Any successful strategy against ISIS will ultimately require both a military and political campaign. On the one hand, our military campaign has proven relatively successful. On the other, our political opposition to ISIS needs considerable improvement. Before going any further, let’s establish some context.
We began our military airstrike campaign, Operation Inherent Resolve, against ISIS in 2014, and since then, more than 7,900 airstrikes have killed nearly 20,000 ISIS fighters, which is nearly double the number of foreign volunteers who fight for ISIS. Furthermore, ISIS has made no significant advances in land acquisition. By all accounts, Operation Inherent Resolve, in conjunction with our support and funding of Kurdish and Iraqi army ground forces, has stalemated ISIS territorially and reduced its numbers considerably. So, from a strictly military perspective, we are succeeding against ISIS.
So why do Americans not feel any semblance of success over ISIS? The answer relates to our underestimation of the political nature of this fight. In spite of their military setbacks, events like November’s attacks in Paris, Beirut and Baghdad are ISIS’ way of injecting fear into the Western eye. These attacks have successfully perpetuated the false notion that ISIS has the upper hand. The more fear ISIS can incite in the West, the more Western officials cast their derision upon Muslims, Islam and refugees at large. This in turn provides ISIS with more fuel to stoke its anti-Western rhetoric.
How, then, do we combat ISIS’ political apparatus? The first step is to reorient the political climate regarding ISIS. In my view, it is the responsibility of both public officials (though we all know how ineffective Congress is) and the American people through social media (which is, ironically enough, far more likely to be successful) to channel political focus on ISIS’ weaknesses and the American Muslim population’s relative harmlessness to national security.
For example, this would mean focusing our attention not on this notion of Syrian refugees bringing terrorism and ISIS ideology to this country, but on ISIS’ weaknesses, such as growing weariness and frustration with daily violence felt by the occupied people in ISIS territory and cities like Mosul, Iraq.
The U.S. must also prioritize political stability in both Iraq and Syria. Political disorder and chaos amidst the Syrian Civil War and a shattered, war-torn Iraq fuel and strengthen ISIS — without it, their influence quickly fades away. In addressing such instability, Iraq may be the easier of the two countries to prioritize first. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq has already expressed interest in not only fighting ISIS directly with U.S. or Russian arms, but also in reaching out to Sunni groups to form a more politically inclusive Iraq.
Meanwhile, it would behoove us to work with the other nations that former President Jimmy Carter outlined in his highly regarded peace plan — Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey — to draft a political future for Syria. Ultimately, both Iraq and Syria will need a politically secure and well-defined future in order to effectively nullify ISIS.
In “The Atlantic,” Graeme Wood, a leading expert on ISIS, argued that if properly contained, “(ISIS) is likely to be its own undoing.” As the U.S. continually deadlocks ISIS positions and essentially bleeds it out, “its claim that it is the engine of God’s will and the agent of apocalypse will weaken.”
The key feature to consider when pondering on an ISIS strategy for the U.S. is that there is no perfect solution. With the start of 2016, we have before us an unimaginably brutal 4.5-year-long civil war, two very broken countries, two other countries (Saudi Arabia and Iran) looking to assert independent influences and oppose one another and the eyes of the world watching.
The trick in dealing with this chaos will be to devise a solution that best ameliorates subsequent consequences.
David Hoffman is a UF history and physics sophomore. His column appears on Tuesdays.
