What would Nixon do?

Obama has come out and said that the USA will go after Daesh (formerly ISIL; this name pisses them off so I'll use it) on either side of the now nominal Iraq/Syria border. That this would ever have been an issue would be mind-boggling if I actually had any faith in those in power displaying any kind of common sense, but alas it was expected.

As the US and allied Arab states launch air strikes on Islamic State (IS) positions in Syria and Iraq, questions arise as to the basis of such military action according to international law.

The legal evaluation differs where operations against IS in Iraq on the one hand and in Syria on the other are concerned.

No questions in my mind. A border is an arbitrary line on a map which only means something if it's enforced. In this context "enforced" means one state controls the actions of parties within their boundaries to the extent that they don't affect parties outside those boundaries. The rump Syrian state doesn't control most of the country at this point, and Daesh roams at will accross the borders Sykes and Picot drew up in the aftermath of the Ottoman empire's collapse in 1918.

Whether you choose to treat Daesh as a rogue state or transnational terrorist group (Iran for example fits both models), if you want to defeat them you have to defeat ALL of them. First rule of fighting any insurgency, or anyone for that matter, is don't leave them a sanctuary. Taking Vietnam as an example, the political constraints against hitting NVA and Viet Cong bases in Cambodia and Laos hobbled the American military. It was only when Nixon took the gloves off in 1970 that these sanctuaries were attacked and disrupted. Even Nixon only gave North Vietnam a taste of what the US could do if it wanted to (even leaving nukes out of the equation), but it was enough to bring the Communists to the bargaining table.

It's an imperfect comparison of course, but the essential lesson of ignoring borders if people are hiding behind them to kill you remains. This brings me back to Nixon.

Looking at it as objectively as I can, I don't think that Nixon was the terrible president he is made out to be. His stepped up attacks on North Vietnam were long overdue, and were designed to get the US out of the war, preferably by winning it. Nixon also thawed things out with China, and as it was said at the time, he was (probably) the only US leader who could do that.

That opinion wasn't the result of Nixon being a nice guy, it was because he had impeccable credentials as an anti-communist, and being ready to smash them if need be is the way you get a reputation like that. It was in fact a conscious "policy" decision, the "madman theory". Putin is running a variant of this right now, and you'll notice that we are reacting to him.

Whether you want to talk about credibility, deterrence, initiative, momentum, the OpFor has most of that and Obama (by extension the USA and the "West") none. That "red lines” fiasco in Syria over chemical weapons (where, again, Putin ate Obama's lunch) was the last straw for any anyone to take Obama seriously, and even his response to this Daesh situation right now is halting, half-assed and indecisive.

Madman theory only really works against parties who have something to lose and is essentially deterrence. Nuking Raqqa (in Syria, self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State) right now would set the tone and establish your "street cred" as truly balls-to-the-wall crazy, but it would cause a lot of other problems. Short of that, I hear that Arab airforces are involved in hiting Daesh now, and have already (Egypt and UAE) been hitting Salafists in Libya. The weak link in all of this is ground troops.

And now this:

Turkey is bracing itself for an unprecedented refugee crisis after as many as 200,000 ethnic Kurds fled across the frontier from Syria in just two days to escape a fresh advance by Islamist extremists.

The influx came after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) captured dozens of Kurdish villages in northern Syria and threatened the border city of Kobane, which was left deserted after most of its inhabitants evacuated in panic.

I've said it before and I'll say it again here: the only answer to this situation is to push back, secure areas of "friendly" populations while arming the able-bodied among them to defend themselves. This is what's sort-of happening in Iraqi Kurdistan, and it's time for Turkey to get off the fence and start throwing their weight around. I understand that there are Kurdish "issues' in Turkey, but Daesh is a bigger problem which will come for Turkey (and Jordan, and Lebanon, etc.) if they are not smashed into the ground. You'll never get them all, but individual wasps only hurt, while a swarm can kill.

I don't know who the USA needs in charge to handle this effectively, but we've got what we've got so fingers crossed that they take some sensible (and sufficiently kinetic) action.