The New “Three R’s” of America’s ISIS Strategy, Explained

The United States is now shifting its strategy in the fight against ISIS, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said in testimony on Tuesday to the Senate Armed Services Committee. These changes, Carter said, “can be described by what I call the three R's.” Those are: the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Iraqi city of Ramadi, and raids into ISIS territory.

This is not a transformative change to US strategy against ISIS, but it does show some revealing things about what's working and not. Here's why the US is now shifting to focus on two specific cities — and the factors that complicate America's new approach.

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“You get a lot of intelligence during raids,” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, says. The raids also free fighters from prison “who have an enormous bone to pick with ISIS after being tortured and slated for execution,” Gartenstein-Ross continues. These fighters could “add a multiplying effect” on the battlefield.

“At some point, I just expected the US to get smarter in the way it's fighting,” Gartenstein-Ross says. “It's possible that's happening now, though I'm cautious about giving too much credit.”

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