What Should We Do if the Islamic State Wins?

BY STEPHEN M. WALT-JUNE 10, 2015

Its time to ponder a troubling possibility: What should we do if the Islamic State wins?
By wins, I dont mean it spreads like wildfire throughout the Muslim world,
eventually establishing a caliphate from Baghdad to Rabat and beyond. Thats what its
leaders say they are going to do, but revolutionary ambitions are not reality and that
possibility is particularly far-fetched. Rather, an Islamic State victory would mean that
the group retained power in the areas it now controls and successfully defied outside
efforts to degrade and destroy it. So the question is: What do we do if the Islamic
State becomes a real state and demonstrates real staying power?
That possibility is looking more likely these days, given Baghdads inability to mount a
successful counteroffensive. If MITs Barry Posen is correct (and he usually is),

the Iraqi Army no longer exists as a meaningful fighting force. Not only does this
reveal the bankruptcy of the U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces (and the collective failure
of all the commanders who led this effort and kept offering upbeat assessments of
progress), but it also means that only a large-scale foreign intervention is likely to roll
back and ultimately eliminate the Islamic State. This will not happen unless a coalition
of Arab states agrees to commit thousands of their own troops to the battle, because
the United States will not and should not do the fighting for states whose stake in the
outcome exceeds its own.
Dont get me wrong Id be as pleased as anyone if the Islamic State were decisively
defeated and its violent message utterly discredited. But one needs to plan not just for
what one would like to see happen, but also for the very real possibility that we cant
actually achieve what we want or at least not at a cost that we consider acceptable.
So what do we do if the Islamic State succeeds in holding on to its territory and
becoming a real state? Posen says that the United States (as well as others) should deal
with the Islamic State the same way it has dealt with other revolutionary state-building
movements: with a policy of containment. I agree.
Despite its bloodthirsty and gruesome tactics, the Islamic State is not, in fact, a
powerful global actor. Its message attracts recruits among marginalized youth in other
countries, but attracting perhaps 25,000 ill-trained followers from a global population
of more than 7 billion is not that significant. It may even be a net gain if these people
leave their countries of origin and then get to experience the harsh realities of jihadi
rule. Some of them will realize that the Islamic State is brutal and unjust and a recipe
for disaster; the rest will be isolated and contained in one spot instead of stirring up
trouble at home.
More importantly, the relative handful of foreigners flocking to fight under the Islamic
States banner are only a tiny fraction of the worlds Muslims, and the fanatical jihadi

message shows little sign of winning significant support in this large and diverse
population.
Im not being naive. Islamic State fellow travelers will no doubt conduct terrorist acts
and cause other forms of trouble in various places. But that is a far cry from the Islamic
States being able to spread willy-nilly across the Islamic world. The group clearly has
the potential to cause trouble outside the stretch of desert that it currently controls,
but it hasnt yet demonstrated a significant capacity to expand beyond the alienated
Sunni populations of western Iraq and eastern Syria.
Moreover, the Islamic States territory has few resources and little industrial power. Its
military forces, though capably led, are not those of a great power (or even a regional
power). The Islamic State faces strong resistance whenever it tries to move outside
Sunni areas (e.g., into Kurdistan or Shiite-dominated Baghdad), where it cannot
exploit local resentment against Baghdad or Damascus.
The Islamic State faces another important obstacle: It no longer enjoys the advantage
of surprise. It emerged unexpectedly from the chaos of post-invasion Iraq and the
Syrian civil war, and it featured the unlikely marriageof an extremist strand of Islam
and some prominent former Baathist officials who knew how to run a police state. The
combination has been surprisingly effective, just as the Iraqi Army has been
(unsurprisingly) corrupt and unreliable. But the Islamic States potential to cause
trouble is now clear, and Arab states, from the Persian Gulf to Egypt and beyond, will
now go to considerable lengths to make sure the Islamic State model does not take root
in their own societies. (Libya is another matter, after the foolhardy Western
intervention there, but the emergence of an Islamic State clone there is also a
containable problem.)
Now take an imaginative leap. Assume the Islamic State is contained but not
overthrown and that it eventually creates durable governing institutions. As befits a

