In the span of a week, the administration of Donald Trump has ratcheted up the pressure from Syria to Afghanistan, verily from one storm-centre to another. Indeed, the US offensive can be said to have escalated from a cruise missile attack to the dropping of the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat. Never perhaps has the ISIS been so sharply targeted, and whether or not the Pentagon has reacted with greater indignation than warranted will be the topic of geostrategic discourse for some time yet.

Suffice it to register that the US has for the first time used what the military colloquially calls the “mother of all bombs” ~ the GBU-43/B. The death of 36 militants ~ the figure till Friday morning ~ is incidental or to summon a technical expression, “collateral damage”. Crucially, America has bombed what they call a “tunnel complex” that is used by the Afghan affiliate of the Caliphate. The first major strike on the Caliphate’s logistics anywhere in the world in the form of non-nuclear bombing has devastated the connectivity that is used by ISIS to spread its tentacles. And it has been devastated three years after US-led NATO forces pulled out of Afghanistan.

Of course, America has retained a relatively token presence in the country. Thursday’s blitzkrieg has shattered the fragile stability in a fractious land. The development ought not to be confused with America’s response to a “combat situation”. Was it really necessary to engage in what the Pentagon has described as the “first-ever combat use of the bomb?” The attack will almost certainly merit a prominent mention in military history. Yet it is open to question whether the “ISIS-Khorasan”, so-called, will be brought to its knees in a volatile swathe of Asia, indeed the Af-Pak region. Whether ISIS or Taliban, for every militant killed two are born.

It was by any reckoning a studiously calibrated strategy, one that the US has not had the nerve to try in any part of the Arab region, let alone the increasingly vulnerable West. If the media briefing by the White House Press Secretary is any indication, the security of US forces was the uppermost consideration ~ “We targeted a system of tunnels and caves that ISIS fighters used to move around freely, making it easier for them to target US military advisers.

In order to defeat the group, we must deny them operational space.” No bad thing from the strategic perspective, but it shall not be easy for the White House to justify the use of a “never-before” weapon from its arsenal. Mr Trump has come through as a war-mongering President. Though he has never been explicit
on Afghanistan, he had pledged to “bomb the shit” out of ISIS. As on a bevy of other issues, he
has begun to walk the talk, armed with the ‘right munition’.