MOSCOW, September 25 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova - A military strategy, preferred by the US President’s Barack Obama, has proven to be ineffective in fighting terrorism and could stir up insurgency, Alan J. Kuperman, Associate Professor at LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, told RIA Novosti Thursday.
“The new US attacks in Syria are quite consistent with President Obama's previous military actions. He [Obama] does not believe in large deployments of US ground forces. He prefers air power, sometimes supplemented by small numbers of special operations forces, to attack terrorists and/or assist ‘freedom fighters,'” Kuperman argued.
“This approach has not eliminated terrorists, and may actually have exacerbated civil wars and regional instability, but it also has helped prevent another 9/11 style attack on the United States,” the professor added.
The United States started to perform airstrikes and drone attacks against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group’s positions in Iraq after the insurgents, who had proclaimed a caliphate on the controlled areas across Iraq and Syria, advanced in northern Iraq. In September, President Obama outlined a strategy to fight terrorism in the Middle East, which involves the establishment of a broad multinational coalition.
As of Thursday, Washington and its Arab allies carried out some 20 anti-IS airstrikes in Syria, according to US Central Command. The attacks were aimed not only at the IS, butr also against other Islamic fundamentalist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Khorasan.
