The president just doesn't get it.

• Author: Marsh, Gerald E.
• Position: Worldview - Barack Obama and the Middle East crisis

PRES. BARACK OBAMA does not have a strategy. To have a strategy one first must have a policy, and the Administration appears unable to articulate one. A policy sets out what we want to achieve; a strategy is formulated so as to implement that policy. Destroying the Islamic State (ISIS) cannot substitute for a policy. The military branches are very familiar with this hierarchical and structured approach of having the civilian authorities formulate a policy and, in response, finding an effective strategy, defining roles and missions for the various services, and, finally, working out the tactics. However, in the absence of coherent and consistent policy guidance from the Administration, we have military commanders trying to fill the gap. As a result, it is increasingly true that "the public face of American diplomacy wears a uniform." It should not.

Consider the war in Afghanistan: the U.S. response after 9/11 was planned and executed brilliantly, and all the warnings from those who, with trepidation, remembered the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, were wrong. Unfortunately for America, the post-war strategy was deeply flawed, not least because one cannot formulate an effective strategy in the absence of coherent, consistent, and realistic policy objectives.

The same was true in the second Iraqi war. If one believed the rhetoric of the time for both wars, the principal policy goal of the George W. Bush Administration was to create democratic states, but democracy--along with its prerequisites of civil society and the rule of law--cannot be imposed externally, and certainly not by military means. If the policy goal indeed was to create a democratic state in either of these countries, it failed miserably and resulted, at best, in what Fareed Zakaria--in The Future of Freedom--calls an "Illiberal Democracy."

What then should be the essence of U.S. policy in the Middle East? Two realistic policy goals would be maintaining the flow of oil from the region at a reasonable price and curtailing the spread of intolerant Islam that creates the fertile ground for terrorism. How they are achieved--through diplomacy, war, or other means--is a matter of strategy. Because of recent advances in oil and gas production, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking"), huge reserves of oil and gas have been made available in the U.S. so that the prevention of the spread of intolerant Islam has taken political precedence over oil.

Nonetheless, even though the U.S. would be buffered by these new sources of energy, the disruption of the international oil markets certainly would be raised as a concern, but much oil will continue to flow from the Persian Gulf even in the presence of conflict since the Gulf rulers depend on oil money for their continued existence. Even today, in the areas controlled by the Islamic State, under very adverse conditions, oil continues to flow through a decades-old oil smuggling network. According to a September report in the Financial Times: "This lucrative unofficial trade encompasses northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southern Turkey, parts of Iran, and, according to Western officials and leading international experts, is where ISIS earns the bulk of its money."

Pres. Obama has stated that his "strategy" is to "degrade and defeat" the Islamic state, but defeat of the Islamic State cannot be achieved solely by military means and, most especially, not by Western military actions such as air strikes--even if given the cover of a coalition containing Arab nations; nor can military operations decrease the spread of beliefs upon which radical Islam is based. Only moderate Muslims can stop the spread of radical Islam and the intolerant Wahhabi form upon which radical Islamic ideology is founded. For the West to attempt to do so by military means simply will exacerbate the problem and serve to create--and recruit--additional Islamists.

More importantly, the presence of Western forces alleviates the necessity that the regional powers take responsibility for resolving what basically is a religious and ethnic war that owes its existence not only to such divisions but to poor governance. These powers have the capability of creating a new and prosperous Middle East but, to do so, they will have to confront...