US Assembles ‘Coalition’ Against ISIS

Cameron: No Military Requests as Part of Coalition Talks

The Obama Administration has made much of its attempts to assemble a new “coalition of the willing” for its latest war in Iraq, and sought to claim a major victory on that front today announcing it had organized a campaign including Britain, France, Australia, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Poland, and Denmark against ISIS.

Secretary of State John Kerry was pushing hard for backing for the coalition, dubbing ISIS a “ambitious, avowed, genocidal, territorial-grabbing, caliphate-desiring quasi-state with an irregular army” that had to be totally destroyed militarily.

Yet it’s not clear at all what officials from those countries in the new coalition are actually signing on for, and British Prime Minister David Cameron insisted no military requests have been made of any coalition members with respect to ISIS.

Officials say that in addition to the NATO members, the US is hoping to cobble together a collection of Sunni Arab nations to join the war, a difficult task since the war is taking place mostly to save Shi’ite Arab nations like Syria and Iraq from further ISIS expansion.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.