Nothing beats stupid

This weekend, yet again, we have been treated to Senator McCain calling for bombing and special forces on the ground in Iraq and presumably Syria. And of course there's Fox News with its incessant blaming of a president it viscerally hates, regardless of the situation or facts. (If you slipped on a banana peel, Fox would find a way to link it to presidential action or inaction). So here's my take.

An honest gaffe

Obviously, in a culture that often tends to celebrate action and 'can-do' over thinking and analysis, an 'ask questions first, shoot later' posture is never going to be wildly popular. This is particularly so when so many people have no appetite for understanding the complexities of a situation and thinking things through; indeed, most of the media is pandering to, and in so doing, fostering, and attitude of "give me a simple (140 character) answer and let me go back to not having to think". So admitting that that you don't have a strategy for dealing with ISIS, while honest, will be pounced on as weakness by others who, albeit mistakenly, think (or are pretending) that they do. But a political mistake does not mean a policy mistake; and the latter matters more in the end.

Simplistic comparisons are misleading

Much was made of the fact that Britain raised its terrorism threat level while America did not. That ignores important dissimilarities. First, the UK has had less experience and is less effective than the US in integrating immigrant communities. It has been more lax about allowing zealots stir up religious hatred. Consequently, it has a much more isolated, less culturally and societally integrated Muslim population than the US. It has a rather unsavoury history of not calling out and stamping out religious stereotyping, animosity and xenophobia. As a result, there are many more British citizens actively involved as ISIS fighters than the US. The threat from radicalised citizens, now trained by ISIS, returning to commit acts of domestic terrorism is probably much more severe in the UK than in the US. That's not to say it's non-existent her, but any claim that not raising the terrorism threat level here because Britain has done so, misses the important nuances of the differences in context.   

No plan is better than a stupid plan

Senator McCain and Ex-VP Chaney, amongst others, still seem to believe in the effectiveness of military force to make our enemies fear us (remember shock and awe?), and thus we "win the day"; it will be another "mission accomplished", apparently. They're wrong. Bullying and beating on others to get what you want may yield short term gains, but doesn't solve the problem long term; indeed it is likely to do just the reverse. Any quasi-equilibrium so achieved is an unstable one; systems under tension behave less predictably than ones that are not highly stressed.

Chaney and other arm-chair militarists have never been in a position of being on the receiving end of vastly superior fire-power, so they don't understand that it doesn't create submissiveness. Both Adolph Hitler and Air Marshal Arthur Harris made the same mistake in the Second World War in thinking that massive bombing of enemy cities would cow the enemy into submission. As the public became fed up with war they would pressure their leaders to disengage, went the theory. They were both wrong; in fact it had the reverse effect, steeling the enemy's resolve and focusing their ire. Military oppression creates hatred and resentment in the street, both of which fuel violent resistance.

So while the President is working on a long term plan, something his predecessor never had, no plan is vastly better than a stupid one. So what might an intelligent strategy take into account?

What is ISIS?

Part of the issue is understanding what ISIS really is. Simplistic categorization is unhelpful. It is clearly not a 'state' despite the name. Nor is it your typical terrorist organization like the Tamil Tigers, the PKK, Boko Haram, Lashkar-e Tayyiba, the FARC, al-Qa'ida, ETA, or the IRA. It's not fighting for self-determination, or a particular ethnic group, though it does cloak itself the mantle of a religious ideology. It isn't fighting an underground covert resistance war, melting back into the population as many terrorists do.

It has acquired a large stockpile of heavy armor and up-to-date weaponry. It is exploiting fear and disaffection with governments among oppressed groups, principally Suni Muslims. It is expanding geographically, capturing, holding and 'governing', ousting and replacing existing power structures. So just calling ISIS a terrorist organization is less than helpful.

A logic of appropriateness, while less intellectually taxing, in this case is less useful than a logic of consequences. Sometimes in chess you meet a situation that isn't susceptible to pattern recognition and labeling, and requires thinking from first principles; this is one of those times.

For example, knocking on doors and arresting active and high ranking members isn't realistic. Nor is blowing them up with drone strikes that create significant collateral damage which in turn fuels ISIS' argument about breaking free of Western oppression. It may be part of a solution but however much we yearn for a quick fix, it's not the solution in an of itself. This isn't a snake you can de-fang; those fangs will grow back. Any solution needs to prevent violent groups from recruiting the disaffected, and not giving them ready made arguments is a start.

Framing the problem

It is crucial to frame the problem not as a struggle between one religious group and another but between, on the one hand, the rule of accountable, responsive government, and law and order, and on the other, chaos, violence and the rule of ruthless unaccountable demagogues. If ISIS is attacked by the West while those nearer the action believe this is another example of imperialism, seeing that action though the lens of a sectarian divide, will provide it with a fertile recruiting ground.

Those who have deep differences, the Sunnis and the Shia in Iraq, Sunnis and Alawites in Syria, must come to believe that law and order and a negotiated solution is preferable to violence and chaos. (The same goes for Israel and Hamas).

Going it alone

Unilateral action is easier than a coordinated multilateral response. It's not even clear that unilateral actions is going to be that easy to set in motion; the hawks want to ramp up military involvement but Congress as a whole seem unwilling to authorize another war.

In any globally coordinated response, you have even more conflicting interests. Not only do you have to take into account each countries' national strategic interests but their domestic politics too. That makes getting a coordinated multilateral response much more difficult, but no less essential. If new ISIS fighters are recruited with rhetoric demonizing a trigger happy super power ignoring national sovereignty and acting with force wherever it chooses, then a multi-lateral response is indispensable.

The US' leadership role

While some (mostly Fox pundits and friends) have suggested that the world needs the US to be the world's (self-appointed) sheriff, other countries may justifiably disagree. And every time the US comes in to fix things other countries or coalitions have failed to address, we create a moral hazard problem. The President's reluctance to act unilaterally is a welcome change. The US should lead but with unilateralism and military action as a last resort. Leadership is not about going it alone (as any quarterback or team captain will tell you); it's about getting everyone on the same side motivated and committed. Often that takes time as is evident by the difficulties getting a concerted European response to the Russian annexation of Crimea, and it more recent invasion of eastern Ukraine.           

What should be done?

I have neither enough information, nor enough time to develop a strategy for dealing with ISIS; and since this is tightly coupled to a much broader set of problems in the Middle East including issues in Egypt, Syria, Lybia, Israel and the Palestinians, the problem can't be simply resolved in isolation. But if there is one thing of which I am certain, and which history suggests (and will confirm as we look back decades from now) about which I'm not wrong, it is that a 'bomb them into submission' approach that relies solely on military superiority will be as disastrous for everyone as the catalog of terrible decisions taken in the last administration's ill-fated nation-building in Iraq has been.

Maliki has gone and that's a start. Importantly, his departure was seen as legitimate since it came about through a democratic process rather than unilaterally imposed from outside. That's not to diminish the important coalition building role of the State Department, which managed to get a variety of regional governments to weigh in. His departure is a step in the right direction in terms of solving the underlying problems he (and Paul Bremer and Dick Chaney) created in de-Ba'athification and sectarian discrimination. But it will, in hindsight, be a clear demonstration that a process of coalition building is the best way to wield power effectively.