Blunt ISIS’ Message ,” New York Times, February 16, 2015. March Mazzetti and Michael R. Gordon, “ ISIS is winning the Social Media War, U.S Concludes , International New York Times, June 12,2015.]

7. Disrupt the flow of foreign fighters to and from the extremists.

There are no open source data on the effectiveness of U.S. efforts to reduce the flow of foreign fighters to and from the extremists. There is limited media reporting indicating that ISIL is still able to attract significant numbers of volunteers and that relatively easy transit though Turkey is still a major problem

8. Providing humanitarian support to people displaced by or vulnerable to ISIL

The United States is a major aid donor and plays a key role in aiding Syrian civilians. It is unclear, however, that it has a strategy for dealing with the rising number of Syrian, Iraqi, Yemeni, and other internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees, or for post-conflict recovering in such states. UN reporting raises questions about the overall adequacy of international aid funding and support for refugees.

9. Protecting the homeland by disrupting terrorist threats

It is not clear that present U.S. strategy for Syria and Iraq will produce a lasting disruption of terrorist attacks. Some experts believe that U.S. military intervention in Iraq and bombings in Syria – along with UCAV strikes on the leadership of such movements -- will stimulate ISIL and Al Nusra Front interest in attacks on the United States but this is unclear.

So is the extent to which U.S. operations in Syria and Iraq have reduced the present and future threat.

Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

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