By Rachel Brock
The recent attacks in Paris have refocused global attention on the war with the Islamic State (also referred to as ISIS). Within the United States, scholars, military advisers, and policymakers disagree about the appropriate US strategy to combat ISIS. While party lines, pathos, and different ideologies complicate the domestic conversation, international disagreements about how to best eliminate ISIS create another layer of diplomatic hoops through which the United States must maneuver. Essentially, the debate boils down to the extent to which the United States should intervene militarily against ISIS: some pundits argue that the US should not intervene at all; others argue that a full-scale military campaign is the only viable policy option; still others argue for a mid-line approach, in which targeted airstrikes and limited military actions will best eradicate ISIS. While all arguments have their merits, a limited intervention approach proves to be the “best of bad options”. I argue that the United States must escalate its military campaign against ISIS proportionate to the group’s increasing capabilities, but that a full-scale intervention is neither advisable nor the most effective US strategy. By contextualizing the Islamic State’s rise and current situation, and then applying Clausewitzian and Sun Zi’ian lenses to ISIS and US strategy, a proportionate escalated intervention strategy becomes the clear policy choice. While valid arguments can be made against such intervention, this approach enables the US to best respond to ISIS’s changing capabilities, and ultimately provides the most effective policy forecast moving forward.
In order to defeat the Islamic State, one must first understand them. In short, ISIS rose to prominence after one of its leaders, Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, splintered from al Qaeda in the mid-2000s. It has been rejected by many terrorist organizations as being too radical and too violent, but receives support from other infamous terrorist organizations, including al-Nusra Front and Boko Haram. In late 2014, al Qaeda cut all ties with ISIS and denounced it as a “notorious intransigence”. In June of that year, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi changed ISIS’s name to the Islamic State and declared it to be a caliphate, ruled by himself as caliph. The United States has carried out campaigns against ISIS since its creation, but its efforts to destroy the organization have greatly expanded since the onset of the war in Syria (2011-present). The Atlantic recently ran a cover article entitled “What ISIS Really Wants”, in which the author Graeme Wood examines the history and the psychology of ISIS. He finds that ISIS is a rational, Islamic extremist group that gains its legitimacy through territorial acquisition and psychological manipulation, adheres to strict and ancient principles, and promises to bring about the apocalypse. He then identifies five areas in which the West has failed to fully understand the Islamic State. Devotion is key—specifically that ISIS follows an extremist form of Sunni Islam that, while not representative of the majority of Muslim beliefs, attracts very dedicated followers. He also examines the main difference between ISIS and al Qaeda in this section; ISIS derives its legitimacy as a caliphate from its control over physical territory, while al Qaeda operates more as a cockroach-like organization—one that does not need control over physical territory to plot their attacks against the “Far Enemy”. Wood proceeds to develop his analysis on the role of territory, and then looks to ISIS’s promised ultimate fight against the West. Finally, he suggests that Muslim religious leaders may be able to reframe ideas that ISIS supports, such as the ideas of offensive jihad and slavery, to decrease ISIS’s attractiveness to militant Islamists. In this way, ISIS will be delegitimized ideologically, and lose its appeal as a radical Islamic organization. The main takeaway of the article: up until this point, the United States and the West have classified ISIS as a member of a large, homogenous group of militant Islamism. This is false and dangerous conclusion. In order for any policy to be effective, it must address the singularities of a particular situation. Before we can devise a successful strategy to defeat ISIS, we must identify exactly what threat we are facing. Further research and intelligence-gathering is required to give us this breadth of knowledge, but at minimum the United States must recognize that the Islamic State controls a vast territory in Iraq and Syria and exerts its influence over between 2.8 million to 5.3 million people (numbers postulated on November 29, 2015). Any policy to destroy ISIS must contextualize its rise and attractiveness to foreign radicals within the chaos of the conflict in Syria, and factor in the greater instability that consumes the Middle East. Policy must also take into account the individual nature of the Islamic State, particularly the ways in which it leverages territorial control and religion to feed its growth, in order to destroy the organization.
