there s the concern of a power vacuum if assad is taken out of power and then what role isis plays in the control. and that s an ideal solution. that s the one i favor, but frankly the zwreometry of the battlefield has changed. anderson, after the russian intervention the amount of energy that would be required on our part to take on both assad and isis is beyond what any president could now reasonably demand of this country. and that s a great satdness, and it s going to be a festering sore for a long time. but we re going to handle this sequentially. how difficult i mean the level of russian involvement in syria, it seems like it is even more complicated now than it was during the obama administration before russia got involved. i mean having them on the ground on obviously iran as well, it s much more three-dimensional
sorry, regarding syria, we have used the military against isis. we have attempted in the obama administration to use massive amount of diplomacy with the russians and the syrians. and those are only two of the powers, and they re not synchronsed. if you bring diplomacy, economy, information, we re starting to see some informational tools being used against the russians because they have been the ones supporting isis. as long as assad is there, isis will continue to grow. it was just like isis in iraq. as long as maliki was there, they were thriving. so we can do two things at a time. counter missile assad, bring people to the peace table, and at the same time fight this terrorist scourge with isis. we can t separate them. they re combined.
and i think general hayden is right that in the long run our strategy has to be an isis-first strategy because isis is the main target. isis is the main enemy. and in that context there s only so much we can do to weaken assad. because let s say we were going to keep going on this path, the weaker assad gets, the stronger isis gets. overall the two strongest military forces in syria are isis and assad. we are now in the next few weeks going to return, i assume, to what the trump administration s primary focus has been, the war against isis, the battle against isis. and in doing that, we re going to be going hammer and tongs after isis. isis is also the assad regime s manu tacker. so in a strange sense the assad regime is kind of going to be in corporate alliance with us even though we just bombed them.
that s the complexity, and we have to keep in mind certainly the first priority is the defeat of isis. we ve actually gotten very close. because they re real priority is to get back to that fight against isis. matt, you said mentor mccain was on the in the last hour and was talking about he d like to see the elimination against more attacks against the syrian air force, eliminate their capabilities and creating safe joans. all of that seems unlikely, if it s ever going to happen, until the battle against isis is completed. well, there s the battle of isis, which you re absolutely right about. and then there s also the fact that russia has setup radar, missile systems throughout government areas, russian troops, russian intelligence officers throughout these bases. so to celt up that no-fly zone is you risk a real compication
respects and gives him advice that has moved him in this direction. third of all, he is a human being. he was obviously deeply moved by those pictures as all of us were deeply moved. and finally, to those in the united states who are concerned about getting deeply involved in syria, committing to an ongoing you know, whether it would be a military fight, however that would look, what do you say to them in terms of what the end game would be, who would replace assad. there are a lot of folks who think it could be a quagmire. how do you resolve their concerns? well, i hope we pay attention. we pulled everybody out of iraq. al qaeda moved to syria. al qaeda became isis and assad