By Erik Goepner
“The sobering fact is that the United States has no good military options in its fight against ISIS. Neither counterterrorism, nor counterinsurgency, nor conventional warfare is likely to afford Washington a clear-cut victory against the group. For the time being, at least, the policy that best matches ends and means and that has the best chance of securing U.S. interests is one of offensive containment: combining a limited military campaign with a major diplomatic and economic effort to weaken ISIS and align the interests of the many countries that are threatened by the group’s advance.”
From Audrey Kurth-Cronin’s “ISIS is Not a Terrorist Group” in Foreign Affairs. Full article available at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143043/audrey-kurth-cronin/isis-is-not-a-terrorist-group
“The United States and Europe already have effective measures in place to greatly reduce the threat of terrorism from jihadist returnees and to limit the scale of any attacks that might occur. Those measures can and should be improved—and, more importantly, adequately resourced. But the standard of success cannot be perfection. If it is, then Western governments are doomed to fail, and, worse, doomed to an overreaction which will waste resources and cause dangerous policy mistakes.”
From Daniel Byman & Jeremy Shapiro’s “Be Afraid. Be A Little Afraid: The Threat of Terrorism from Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq” in the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Paper series. Full paper available at http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/01/western-foreign-fighters-in-syria-and-iraq-byman-shapiro
Finally, for a good general overview, take a look at “The Islamic State” by Zachary Laub and Jonathan Masters; a Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder available at http://www.cfr.org/iraq/ islamic-state/p14811.
The Pandora Report 