In the past six months, Islamic State (IS) has suffered a series of major defeats, largely at the hands of the U.S. and its allies, and has been driven from all of the major cities it held in Iraq and Syria. Yet the group still has between 6,000 and 10,000 fighters in the area, plus its affiliates everywhere from Nigeria to Uzbekistan. And IS hardly has a monopoly on jihadism: there is a resurgent al-Qaeda, active from Africa to Southeast Asia, various groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Iran’s network of Shiite militias that are wreaking havoc throughout the Middle East and planning terrorist attacks in the West. Surveying the situation, Max Boot takes stock of what the U.S. has done right in the war on terror, and where it has gone wrong:
The greater Middle East has become even more unstable and dysfunctional since 2001—and thus it is no surprise that it has given rise to even more terrorism. The dismaying trends are relatively easy to discern. It’s much harder to know what to do about them. One thing is clear: the primary U.S. focus, since 2001, on killing and capturing terrorists can only limit the problem; it cannot solve it. The U.S. military is engaged in what many officers call “mowing the lawn”: it has to be done, but the “grass,” i.e., the terrorists, will always grow back so long as they operate in terrain that is not controlled day and night by the U.S. or its allies.
Outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. has not given sufficient attention to trying to change the conditions that give rise to terrorism. This would require a sustained commitment to “nation-building,” which remains so neuralgic a term in Washington that the U.S. does not even have an agency devoted to this crucial undertaking. One of the few things that unites Presidents Obama and Trump is their shared belief that “nation-building begins at home.” . . .
Even if it does not involve sending tens of thousands of troops (and it seldom will), nation-building, or, as it should more properly be called, “state-building,” is a hugely difficult, time-consuming, and thankless undertaking that even under the best of circumstances faces enormous obstacles. . . . But if the U.S. makes no attempt at stabilization, the result is likely to look like Libya, Yemen, Somalia, or Syria.
Greater attention to state-building should be coupled with a renewed emphasis on a related discipline—political warfare. Groups such as al-Qaeda, IS, and the Taliban, and [states like Iran] place great stock in spreading propaganda, political organizing, and subverting indigenous institutions. So, for that matter, does Russia. . . . The U.S. has little reply save anodyne “public diplomacy” designed to enhance the image of the United States. Washington should instead be focused on using information warfare to undermine repressive regimes such as Iran (or Russia, North Korea, and China) and to bolster moderate Muslims much in the way that the U.S. once helped dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. This is a discipline that, unfortunately, fell out of favor after the end of the cold war. It needs to be revived today.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/first-victory-isis/