US President Barack Obama, faced with deepening crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, is putting the brakes on the notion that US military power can solve either conflict.
While that stance is in keeping with Obama’s long-standing aversion to military entanglements, it comes at a time when the effectiveness of his preferred options is being challenged and there are indications that some in the administration are ready to take more robust actions.
In the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Obama has relied largely on coordinated US and EU sanctions to try to shift Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculus. While the White House can claim credit for inflicting some pain on Russia’s economy, Putin appears to be only getting more aggressive, with Ukrainian officials accusing Russia of sending two military columns across the border on Thursday.
Photo: AFP
During a news conference at the White House, Obama said that Russia likely will face more Western penalties because of its continued provocations. However, he offered no indication that he was considering anything outside the realm of sanctions and explicitly ruled out the prospect of US military intervention.
“We are not taking military action to solve the Ukrainian problem,” Obama said.
He did authorize limited airstrikes earlier this month to go after Islamic State militant targets in Iraq, but the discussion quickly shifted to whether the strikes should extend into Syria, where the group, previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has a safe haven.
Obama at first seemed to largely rule out that option, a decision that came as little surprise, given his long opposition to plunging the US military into Syria, a country ravaged by civil war. However, staying out of Syria got more complicated after the extremists announced last week that they had killed US journalist James Foley and threatened to kill additional US hostages in Syria.
Obama has also had to contend with assessments from others in his administration about the need to move into Syria. The most notable statements came from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey, who said unequivocally that the Islamic State could only be defeated if the US were to go after the group in Syria as well as Iraq.
Obama on Thursday said that he was weighing the prospect of military action in Syria, but he tamped down any suggestion that such a move was imminent.
And he said that even if he were ultimately to authorize strikes, they would have to come in conjunction with a broader regional strategy that addresses political turmoil in both Iraq and Syria.
“Syria is not simply a military issue, it’s also a political issue,” the US president said. “It’s also an issue that involves all the Sunni states in the region and Sunni leadership recognizing that this cancer that has developed is one that they have to be just as invested in defeating as we are.”
Obama convened a meeting of his top national security advisers at the White House shortly after his remarks on Thursday, but officials cast the meeting as more about discussing options than finalizing an approach and said the president was unlikely to make a decision before departing on Tuesday for a trip to Estonia and the NATO summit in Wales.
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