group built in part on the former Baathist thugocracy, it is already creating the
administrative structures of statehood: levying taxes, monitoring its borders, building
armed forces, co-opting local groups, etc. Some of its neighbors are tacitly
acknowledging this reality by turning a blind eye to the smuggling that keeps the
Islamic State in business. Should this continue, how long will it be before other
countries begin to recognize the Islamic State as a legitimate government?
This might sound preposterous, but remember that the international community has
often tried to ostracize revolutionary movements, only to grudgingly recognize them
once their staying power was proven. The Western powers refused to recognize the
Soviet Union for some years after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, and the United States
did not do so until 1933. Similarly, the United States did not establish full diplomatic
relations with the government of the worlds most populous country the Peoples
Republic of China until 1979, a full 30 years after the PRC was founded. Given these
(and other) precedents, can we be certain that the Islamic State might not one day
become a legitimate member of the international community, with a seat at the United
Nations?
Perhaps, youll say, the Islamic States barbaric behavior enslaving women, torturing
civilians, beheading hostages will forever exclude it from the community of civilized
nations. Isnt it more likely that its leaders will end up in the dock at the International
Criminal Court than addressing the U.N. General Assembly? It would be nice to think
so, but history suggests a more cynical lesson.
Those oh-so-posh and civilized Brits we enjoy watching on Downton Abbey? Their
ancestors created the United Kingdom through violent and brutal acts of coercion and
conquest (as any knowledgeable Welshman or Scot could tell you). Those heroic
Americans who expanded the Empire of Liberty across North America? They
massacred, raped, and starved Native Americans to get there and collected plenty of
scalps along the way. The Bolsheviks and Maoists who created the USSR and Peoples

Republic of China? They didnt consolidate power via gentle persuasion, and neither
did the Wahhabis under Ibn Saud or the Zionists who founded Israel. As the nowdeceased Charles Tilly made abundantly clear in his landmark Coercion, Capital, and
European States, state-building has been a brutal enterprise for centuries, and the
movements that built new states in the past did many things that we would now
condemn as utterly barbaric. (And lets not pretend that todays advanced societies
are uniformly genteel or moral either. An innocent blown up by an ill-aimed drone
strike is just as much a victim as someone brutally beheaded by the Islamic State.)
The norms of acceptable state conduct have changed dramatically over the past
century, which is why we rightly regard the Islamic States behavior as especially
abhorrent today. Pointing out that other state-builders acted badly in the past neither
excuses nor justifies what the jihadis are doing today in Iraq and Syria. But this long
history does remind us that movements that were once beyond the pale sometimes end
up accepted and legitimized, if they manage to hang onto power long enough.
To be accepted into the community of nations, however, radical or revolutionary
movements eventually have to abandon some (if not all) of their most ferocious
practices. As Kenneth Waltz pointed out more than 30 years ago, eventually all radical
states become socialized into the system. Over time, they learn that their grandiose
ideological ambitions are not going to be realized and that uncompromising fidelity to
their original revolutionary aims is costly, counterproductive, and maybe even
threatening to their long-term survival. Within the movement, voices arise that call for
compromise, or at least a more pragmatic approach to the outside world. Instead of
world revolution, it becomes time to build socialism in one country. Instead of
spreading the Islamic Republic, it becomes time to cut deals with both Great and
Lesser Satans. The new state gradually adapts to prevailing international norms and
practices, and it eventually moves from pariah to partner, especially when its interests
start to coincide with those of other states. It may still be a troublesome presence in
world politics, but it is no longer ostracized. If the Islamic State survives and

consolidates, that is what Id expect to happen to it as well.

But make no mistake: This process of socialization does not happen automatically.
Radical states dont learn that beastly behavior is costly unless other states join forces
to impose the necessary penalties. If the Islamic State manages to cling to power,
consolidate its position, and create a genuine de facto state in what was previously part
of Iraq and Syria, then other states will need to work together to teach it the facts of life
in the international system. And because the Islamic State is not in fact that powerful,
preventing it from expanding or increasing its power and imposing costs for its
abhorrent behavior should not be all that hard.
The chief task for American statecraft, therefore, should be to coordinate and back up
an international campaign of containment in which local actors such as Saudi Arabia,
Jordan, Turkey, and Iran which have the most at stake take the lead role. It also
means helping others counter the Islamic States efforts to spread its message,
convincing other states to do more to limit its sources of revenue, and patiently waiting
for its excesses to undermine it from within.
Photo credit: Photoillustration by FP

Posted by Thavam