Obama’s six-point plan for the defeat of the Islamic State (IS) promises more than it can achieve. It is a recipe for continued disaster. Can the strategy be reinforced?

On September 10 President Obama laid out his strategy for dealing with IS. First, it called for significant expansion of the aerial bombing campaign in Iraq. Since mid-August airpower has succeeded in blunting the forward momentum of the IS lightning advance. It has even allowed the dispirited Iraqi Army and the vastly overrated Kurdish Peshmerga, to push back IS from some of the territories it had previously conquered. However, in places like Tikrit the Iraqi Army’s Special Forces have been unable to budge IS from its gains.

… Ahmed S. Hashim isAssociate Professor in the Military Studies Programme at RSIS, Nanyang Technological University.