Kim Cragin
The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime has reopened the debate on the U.S. military presence in Syria and the wider Middle East. The United States has three primary interests in Syria: averting adversaries’ potential possession of chemical weapon stockpiles, preventing an Islamic State resurgence in the region and accompanying external operations against the West, and limiting regional instability more generally. But the Islamic State’s resurgence has already begun to some extent. Islamic State fighters killed 139 people during an attack on a concert hall in Moscow, Russia, in March 2024. An Islamic State plot shut down Taylor Swift’s concert in Austria in August 2024. Then, in October, the FBI arrested an Afghan man and juvenile for planning an Election Day attack in Oklahoma City. The latter two attacks were halted due to intelligence and law enforcement investigations, but they feel a little too close for comfort.
Some critics have argued that this resurgence is the result of a reduced U.S. military presence in Syria and Iraq, and its withdrawal from Afghanistan. They believe that U.S. intelligence cannot provide sufficient indicators and warnings from a distance. Others argue that even if U.S. intelligence is up to the task, the current approach of periodic air strikes or raids conducted from “over the horizon” will not work. These critics draw on prior studies of decapitation operations and observe that they rarely have long-term effects. I have expressed my own doubts, arguing that over-the-horizon strikes might be too risky for senior decision-makers because they make it difficult to achieve the necessary pace of operations.
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