Kicking the hornet’s nest
by digby
Josh Holland over at BillMoyers.com has conducted a very interesting interview with terrorism expert Thomas Hegghammer, director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. There’s a lot of interesting analysis, much of it stuff you don’t hear from the usual suspects on TV, but this struck me as particularly salient:
Holland: You have argued that this campaign may increase anti-Western terrorism. Why do you think that?
Hegghammer: The Islamic State and its sympathizers haven’t systematically targeted the West so far. There have been a few plots here and there, but they seem to have come from free agents — people who are just vaguely affiliated with the group. But the group isn’t maxed out on the capability side in the way that Al Qaeda has been. Now that we’re attacking them, it’s quite likely that both sympathizers and the Islamic State itself might want to carry out attacks to avenge the offensive. So I’ve called the air raids in Syria “kicking the hornet’s nest,” because by doing that, we make them very angry and more likely to attack us. And if they do, there will be intense pressure to deepen our involvement in the conflict.
Holland: You’ve argued that the US has had an unspoken, yet in your view, effective policy of deterrence against Islamic terror groups, and that this campaign is getting away from that policy of deterrence. Can you explain that?
Hegghammer: For the past seven or eight years the US has had a counterterrorism strategy based on deterrence. The idea is to only really go after those groups that attack the homeland, and use less force against those groups that don’t attack the homeland, those who operate only in the Middle East, for example. And this strategy stems from the fact that you just cannot fight all the groups at the same time. It’s simply impossible. So to maximize domestic security at minimum cost, the US has sent a message to jihadi groups around the world that if you come here, if you attack the homeland, then we will come after you. If you don’t, the pressure will be lighter. That’s why the heaviest repression has been in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Al Qaeda Central is based, and in Yemen, where Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula is based. These are the groups that have systematically tried to attack the West.
So by attacking the Islamic State before it has started to systematically attack the West, we’re diverging from that strategic principle and I think that’s problematic in the long term.
Holland: What kind of alternative policies do you think we might have adopted that wouldn’t include these risks?
Hegghammer: I think one alternative would be something more like containment, which basically means you encircle the enemy and cut off its sources of funds and weapons and hope that internal tensions will make it sort of rot from within. That seems like an unattractive option with the Islamic State given all the terrible things it does in the areas it controls. But I think it could be the least bad option. Use military force, for example, to stop the Islamic State near Kurdistan or keep it from expanding, and then target its financial operations — its oil sales, etc. — more systematically, and then use other, more subtle means to make it more difficult for the Islamic State to govern its territories, in the hope that the population eventually turns against them.
But it may be too late for that now that we’ve started bombing its headquarters. I think the important thing now is to create what I call “offramps” — to define circumstances in which the mission can be ended. If we proceed with the Islamic State’s complete destruction as our only goal, then I think it could be a very long war. We need a range of more limited objectives that we can actually reach.
We reacted to the spread of ISIS the way we always seem to react — by lashing out wildly in ways that are basically designed to inflame the situation sheerly to soothe the emotional needs of the country.
I’ve been very critical of the clandestine drone war and I think it’s been destructive. But it’s nothing compared to dropping bombs on large populations and bragging about it while hysterically freaking out about non-existent “infiltration” inside our country. A little finesse would go a long way toward puncturing the myth of ISIS’ alleged super-powers and depleting its strength. But the pressures brought to bear by the hawks, the liberal interventionists and the media are working against that and pushing everything we have toward a counterproductive strategy. It’s taking on a life of its own — as these actions always tend to do.
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