His [Kilcullen’s] assessment will be sobering. “Whoever is the president in January 2017 is going to deal with a situation substantially worse than now,” he says. “We could be looking at an Isis blitzkrieg in 2016. You’re looking at spikes in unrest in Europe. It’s hard to see how anything could be better in 2017.”
The tendency of the Obama administration to pretend everything is fine is as out of touch as Republicans who “think the world is going to end”.
“We have to acknowledge that this string of engagements since 9/11 have been a string of defeats,” Kilcullen says.
In Syria the West has to commit more military forces to defeat Isis there on the ground by putting “flesh against steel”.
America, he fears, has forgotten how to translate military victory into political stability. Even one of Obama’s signal achievements — killing Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011 — made things worse, he argues.
Bin Laden was isolated and marginalised but the Obama administration could not resist succumbing to “hubris and complacency”…
The David Kilcullen Collection (merged thread)
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