Early in ISIL’s existence, intelligence analysis firm Stratfor founder George Friedman expressed the anxiety that ISIL could geopolitically reshape the Middle East (www.stratfor.com/...). Given its atrocious behavior, contributions to a further destabilized Syria, and unenlightened aims, ISIL’s aspirations for statehood and territorial expansion must be contained. Containing ISIL involves the same logic as containing the old Soviet Union. It is important to focus on its area of operations and the satellite states around this area. These satellite states are not necessarily part of a neatly contiguous area around Iraq and Syria. Some of them are other states in or around the West Asian/North African region that are subject to the ideological reach of ISIL. Followers of ISIL are brought together not by blood or territory, but by beliefs. Substantially threatening ISIL alliances are forged out of states where powerful political actors or large swaths of the populace are subject to sharing common beliefs with ISIL, namely that of establishing a caliphate subject to a particular philosophical commitment to Sharia and a willingness to ramify this anachronistic vision of the world using practical means such as violence and coercion.
To be sure, the reach of ISIL’s icy hand of death extends to anywhere but a few sympathizers are willing and able to carry out terror in the name of Islam. Yet, managing the security threat picture internally in other states is more a matter of mitigation of harm than containment of ISIL. Herein, I’ll try to give an adumbration of the policy prescriptions of an admittedly cherry-picked set of experts on foreign affairs. This Plan A strategy involves three phases:
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Contain ISIL’s regional influence to only its main area of operations and prevent further expansion/leakage of ISIL’s ideology.
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Conduct a joint air-land campaign against ISIL with coalition and regional allies.
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Reduce ISIL to a landless counterinsurgency and address as a counterterrorism/law enforcement problem for global security services.
David Rothkopf, whose foreign policy/international relations credentials are as long as the Nile, lays out the plausible consequences of the United States choosing the alternative of doing nothing (foreignpolicy.com/...). As tempting as it is to let this be a conflict with a coalition of Iran, Russian, Iraq, and the Assad government on one side and ISIL on another, Rothkopf argues that there is no favorable result from sitting this conflict out. Either ISIL will succeed in controlling territory in Iraq, Syria, and possibly elsewhere or Iran will gain a stronger foothold in the palaces of Iraq and Syria or a stalemate will emerge where a relatively large lawless area in Syria and Iraq will be subject to potentially contagious extremism. The second disjunct is especially plausible, troublesome, and complicated. According to Ray Takeyh and Reuel Marc Gerecht writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, Iran can cynically use the ISIL crisis to leverage its influence on Iraq’s Shiites and the Alawite regime of al-Assad (www.foreignaffairs.com/...). More specifically, Iran has a history of using Shia proxies to check U.S. influence in the region, and of exploiting the Sunni-Shia divide. Rothkopf argues that the red line for U.S. direct intervention lies on the Jordanian border; that is to say, if ISIL encroaches into Jordan then the U.S. will have no better alternative than to become involved. Another argument could be made, however, that the red line was crossed when ISIL orchestrated terrorist attacks on the U.S. and its allies. Jordan is a nation in the region that quietly cooperates with the West and Israel and is a bastion of stability compared to other regional states, and it is comparatively religiously tolerant and moderate. It is not a democratic nation with a healthy rule of law situated within the framework of civil and human rights and free speech (www.hrw.org/...). Furthermore, it could do more to accommodate refugees from neighboring Syria, although the grounds on which some refugees were denied entry seemed reasonable to a degree, prima facie. Yet, it is far better to remain in its current status quo than to be destabilized by ISIL. Preventing the spread of ISIL in Jordan is an important desideratum. With that set of scenarios as a baseline, it is time to explore better alternatives.