The best strategy to eradicate ISIS comes from Prussian general and war theorist Carl von Clausewitz. According to Clausewitz, out of the dominant characteristics of each belligerent side in a conflict, “a certain center of gravity develops, the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends. That is the point against which all our energies should be directed.” Identifying and attacking the opponent’s center of gravity is key to a successful military strategy. The Islamic State derives its legitimacy from its physical control over land and its subsequent functioning as a governing caliphate. Unlike other terrorist organizations, ISIS fulfills many roles that nation-state governments provide, such as levying taxes, providing education, managing the economy, and overseeing “law enforcement”. In other words, the Islamic State’s center of gravity is its control over territory. Any US policy moving forward must dislodge ISIS from its territorial strongholds and eliminate the organization’s ability to function as a pseudo-state. Granted, this is easier said than done. ISIS’s territorial claims are complicated with religious overtones. One of ISIS’s proclaimed goals has been to reestablish a caliphate—this caliphate will act as the political entity and vehicle for Muslim salvation. Failing to immigrate to the caliph’s territory and apply its laws predicts damnation for Muslims who believe in this form of Sunni Salafism. This provides religious motivation for potential members to join the organization, and political leverage for current members to denounce those who do not follow these principles as “apostates” or sinners. Equally important, ISIS does not recognize the current Westphalian system as a legitimate form of political organization. Therefore, all national governments, borders, and conventions that fall within our global system of organization are void. ISIS does not feel the same constraints that countries experience as it determines its actions. It is essential that the United States recognize that ISIS does not operate within its realm of morals and laws when formulating its strategy.
The Islamic State’s actions can thus be understood as a strategy of rational, decisive acts to protect its territorial and organizational integrity. It has adopted Clausewitzian ideas of offensive battle (in this case, offensive jihad) and the use of brutal displays of violence to intimidate. This brutal violence is twofold. It is used as a shock factor for the international community, as a means to provoke a violence reaction from its enemies in the “Far West”. It is also used as a domestic political tool to make populations submit to its will. While the idea of using violence as the means of achieving victory is distinctly Clausewitzian, ISIS also uses violence as psychological manipulation. The organization uses the threat of violence to blackmail, kidnap and infiltrate villages. Espionage destabilizes regions, and mutual suspicions turn neighbors against one another. Once villages are sufficiently weakened, ISIS takes over. Its strategy depends upon its ability to control its populations, extort their resources, and use these material and economic factors in ways that allow it to conduct larger attacks against the West. This follows a more Sun Zi’ian approach, in which the best way to destroy an enemy is to attack his strategy. This may be accomplished by attacking the opponent’s center of gravity, which is in the mind and morale of his soldiers and population. The Islamic State uses Western forms of communication to permeate the West’s collective consciousness and force us to acknowledge it as a formidable enemy. In particular, the Islamic State uses social media to attract foreign radicals to its cause. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have been used to disseminate the organization’s messages to sympathizers abroad. Social media and news coverage also increase ISIS’s exposure to the world at large, as its ghastly acts are discussed in the mainstream news. In this way, ISIS appears to be omnipresent: a continually existing threat that can strike at random anywhere in the world. No city or geographic location is out of its reach. Not only does this strategy minimize the use of force and save valuable resources, but it also sets the West continually on edge. It is in this state of anxiety and paranoia where cohesion among allies disintegrates and policy crumbles.
The United States’ response to the Islamic State has been more Sun Zi’ian than Clausewitzian in nature. While this is ultimately the better of the two strategies to follow, US strategy has been relatively ineffective up until this point because our efforts do not proportionately match the Islamic State’s capabilities. We have tried to minimize our use of military force and contain our efforts to targeted airstrikes. The United States has also provided financing, weapons, and training for local fighters in order for them to carry out necessary grounds operations, but this program has experienced little success. International condemnation of the Islamic State mirrors the US’s views, but we have thus far been unable to capitalize on these shared views to create a decisive anti-ISIS coalition. Wherein then lie the problems to our strategy, and how can we overcome these shortcomings to destroy the Islamic State?
