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strikes that he talked about, but where's the ground game? where is the u.s. support for the syrian kurds and the sunni arab groups fighting the assad regime and fighting the islamic state? i think i certainly believe that the u.s. can do more to arm those groups because you really can't defeat the islamic state solely through air attacks. >> and where are the arab air strikes? because we have a coalition, but many of these countries, bahrain, the uae, the saudis and jor dada jordanian jordanian, jordanian,ss, some have not flown since august or september? >> that's right. it's almost as if president obama and president hollande need to take a step back after their own meeting to reformulate this coalition. and that means try to find a way to get turkey to do more against the islamic state, try to bring russia in from the cold, that's going to be very difficult, but as you say, the sunni-arab
supporting air strikes in syria, yesterday president hollande and i agreed to step up our coordination on that effort further and do more of that work together. so we're stepping up the pressure on isil where it lives and we will not let up. adjusting our tactics were necessary until they are beaten. that's our first goal. second, we continue to do everything possible to prevent attacks at home and abroad and to prevent foreign terrorist fighters from entering the united states or other nations. since 9/11 we've taken extraordinary measures to strengthen our homeland security in everything from aviation security to border security to information sharing. we've improved upon these actions over time. any time there's an event, we learn something from it. and we continue to refine them. we continue to improve upon our
frankly, the two key countries that have not been fully part of this coalition are turkey and russia. turkey because it seems more concerned by kurdish nationalist groups operating in syria and they have been effective fighting the islamic state than turkey fighting the islamic state directly. russia because it's -- of its hypocrisy, frankly. it says it is concerned about the islamic state, but all their attacks are against the syrian groups opposed to the assad regime. so the big challenge for president obama and president hollande who met yesterday at the white house, can you bring these two countries into the coalition? and right now, of course, there's very poor relationship between them because of the tragedy of yesterday. i hope the russians will reflect on what they have been doing there. quite isolated in this situation, andrea. the only country they are truly linked up with is iran and iran is still a pariah in the middle east. one more thing, president obama deserves credit for having to put together this coalition, for having conducted the 8,000 air
this, quite frankly, andrea, that it's difficult to imagine that this mission could have gone ahead to begin with. it should have been called off before it even started. now some of those involved directly in that operation on the ground and in the air have been suspended pending further investigation, possible administration or administrative or perhaps criminal punishment, andrea. >> thank you so much, jim miklaszewski from the pentagon. for more on all of this, i'm joined by nick burns, former u.s. ambassador to nato. professor at the harvard school of government and former member of the ncs and state department. nick, there's so much to sort through. we'll talk about russia and turkey and how this complicated anything president hollande may do to bring together a coalition against isis. >> reporter: well, an ddrea, it does complicate the stronger coalition.