The Trump Administration has made much of its military defeat of ISIS,
portraying the group as virtually wiped out and hyping the victory in
Syria to such a point that for a time he was even intending to withdraw
from Syria outright.
Having backed away from the Syria pullout, the Pentagon is now hard at work trying to shore up commitments from the 79 members of the anti-ISIS coalition, Officials insist they need to keep the coalition together to fight wars against ISIS worldwide in the future.
What was originally meant to be a temporary coalition for an “emergency”
situation with ISIS is also being portrayed as a very permanent thing
now by US officials, with Assistant Secretary of Defense Kathryn
Wheelbarger arguing that the coalition needs to stay together to
maintain “stability” in general.
She said the war against ISIS would look a lot different now than it has
in the past, but that keeping these forces unified for the purposes of
intelligence-sharing and training would be needed to keep fighting ISIS.
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan says that the battle is “far
from complete,” and tried to present not staying in the unified
coalition as complacence. Officials sought to emphasize the presence of
ISIS affiliates across the world.
And yet while ISIS has a proper affiliate in Afghanistan, with a
presence mostly confined to a single province, a lot of the other groups
seem to be ISIS in name only, embracing the label as a way to try to
gain notoriety.
The presence of so many such factions in so many remote parts of the
world is a perfect recipe for a forever coalition, one with increasingly
nebulous goals, but which the Pentagon seems to believe they can keep
much of the world chained to going forward.
Pentagon to Extend ‘Defeat ISIS’ Coalition Beyond Syria
Despite talk of ISIS being almost wiped out, Pentagon to maintain large coalition
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.
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