Unlike ISIS, the US is constrained by the conventions of the nation-state system. It must respect the territorial sovereignty of nations, such as countries like Syria and Iraq in which ISIS currently operates, and act in accordance with rules set forth by global political institutions. Namely, the United Nations has denounced the ISIS, and Security Council members have called for a unified fight against the organization. Yet parochial, sectarian, and ideological differences have thus far paralyzed the international community and impeded a truly coordinated response to combat the Islamic State. This is most evident in the entanglement of alliances that have arisen within the context of the war in Syria. Basically, this civil war has become a proxy for great power disagreement, and these ideological differences have prevented any one unified response from developing. Russia staunchly supports President Bashar al-Assad and carries out its own airstrikes against ISIS in Syria to fortify Assad’s regime. The United States and its allies support various rebel groups, yet rebel groups’ lack of coherency (and for that matter, articulated plans for the future), prevents one group from leading the resistance. Tensions between the United States and Russia have arisen over this disparity, and relations between Russia and other countries (notably Turkey) have soured as various military accidents in sovereign territory pit one country directly against the other. ISIS has capitalized on this chaos and filled the security vacuum left by lack of central authority in Syria. A similar situation exists in Iraq. Consequently, the United States must maneuver these difficult conditions when implementing its policy.
The United States must consider its own strengths and weaknesses from a Clausewitzian sense when formulating its strategy. The US’s center of gravity lays in public opinion. Both domestic support and international support are key to US strategic success. At home, the United States population is weary from over a decade of Middle Eastern wars. Understandably, many view escalating intervention in Syria and Iraq as the US getting dragged back into this unstable region. Few are willing to devote more resources, lives, and time to a campaign that promises to promises to be long, entrenched, and costly across many measures. Abroad, the United States relies upon its network of alliances to condone its actions and supplement resources to the campaign, as previously mentioned. Our key allies in the Middle East include Turkey, who has absorbed 2 million of the 4 million Syrian refugees who have fled due to the civil war and the presence of the Islamic State, and Jordan, an active member of the US-led airstrike coalition and another main refuge for displace Syrians. Yet many of these allies share troubled histories with one another that preclude the possibility of a unified campaign.
Some pundits argue that the United States should not escalate its ongoing war with ISIS, given the political, logistical, economic, and ideological difficulties associated with such an increase, compounded with the public’s general desire to stay out of another Middle Eastern war. In particular, Boston University professor and New York Times Opinion writer Andrew J. Bacevich believes that US intervention in the Middle East has produced instability, not stability. Previous large US interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya have destabilized the region, and the United States has “grotesquely mismanaged the occupation [of Iraq] that followed”. It is true—one quick look at the United States’ track record in Middle Eastern conflicts (excluding the First Persian Gulf War) proves that the United States becomes entrenched in long, bloody, costly wars in the Middle East that rarely fully accomplish their policy objectives. The United States continually underestimates the amount of resources and dedication necessary for these types of campaigns, not only to achieve its military objectives, but also to deal with resulting political turmoil after the intervention. Although the United States has become increasingly active post-conflict since its dramatic failure in Vietnam, many argue the US does not have enough vital interest staked in the Middle East to escalate its intervention beyond its current actions.
While this argument accurately analyzes the effects of war weariness on popular support and the United State’s history of somewhat failed interventions in the Middle East, it does not take into consideration that the Islamic State continues to expand and evolve as an organization and as a governing force. Within the last year and a half, ISIS declared itself a caliphate, has conquered vast regions of Syria and Iraq, and used extreme violence and brutality to solidify its reputation as (arguably) the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world. Any strategy to combat ISIS must be adaptive and evolve alongside the threat. The United States must escalate its current intervention to reflect ISIS’s improving capabilities. At the current time, this means increasing its military intervention. This is because we currently lack the necessary depth of knowledge required to combat the Islamic State from a more psychological, or Sun Zi’ian, approach. It takes time to develop necessary expertise to formulate a psychological strategy, time that the United States does not currently have. In order to defeat ISIS, we must ultimately destroy their ideologies of radical Islamism and anti-Americanism. But at this point in time, we must focus on addressing the real security threat that they pose through escalated military intervention.
