WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — On Sunday, France launched massive airstrikes against the Islamic State’s stronghold in Raqqa, Syria in response to Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris, for which ISIL had claimed responsibility.
"If the French want to do anything offensively, whether it’s doing something in Syria or something like that in Iraq, almost invariably that’s going to require US assistance," Heritage Foundation Vice President of National Security James Carafano told Sputnik.
"There’s very little power projection that European countries can do without American military assistance," according to Carafano.
The United States called for a collective response from NATO after 9/11, Carafano noted, and the French have a case to do the same in responding to the Paris attacks.
On Sunday, US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and French Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian agreed during a phone call to intensify joint efforts aimed at countering the Islamic State, a Pentagon spokesman said.
University of Southern California Director of Homegrown Violent Extremism Studies Erroll Southers told Sputnik that France and its allies may have to respond to the terrorist attacks in Paris as if they were an "act of war", which will also require collective defensive measures.
"This is a time for them to agree on a unified front as it relates to intelligence sharing, border control and other related activities that will enhance our collective abilities to reduce the risk of future attacks," Southers, former deputy director for critical infrastructure protection at the California Office of Homeland Security, explained.
Thanos Dokos, who heads the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), told Sputnik that France will have to work with as many allies as possible to militarily defeat the Islamic State in Syria, although military power alone will not bring victory in the long run.
"But looking at the sources and causes of Islamist — Salafist — terrorism and trying to deal with them is the only way to defeat the narrative and the ideology of those fundamentalists in the long-term," Dokos added.
On Friday night, eight extremists wearing explosive belts attacked several venues across Paris, killing 129 people and injuring over 350 at restaurants, the Bataclan concert hall and in the vicinity of the Stade de France stadium.
Several Islamic State-affiliated accounts shared images of weapons and blessings towards its members hours before the Paris attacks, media reported on Sunday.
