Nicholas Burns: ‘Airstrikes Alone Are Not Going to Defeat’ ISIS

BREWER: “Well, you bring up the Islamic State, ISIS or Daesh as it’s called, ISIL in some cases when it’s the president talking. Is it possible for Turkey, for NATO, for the European Nations, for the United States to gain the upper hand against ISIS without Russia’s, at the bare minimum, cooperation?”

BURNS: “I think it is possible. It’ll be — it would be advantageous to have Russia inside the coalition. And it was very interesting that President Obama, quite consciously, in his public remarks this week has left the door open to the Russians. But the Russians aren’t making it easy on themselves, because they’re directing the vast majority of their air attacks on Syrian, Kurdish and Arab rebel groups that are opposed to the Assad regime. But the big challenge here is that airstrikes alone are not going to defeat the Islamic State. President Obama’s been right to put together this air coalition. But unless you have Arabs and Kurds, fighting the Islamic State on the ground in both Iraq and Syria, that group will not be defeated. And that gets us to U.S. policy. The administration has not wanted to send significant arms shipments on a sustained basis, to the Syrian and Kurdish groups fighting the Islamic State, or the Sunni Arab groups fighting the Islamic State in Syria. And that is the next step for the United States, to empower those groups on the ground, to defeat the Islamic State. And try to prevent that organization from — “

BREWER: “But —“

BURNS: “— funding and financing the kind of terrorist attacks that we saw in Paris.”