Richard H. Kohn—military historian at UNC Chapel Hill—lays out the basics of the approach of denying ISIL room to move and expand (foreignpolicy.com/...). Recognizing that ISIL is now little more than an out-of-control insurgency, the central focus of the this phase of anti-ISIL operations is to prevent ISIL from controlling territory by a coalition of Western airpower and logistics and Middle Eastern ground forces. Western ground forces would confuse the issue in the minds of those in the Muslim world who may see it as yet another crusade from the Christian West. From there, the endgame would be to use intelligence, law enforcement, and counter-terrorism assets to deal with the standard counter-insurgency mission against a diffuse and disembodied ISIL; this could be similar, to a degree, to the way the threat of Al Qaeda in Iraq and Af-Pak was managed. But first, ISIL’s regional reach will have to shrink. This is why the first order of business is to contain ISIL’s spread by limiting its influence on satellite states.
Christian Caryl—author and senior fellow at the Center for International Studies at MIT—argues that the U.S. should encourage the post-Arab Spring Tunisian success story to flourish. The nation is forging democratic institutions and this development is helmed by Nobel laureates. Tunisia represents a status quo the international community can live with: a stable Islamic democracy in the Arab world. This is more than about alternatives for Western planners; this is about providing alternatives to the people of the region. There are problems in Tunis. There is jihadism and corruption at play. None of that takes away from the progress being made there and the potential if economic reforms solidify a more impartial democratic government and a robust civil society in Tunisia. Its presence on the scene as a Muslim democracy buffeted by the rule of law takes away the argument that Arab states must pick their poison in the form of either sociopathic dictators or Islamic extremism. Hopefully, there will not turn out to be an unanticipated dark side to the revolution in Tunisia.
Separately, Caryl cautiously explores the potential for an independent Kurdistan (foreignpolicy.com/...). This was a longed for moment for the late Christopher Hitchens, who regarded Kurdish autonomy as worthwhile, multi-national (spreading into Iraq, Syria, and Turkey), and inevitable. Hitchens wrote wistfully about the potential for an independent Kurdistan, which had the makings of a state denuded of internecine sectarian conflict and willing to cooperation with multilateral institutions (www.slate.com/...). In the linked article, Hitchens speaks to a UN official who fatalistically predicted the Iraqi civil war would spread to the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq. This prediction turned out to be prescient, if one considers ISIL an artifact of the Iraqi civil war—which is quite reasonable if ISIL in Iraq is properly regarded as an insurgency. The Kurds are a large group of Western allies in the region, and one which does not have a state. Are there any good reasons to not support an independent Kurdish nation, which is an enemy of both Al Qaeda and ISIL and is borne out of a history of cooperative, democratic behavior? Caryl discusses the nascent vibrancy of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and large civil society in Iraq, and the success the Kurdish Peshmerga in pushing back against the ISIL incursion from Mosul. This has represented a territorial expansion for the Kurds; an expansion into territory the Iraqi military could not control but may at some point want back. There is some measure of détente between the Kurds and the Turkish government, as well as increasing partnership between Iran and the KRG in the fight against ISIL. Above all, an independent Kurdistan would be economically supported by its oil resources, but would hopefully go a different route than other independent petrol states. All of this bodes quite well for the possibility of an emergent Kurdistan. A Kurdistan could most probably be reliably insular against ISIL ideology, and would certainly be an ally capable of providing ground forces in the fight.
Herein, a plan has been presented for dealing with ISIL, and in its initial phase it involved supporting institutional development in Tunisia, prevention of destabilization in Jordan, and support for independence in the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey as a counterweight against the spread of ISIL ideology in the region and a way of denying ISIL its strategic goal of establishing a caliphate. The Plan B strategy is far less favorable. It involves either coalition or U.S. ground forces returning to occupy Iraq and Syria in order to close with and destroy ISIL forces. This is a politically dangerous gambit, as it risks confrontation with Russia and Iran and a greater escalation of conflicts.
The capturing of Ramadi by Iraqi forces supported by Western airpower is a positive sign. With any luck, developments will continue along these progressive lines. This essay did not address the centrality of Turkey in the fight against ISIL, as will be discussed separately in future.