The war against ISIS is approaching its third anniversary. After thousands of dead, dozens of wrecked cities, and billions of dollars spent, there may be light at the end of the tunnel. While Mosul is getting obliterated (seven months and counting), US-backed Kurdish forces are slowly grinding their way towards Raqqa.
But even after these cities are taken, the war will not end. ISIS will melt into the countryside and return to its roots as a guerilla organization. Meanwhile, ISIS affiliates keep popping up in new places: Afghanistan, Libya, Nigeria, Yemen. Most importantly, ISIS ideology still appeals to many – inspiring its followers to shoot people in shopping malls or mow them down with trucks on the street. Fighting ISIS is a whack-a-mole quagmire. Complete victory will remain elusive.
Can We Talk?
As with any war, a few familiar questions arise. Is peace with the enemy possible? Can we negotiate with ISIS? Should we?
What does ISIS want? Basically, they want their own space – a new country – where they can carry out their holy experiment: building a fundamentalist Islamic state. And in due course, they hope to spread their Caliphate to the rest of the Muslim world, and eventually the entire planet. “Maintain and expand” is their slogan.
This leads most scholars to conclude that negotiating with ISIS is impossible, even if we wanted to do so. How can you cut a deal with someone whose goal is to conquer you?
This logic is nonsense. Most people have ambitions beyond their abilities, and realize that themselves. (I fantasized about pitching for the Mets, but settled for a tax lawyer’s career.) Just because ISIS wants to expand globally doesn’t mean it can, or will. And talking to people who want to annihilate you (even while you are fighting them) is how most wars end.
There is another problem. ISIS’ own ideology prohibits negotiating with its enemies. Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has shown no willingness to compromise.
But leaders change – a drone strike can help with that. Sometimes their views change too. Military defeats could make Baghdadi, or his successor (who may be a more pragmatic ex-Baathist officer) more flexible. ISIS is now being squeezed on all fronts, and its long-term outlook is not good.
For negotiations to become feasible, ISIS must morph into a more conventional state actor that recognizes its limitations and agrees to limit its ambitions. But once it does, can the rest of the world cut a deal with ISIS? What would we want?
- Disarmament sufficient to prevent ISIS from launching a large military offensive. ISIS would not have tanks or heavy artillery, let alone chemical weapons. To verify continued compliance, ISIS would agree to arms inspections.
- Confine ISIS to a clearly defined geographic area. This can include some of the land that it currently holds, or some other piece of land (preferably, a sparsely populated patch of desert – there are many in the Middle East). Ideally, that little island in the Indian Ocean where cannibalism still rules.
- Any civilians who wish to exit ISIS-held territory must be allowed to leave unharmed. Borders must remain open, and internal travel to the border must be allowed.
- ISIS would agree not to attempt further expansion, and tone down its propaganda machine that inspires knife-wielding maniacs around the world.
Sure, this feels like an unsatisfying ending. ISIS brutally murdered thousands of people. A truce would leave these crimes unpunished. It would also leave other people displaced from their hometowns, where ISIS remains entrenched.
Unfortunately, every peace has a price. More importantly, peace may be a better path to eradicating or reforming ISIS in the long run.
An Analogy to Communism
The most potent weapon in ISIS’ arsenal is its contagious ideology, which has a global following. This makes ISIS similar to Communism. By looking back at how Communism was defeated, we could learn a lesson for dealing with ISIS.
The main “host” nation that got infected with the Communist bug, the Soviet Union, was much more powerful than ISIS. Military defeat was not an option. For decades, the US and its Western allies tried to strangle the Soviet bloc economically and bombarded it with propaganda, hoping for a popular uprising inside the “Evil Empire.” For decades, none of that worked.
Worse, the Communist dream appealed to many people outside the Soviet bloc. Communist revolutions and guerilla movements shook Asia, Africa and Latin America. Even in Western Europe, local Communist parties had broad popular support, peaking around 28% in France and 34% in Italy. For much of the 1960’s and 70’s, the Communist disease was spreading. The West spent fortunes, and propped up brutal dictators, just to keep Communism at bay. (Just like today the West is allied with the Saudi monarchy, which decapitates clerics who disagree with the regime.) The future of liberal democracy seemed to be in danger.
Then along came Nixon. Tricky Dick was a crook, but was also smart enough to listen to Henry Kissinger’s advice. America had just lost the Vietnam War. Nixon realized that the West had to make peace with the Communist regimes, and to wait them out. He reached out to both China and the Soviets, and began the policy of détente. America befriended China and agreed to stop trying to topple the Soviet regime. The Soviets tacitly agreed to give up the dream of global revolution. “Peaceful coexistence” became the new slogan.
A decade passed. China embraced free enterprise and drifted away from Marxist orthodoxy, benefitting from expanding trade with the West. The Soviet Union’s leaders were not as wise, and watched their empire rot to pieces. Sometimes, all you need is patience and faith that your system is superior to the bad guy’s, so that in the long run your system will prevail. The bad guy will have to become more like you, or he will end up in the dustbin of history.
A Kinder, Gentler ISIS?
It’s easy to rally the masses, and keep a lid on discontent, when you are at war. But what would happen if ISIS actually had to govern its own country in peacetime? Especially a country without a Berlin Wall, with a population that could “vote with their feet”? Who would they trade with? How will they produce enough economic growth to keep their people satisfied?
Faced with modern realities, ISIS will either collapse like the USSR or have to morph into a rational state willing to play with others, like Maoist China did. Of course, there is also the North Korean scenario: an archaic regime that refuses to rot away. But as long as ISIS does not start building nukes, it can be tolerated – as an ugly blemish that is not cancerous. And if it starts to metastasize into cancer again, then we do go all in and finish them off. Unlike Kim Jong-Un, who has one reluctant but powerful supporter, the ISIS leaders have no China backing them up.
So, can we negotiate a peace with ISIS and wait them out? Is this a better path than waging incessant war, in which thousands of civilians keep dying as “collateral damage”? You tell me. The current strategy of cutting off the hydra’s heads, only to watch it grow new ones, is starting to resemble Vietnam.
Do we need another Nixon in the White House? Oh wait, we have one.
Vadim Mahmoudov
May 13, 2017
