17
October 2014
Past Event
Can the Obama Administration’s ISIS Strategy Work?

Can the Obama Administration’s ISIS Strategy Work?

Past Event
Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. Headquarters
October 17, 2014
17
October 2014
Past Event

1015 15th Street, N.W., 6th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Speakers:
Lee Smith

Former Senior Fellow

Andrew J. Tabler

Senior Fellow, Program on Arab Politics, Washington Institute

Criticism of the Obama administration’s Middle East strategy is no longer restricted to the president’s usual opponents. Former defense secretary and CIA director Leon Panetta – the latest in a series of departed senior officials to go public with their misgivings – now suggests that the president’s own policies helped make possible the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. “When we stepped out of Iraq,” Panetta observed in a recent interview, “we created this vacuum” – and ISIS is currently filling the space.

Can the same administration now make good its mistakes and repair the damage? Will a strategy limited to coalition aerial bombardment and ancillary assistance to local fighters be sufficient to “degrade and destroy” ISIS, or are the U.S. military officials and regional allies who argue that ground troops will be required correct? In either case, to what extent are longstanding, region-wide issues – like the anti-Sunni policies pushed by Iranian assets in Iraq and Syria – a fundamental obstacle to complete success against ISIS?

To address these and other directly related questions of Middle East strategy and diplomacy, Hudson Institute hosted a timely discussion on October 17 with Lee Smith, Andrew J. Tabler, Michael Pregent, and Hussain Abdul-Hussain.

Event hashtag: #HudsonISIS

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