However much Republican presidential candidates may complain about President Obama's strategy to defeat ISIS, they will end up embracing his policies in the end should any of them actually win the White House. Why? Because, given that the American public is against further military involvement in the Middle East, most of the contenders have already promised, as Obama earlier did, not to send U.S. ground forces into the conflict. This leaves all of them with the only strategy that can work -- namely Obama's approach.
Obama's strategy has developed out of the military realities and regional constraints of the Middle East. First, he understood from the outset that, once there would be no American expeditionary forces, he could only employ air power to degrade ISIS troop strength and military assets. Since mid-August 2014, the U.S. and its coalition partners have flown more than 8,000 sorties against ISIS that have badly hurt the Islamic State militants, now estimated at 30-40,000 fighters.
Second, Washington is training both Iraqi troops and Free Syrian Army forces to handle most of the ground fighting, as a way to assure that the US does not have to intervene.
Third, Washington has emplaced US Special Forces in Syria and Iraq to instruct, assist and deploy with the Arab forces. It now has over 3,500 in the area, with another 1,200 to be sent in the Spring.
Fourth, the U.S. continues to exert pressure on the Iraqi government to include more minority Sunnis in its decision-making and has insisted that mostly Sunni soldiers lead the fight to retake the Sunni-majority cities.
Fifth, it is working to restart peace talks in Geneva to resolve the Syrian civil war and undermine ISIS's raison-d'etre for existence. Its most controversial move is to veto any idea for a no-fly zone over Syria due to Turkish opposition, the danger of air clashes with Russia, and the high costs of the operation.
Much of what Obama is doing is showing signs of success. First, Obama obtained the necessary change of leadership in Iraq, helping to bring in a new Shiite Prime Minister who is willing to work with Sunnis. Next, his bombing campaign has gradually reduced the territory seized by ISIS by at least 25 percent. Obama has won back important cities, starting with a surprise victory in the Iraqi border city of Kobani, with the help of Kurdish troops, which forced an Islamic State withdrawal at a great loss of its fighting force.
Subsequently, Obama's coalition has retaken the Iraqi cities of Tikrit and Baiji and has forced ISIS out of Sinjar in Iraq, cutting off the critical supply route between the two ISIS-controlled cities, Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. US air-strikes killed the infamous be-header, Jihad John.
Last November, Obama launched "Operation Tidal Wave II" that took out ISIS oil fields, refineries and hundreds of tanker trucks in Syria. In December the alliance snatched back Ramadi in Iraq. The US Department of Defense released a slew of figures describing the breadth of the coalition destruction -- some 119 tanks; 340 High Mobility Vehicles or high maintenance trucks that carry men and materials; 510 staging areas; 3,262 buildings; 2,577 fighting positions; 196 oil infrastructure facilities; and 3,680 other targets. Such blows have critically damaged the ISIS insurgency.
Last Christmas, the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, released an audio address just days before Ramadi's fall, revealing the extent of his group's plight. Baghdadi blustered on about how well his Caliphate is doing, but he also delivered this stark message: "We urgently call upon every Muslim to join the fight..."
His plea comes at the same time that his monthly terrorist magazine, Dabiq, put out the word that ISIS needs more Sunni professionals, doctors, mechanics and computer programmers -- an acknowledgement that highly trained Muslim technicians no longer are eager to enlist in ISIS.
Finally, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a humanitarian news organization that relies on a network of activists and non-traditional sources, announced that it had obtained an internal ISIS memo issued in January, stating that ISIS is cutting in half the salaries of all of its fighters.
ISIS is, indeed, in severe monetary distress. A Rand Corporation study in May 2015 estimated that ISIS had accumulated almost $875 million in assets by June 2014 and was receiving an annual income of more than $1 billion. Most revenues came from taxes on everyday life in the cities ISIS holds. But that income has plummeted as traumatized residents have fled.
So, too, ISIS's oil sales to Syria, Turkey and Iran have gone down precipitously due to the alliance's bombing campaign. And bank looting, once highly profitable, has slumped as ISIS has lost control of many cities. Further two US air strikes in January destroyed separate ISIS cash depots, one hitting a Mosul bank, wiping out over a half billion dollars in cash and gold. In December 2015, the UN Security Council passed an extra tough resolution hardening financial prohibitions on ISIS, exerting more pressure on its accounts.
There have been other moves to tighten the noose on ISIS. The Turks closed their borders to potential ISIS fighters crossing over into Syria. That was a surprise since Prime Minister Erdogen had weaved and bobbed and ducked on this border issue for months as he was more interested in defeating the Kurds than defeating ISIS. There is, too, the so-called Saudi Arabian coalition of Sunni forces that may potentially intervene against ISIS -- though the Saudi's home-grown pro-ISIS fundamentalists and its ongoing feud with Tehran may constrict its efforts. A shadowy hacking group, Anonymous, has pledged to disrupt ISIS's on-line operations. Lastly, due to its supreme arrogance and unimaginable crimes, ISIS has rallied a mighty coalition of all the major nations on earth against it. These psychological hits on ISIS have dented its veneer of success. It can't hold cities and can't take new ones. It is losing followers.
This does not mean that ISIS's collapse is imminent. Remember that ISIS is a death cult. It is willing to employ the bloodiest measures available to use against its enemies. It ruthlessly organizes super-sized car bombings, launches bulldozers stuffed with explosives driven by suicide bombers against its foes, mounts armed drones, uses tunnels to hide in or plant dynamite charges, sets off chemical weapons such as chlorine or mustard gas, and undoubtedly would use a dirty bomb if it could get its hands on one. In the remaining two large cities ISIS still retains, Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, any battle to retake either city would result in the creation of municipal wastelands, as has already happened in Ramadi.
Victory against ISIS would, at best, be defined by disrupting its lethal activities, pushing it out of urban areas, sending it back to guerrilla warfare. This is hardly the most positive of reckonings. And, as well, the question will arise whether Arab troops can contain renewed underground insurgencies -- or at least hold them to manageable levels. However, any coalition triumph that forces ISIS into retreat also effectively punctures a hole in the myth of its invulnerability and may open up new opportunities for peace in the Middle East. Even a Republican presidential candidate might well endorse such an outcome.