The National Interest recently reported that containment is the “only option” left open to the United States in its response to the growing threat of ISIS. This view has been echoed by many others including: the Washington Institute, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, writers at the Daily Kos and the Associate Press, Foreign Policy, the Mackenzie Institute, and Senior Fellows at the Atlantic Council. What many fail to recognize is that the U.S. not only should not, but cannot treat ISIS the way that it did the Soviet Union during the Cold War. They are fundamentally different types of enemies, and strategies that may have been effective against the USSR are unlikely to prove effective against groups such as ISIS.
While some have compared the U.S.’s struggle against ISIS to the Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union, these premises are arguably flawed on a fundamental level. First, the Cold War was just that – cold. While certainly a time of deep and abiding tension, one did not see full-scale combat or attacks on civilian populations the way one does today with ISIS.
One of ISIS’s goals is to establish a state in its own right. One need look no further than the name, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant if using the alternative acronym – ISIL). Should this happen then, and a true nation-state run by ISIS appear, would the U.S. – should the U.S. – pursue a policy of containment? While I cannot speak to what will happen, it would be foolish to attempt to use a policy of containment to halt the spread of such a state. There are two reasons for this. First, there is an as yet un-articulated difference between ISIS and the Soviet Union – one which renders a policy of containment useless. Second, the strategy of containment relies heavily upon demonstrably ineffective neo-conservative ideas about nation building.
I will address the differences between ISIS and the USSR first. The Soviet Union and the Islamic State – granting that it is a state with a given territory and recognized at least in some respect by other powers – differ in a key aspect. For the Soviet Union, expansion was a fundamental necessity. The profound economic burden of a socialist state required constant expansion in order to provide the natural resources and manpower necessary to power the communist machine. Proponents of containment found that by restricting the ability of the Soviet Union to expand its territory it slowly began to crush itself under the enormous strain required to maintain its economy. Such a calculus was rational and at least somewhat effective in regards to the Soviet Union. This is not necessarily the case for the Islamic State. While their ideology maintains that they seek a global caliphate, and this by its nature requires the ultimate in territorial acquisition – it is arguable that regardless of whether or not ISIS makes any strategic territorial gains, it will never be brought to its knees under its own weight as was the USSR. One reason for this is that ISIS’s need for expanding its territory is not based on economic necessity, but on ideology. It wants to acquire territory in order to further its goal of instituting a global caliphate. ISIS can always shift this policy by embracing a view similar to the one held by Osama Bin Laden, whom they refer to as Sheik Osama – a title of profound reverence and respect – who saw the global caliphate as a future reality, to be achieved at some point, even if not in his lifetime. Such a shift in outlook would not require that ISIS make any territorial gains in the immediate future in order to maintain internal consistency, yet it would do this without undermining its core principles and would still allow it to attract and recruit supporters. This is a flexibility that the Soviet Union did not possess. As I have mentioned, containment rested upon starving the Soviet Union of necessary resources. In an increasingly globalized economy, and especially with the presence of the internet, the prevalence of black markets, and the close proximity of nations that have at least some incentive to support ISIS with money, resources, and weapons, such a starving of resources arguably cannot be achieved by simply containing ISIS as the U.S. did with the USSR.
In addition, many of those who push for a strategy of containment in regard to ISIS fail to recognize or address the implicit neo-conservative assumptions of such a view. When discussing a grand strategy, recognizing the underlying premises is crucial to developing a rigorous and effective foreign policy. The core of containment rests upon the notion that the United States has not only the ability to institute democratic nation-states in the area surrounding the state in question, but also the responsibility to do so. I would disagree with both counts, but as my point is not to lay out an opposing grand strategy, I will confine myself to addressing only the former assertion. The United States does not have the ability to create democratic nation-states. While some still view this as a matter of opinion, I would assert that history has spoken quite clearly against such a view. The U.S. has attempted to institute democratic nation-states numerous times, and the record shows that few if any of these have been successful. Look at the Dominican Republic in the mid-1960’s, Vietnam, Cambodia, or Afghanistan. None of these saw lasting democratic rule, despite the U.S.’s best efforts. The U.S. has consistently failed to transplant democracy successfully to other nation-states, and I fail to see how any who rely upon a similar calculus can conclude that such a project has any likelihood of success – particularly when that project would be undertaken in one of the most unstable regions in the world. Democratic governance requires certain cultural norms and mores that do not as yet exist in these nations. To simply transplant democracy and expect it to take root without any fertile soil to sustain its growth is willfully utopian and foolish.
The National Interest article concludes with an assertion that while messy, containment is our only option. I disagree. The U.S. has many options, and the one for which I would advocate is providing arms and resources to local groups who oppose ISIS. These groups have the most to lose if ISIS rules, and therefore they have the most to gain by pushing ISIS back. They have greater local and cultural knowledge as well as a far greater incentive to resist territorial acquisition by ISIS (they are also one of the few groups that has actually been effective in responding to ISIS). The U.S. should focus on supporting those local actors who have expressed a will to see ISIS pushed back, rather than attempting to coerce uncooperative nation-states to adopt positions that the U.S. favors in a vain attempt at recreating Cold War era stratagems.
Kendall on the Hill 