Walter Russell Mead

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Mead is Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and previously taught American foreign policy at Yale University. He also edits a site called The American Interest where I got this.

Mead focuses more on ISIS’ need to recruit. ISIS relies on shock, horror and drama. It’s out-of-the-ordinary tactics have allowed it to recruit on a global scale.

ISIS are still nowhere near as advanced as they would like to be when it comes down to the logistical nitty gritty, and in the long game, it will slowly haemorrhage troops and cash. Mead says:

“Understanding ISIS’ methods can help us counter its aims. One key for us: to step up the grim war of attrition against ISIS on the ground. Life for the average ISIS fighter has to become a miserable affair of holing up, getting shot, running out of food, and putting up with bad medical care and low supplies even as the higher-ups live it up in the ruins of Raqqa. That word needs to filter out across the jihadi grapevine.

To cut the flow of recruits and funds to ISIS, we must make ISIS look unattractive and weak–drab. If at the same time we work aggressively to reduce its ability to repeat the Paris attacks, ISIS will continue to fade.”

This perhaps won’t be enough on its own and it certainly won’t be quick, but it seems to make sense. If ISIS are no longer recruiting, they can only shrink in size.

“This is what we have to teach our enemies and those tempted to join them: disenchantment. There is no magic road back to the 7th century triumphs of Islam. That door is closed. The Islamic world, like the rest of us, must live in the real world of the 21st century.”