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GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): The debate over crafting a coalition moves next to Congress, when Secretary of State Kerry testifies at a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
So, how much support is the U.S. getting for its coalition?
For answers, we turn to retired Colonel Derek Harvey. He was an intelligence officer and special adviser to General David Petraeus, and he is now director of the Global Initiative on Civil Society and Conflict at the University of South Florida. And Steven Simon, he was senior director for Middle Eastern and North African affairs on the National Security Council staff from 2011 to 2012. He’s now a senior fellow at the Middle East institute.
Thank you both for joining us.
Colonel Harvey, how well is this coalition that we keep talking about coming together, from your lights?
COL. DEREK HARVEY (RET.), Former Army intelligence officer: Well, I think it’s too early to tell at the moment, but there are major concerns.
I applaud the efforts to hold the conference in Paris. And the right things are being said. But, given that, moving beyond that, the coalition is going to be required to actually do some heavy lifting. And the test will be in the substantive and meaningful actions by coalition members, contributing in the kinetic realm, as well as just contributing verbally and with information campaigns and some legal mechanisms to diminish recruitment.
And that means an Arab country or countries need to get out front and be there in the kinetic operations, and not just offer in-kind assistance, air refueling, intelligence support, basing. They need to be participants in this, because it can’t be the Westerners doing this alone.
GWEN IFILL: Steven Simon, do you see that happening, the involvement from the Arab countries that Derek Harvey is talking about?
STEVEN SIMON, Former National Security Council staff: Well, I think it is going to be an uphill battle for Washington.
Secretary Kerry has approached it with his customary energy, but I think the president has given him a very hard job. The Arab states whose cooperation we’re seeking are mostly concerned about unseating Assad in Syria.
They’re concerned about regime change there. They’re not so concerned, I think, about defeating ISIL, or ISIS. They have got — they have got their goal, and they have been maneuvering toward that goal for several years now, fighting essentially a proxy war in Syria against Assad.
So what the United States is asking them to do, really, is to shift gears and change direction in a fairly major way. Now, I don’t think it’s an impossible battle in terms of air support. I mean, real kinetic, as Derek Harvey put it, kinetic support for U.S. operations from the United Arab Emirates and perhaps from Saudi Arabia.
But the Saudis seemed very focused on providing arm-and-train help for the fight against ISIS. The UAE has staged air operations, and they staged them rather far from the United Arab Emirates, as far away as Libya. So it’s quite possible they would join the United States in these kinetic attacks, in the air attacks that we’re talking about, but I think these will take a while to arrange.
These are complicated things to work out, to harmonize. The United States needs to work with these other countries on divisions of labor, on deconfliction, on the specific signals, so that the two sides can tell who’s friend and who is foe. There are a lot of technical issues that need to be — that need to be sorted through. And I think that that is all going to take time.
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