| | | | Baghdadi's Legacy: Violence as a Meme | | In a Wall Street Journal op-ed exploring the legacy of ISIS's former leader, Raffaello Pantucci writes that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi popularized terrorist methodology to be copied—by anyone, including people with mental or social disorders but no strong adherence to jihadist ideology. Using as an example Salih Khater, a man who drove his car into pedestrians in London in 2018—and who espoused no clear set of terrorist beliefs—Pantucci writes that ISIS simply generated the "meme" of car attacks, and a copycat did the rest. His conclusion: that "the West is moving into an age of isolated and even meaningless terrorism, an age when leaders contribute more conceptually than tactically."
Pointing to a different kind of decentralization, Aaron Y. Zelin writes for Foreign Policy that ISIS introduced a new kind of terrorist structure. "In contrast to al Qaeda, which had organizational branches, the Islamic State would structure itself via a series of so-called wilayat (provinces) that followed the same methodology. Besides Iraq, the Islamic State now claims to have wilayat in Syria, Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Chechnya, Mali, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, and Turkey, as well as undeclared wilayat in Bangladesh and Tunisia," Zelin points out. Which makes killing top organizers potentially less impactful. | | What a 'Sinocentric' World Order Might Look Like | | As China grows in influence, it is pushing the boundaries of the liberal world order—but what kind of system would it like to see, as an alternative? In the most recent episode of the International Institute for Strategic Studies' "Sounds Strategic" podcast, Senior Adviser Nigel Inkster argues that China wants a global order in which "the Chinese Communist Party's legitimacy no longer comes into question; secondly, that all states internalize and respect China's red lines and priorities, on pain of sanction if they fail to do so; and thirdly … that the interests of great powers should take precedence over customary international law."
Focusing on China's Belt and Road Initiative, Inkster calls China's aims "classically imperial": Beijing hopes for a world in which "everyone else either sends raw materials to China for processing or buys lots of Chinese manufactured goods," he suggests. | | Russia: A Bona Fide Middle East Power? | | Until the Soviet Union began to decline in the 1980s, Russia was a Middle East power player, vying for influence with Turkey and Iran and supplying weapons throughout the region to compete with US arms during the Cold War. It has regained that status, Eugene B. Rumer writes at Foreign Affairs, calling Russia's temporary absence an aberration. Russia has won the war in Syria, he writes, and as most regional powers have a hand in that conflict, Moscow "has positioned itself as the power broker to whom all actors must talk." If it can advance a political settlement in Syria, that would be a "crowning achievement," Rumer argues: "Russia would definitively emerge as a power broker equal to and even more important than the United States, having succeeded where the United States had failed."
Things aren't going as well in Africa, Stephen Paduano writes for Foreign Policy: Moscow has little more than weapons to offer there, and with deeper economic ties on the table, Beijing has made far more inroads. | | The (Newly Urgent) Case for Bringing Terrorists Home | | Turkey's incursion into Syrian territory has only heightened the urgency of figuring out what to do with ISIS fighters and family members, Anthony Dworkin notes in a new paper for the European Council on Foreign Relations. With tens of thousands held in prisons and camps that Kurdish-led forces may not be able to maintain, Dworkin accuses Europe of "offshoring" its ISIS-repatriation problem, in the same way it did the refugee crisis in recent years.
The arguments for repatriation have been made before: Stripping citizenship or relying on local prosecution can be legally thorny, and Europe has more resources. To these Dworkin adds a couple more: Some think ISIS supporters, if taken back to Europe, can be "turned into assets who would help discourage others from following their course," he argues, and with so many children in SDF custody, it's important to get them out and let social workers begin treating them for the trauma they've endured. | | How America Can Win the Next Great-Power War | | | The US may find itself at war with another major power, and it needs to hone its strategy for fighting one, Elbridge Colby and David Ochmanek write for Foreign Policy. Conflict would likely arise over US allies on the doorstep of Russia or China, and the US military needs to develop new ways to project power further afield. That's getting harder to do, as Russia and China are growing more powerful, militarily, and to keep up the US will have to invest in sensors to detect air, naval and ground attacks; long-range bombers and submersibles; and other innovations to fight in the backyards of America's rivals. Otherwise, allies like Taiwan or the Baltic states could be overrun. | | | | | | |