This can best be accomplished through a Clausewitzian strategy: the United States must destroy ISIS’s center of gravity, its territorial holds, by physically retaking the land. Unfortunately, this implies increased military intervention. It is critical to recognize that escalating military efforts against ISIS does not imply full-scale military intervention—I will shortly argue that full intervention is a bad policy choice—but it does require more military creativeness. In order to take back the land that the Islamic State has conquered, the United States and allies should look to coordinate airstrike campaigns. This includes collaborating intelligence and coordinating of military tactics among allies. This anti-ISIS coalition must also have a shared goal in mind. It cannot simply be the defeat of ISIS; allies must share a common vision of the futures of Iraq, Syria, and the other territories that the Islamic State currently controls in order to avoid conflict among allies after ISIS has been destroyed. Until better intelligence about ISIS can be integrated into policy choices, the United States must respond to and roll back ISIS’s territorial expansion. A policy that remains unchanged, vis-à-vis an increasingly powerful opponent, is doomed to failure. Without the necessary intellectual grounds to devise a purely psychological strategy, the US must increase its military intervention accordingly until such intelligence becomes available. The United States must finally delegitimize ISIS’s draw to foreign sympathizers, which peoples their ranks and funds their operations. But at this point, it is unclear how to attack these more abstract facets of the Islamic State without first physically remove them from their territorial strongholds.
Despite the need for escalation, a full-scale military campaign is not advisable either. It is generally acknowledged that “peace will not come through passivity” (Emma Sky, “The West Must Help the Sunnis Defeat ISIS Ideologically and Militarily”). The United States is already limited by debilitating civil wars in the region, and as time passes, fewer viable policy options remain. But on the other end of the spectrum, peace will neither arrive through a massive boots-on-the-ground campaign. To begin with, the American public will not support another large-scale ground invasion in the Middle East. The previous campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular have drained public morale, in addition to material resources. In the midst of recovering from the Great Recession, the United States just does not have the domestic support to commit to another protracted war across the globe. But if the US were to intervene fully and topple the Islamic State, one could reasonably assume that the aftermath would resemble Iraq post-2003 invasion. Washington is still dealing with a frightening mixture of instable Iraqi governments, violent non-state actors, and incredible sectarian violence. The US’s efforts to rebuild post-war Iraq have little to show for all of the energy expended. It is likely that post-ISIS Syria would turn out similarly. The United States neither wants, nor should, occupy Syria, nor try to rebuild the war-torn country. Without entering the debate about the value of American lives compared to the lives of others, nor the potential responsibility of the United States to intervene as a global superpower / police force, full intervention has further consequences that must be examined. A full military intervention would reinforce the Islamic State’s portrayal of the US as an aggressive Western power trying to impose its will in the region. This will champion its image as a religious force fighting against tyrannical apostates who refuse to allow its continued existence. Finally, a full-scale US intervention against ISIS in Iraq and Syria would test current tenuous alliances. For example, Iran has recently reached out to its Sunni rival, Saudi Arabia, to create a co-operation against ISIS, and has largely unaddressed US actions in Iraq, which it previously opposed. Were the US to mount a full-scale ground campaign, it is likely that these acts would deteriorate such relations. Perhaps even more important, Russia might read such an action as a threat to Assad’s regime, which would lead to a host of further diplomatic difficulties between the two superpowers.
Ideally, the United States would not need to intervene at all against ISIS because the Iraq and Syria could quell these problems domestically. Yet keeping our current strategy while the Islamic State continues to gain momentum, or conversely conducting a full military intervention will both prove to be disastrous. Thus, the best US policy is dyadic: the United States should escalate its military intervention against the Islamic State, but not to the point of full intervention. Equally important, Washington should continue to gather intelligence and develop ways to combat ISIS that do not involve military combat. Ideally, as our understanding of the terrorist organization grows, we can replace military action with other psychological tactics to finally defeat ISIS. It is the best of bad military options, but Washington must address the realities on the ground in its policy creation and choose the best (though imperfect) option available.
Moving forward, the United States should base its policy off a sort of containment. Washington must delegitimize ISIS by eliminating its territorial expansion, and taking its existing land. The Islamic State as an organization is not a sustainable entity: it extorts its populations through harsh tax measures, derives most of its income through black market oil sales, and consistently isolates itself from potential allies through its insistence in the use of savage violence. If its territorial holds are contained and then rolled back, ISIS will lose its credibility in the eyes of foreign sympathizers and radicals. If left to operate under these conditions, ISIS will be bled dry and eventually collapse in on itself.
In tactical terms, this means increasing the frequency and effectiveness of limited airstrikes. This military strategy reduces the need for formal troop involvement, as well as isolates the zones of combat. Hopefully, this will spare the lives of populations who would otherwise be affected, and probably lost, if a full-scale military intervention were to occur. The United States should look to recruit more of its allies to join the airstrike coalition to more equally share costs. In addition, Washington should continue to train local fighters. But it should also create feedback mechanisms to ensure that this training is effective, such as the creation of standardized procedures (that can later be systematically evaluated for effectiveness). Additionally, the United States may want consider mobilizing minority populations who are currently persecuted by ISIS, such as the Iraqi Kurds and Shia, to join in the fight against ISIS and prevent its further expansion.
As with every military strategy, this mid-line approach suffers from important drawbacks. One could reasonably argue that the concept of escalation short of full-scale intervention is too broad and therefore does not spell out a clear path to action. Yet the international community has seen how much the Islamic State has evolved over the last year and a half. Washington’s strategy must be flexible enough to account for future evolutions, and include a clear direction to its plan. Fears about future terrorist attacks, like those that took place in Paris, continue to paralyze policymakers, and prompt some to demand further action against the Islamic State. But as President Obama adroitly recognized, there is no way to guarantee against a terrorist attack. Escalation to the point of full intervention will not lessen this threat—even with the defeat of ISIS, the United States is still vulnerable to attacks. Americans at home are equally capable of perpetrating such acts of violence. This fear should therefore not be given weight in policy discussions. Finally, concerns arise over whether intervention will ultimately eliminate the sentiments that the Islamic State embodies… even if we defeat ISIS, what prevents another terrorist group from taking their place? While these fears are valid, they do not provide a solid argument against intervention, nor do they do anything to address the current threat that ISIS poses.
The war against the Islamic State will be long, bloody, and require considerable expenditure of resources and talent. It occurs in a particularly volatile region of the world and is integrated into a complex social fabric: the escalating war in Syria with its great power implications, the precarious situation in Iraq, new tensions between Russia and the West, and divided domestic opinion promise struggles within Congress and the Pentagon. Yet a policy that focuses on decisive, limited military strikes, extended coalition action, and increased knowledge about ISIS promises the best results for the United States. With such a convoluted situation at hand, one cannot that this policy will act as an overnight panacea and right wrongs that will most likely take centuries to correct. But in pursuing this policy of escalated but limited military intervention, the United States can roll back ISIS’s gains, delegitimize the organization, and ultimately eradicate the Islamic State.
Rachel Brock is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in International Relations and minoring in French.
Sources:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29074514
http://cartogracy.com/conflict/islamic-state/watch/103
http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/Cquotations.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant#Groups_with_expressions_of_support
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/11/12/who-has-contributed-what-in-the-coalition-against-the-islamic-state/
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/19/official-mission-creep-timeline-us-war-in-syria-obama-administration/
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/14/world/middleeast/isis-expansion.html?_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/11/17/is-the-fight-against-isis-the-wests-fight/intervention-in-the-middle-east-has-produced-instability-not-stability
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/11/17/is-the-fight-against-isis-the-wests-fight/the-west-must-help-the-sunnis-defeat-isis-ideologically-and-militarily
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/
http://time.com/3933568/isis-caliphate-one-year/
