Ideology Why Defeating ISIS with Military Might is Starry-Eyed Idealism

Iraqi government forces rest after they claimed they have gained complete control of the Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, on January 26, 2015 near the town of Muqdadiyah. Iraqi forces have 'liberated' Diyala province from the Islamic State jihadist group, retaking all populated areas of the eastern region, a top army officer said.

Photo: Younis Al-Bayati/AFP/Getty Images

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ISIS–the self-proclaimed “Islamic State”–is the monster of our times, our Grendel. A steady stream of political statements offering answers to “what do we do about them?” have gotten progressively more hawkish.
Would-be presidents have given us options ranging from bombing ISIS “back to the seventh century” (Rick Santorum), increasing the number of American troops in the fight (Lindsey Graham), and “look for them, find them and kill them” (Marco Rubio, quoting an action movie).
Bold words—and every one of them will fail, because they are far too idealistic to work in reality. A realistic assessment advocates something else: peacebuilding.
“War as utopian idealism” and “peacebuilding as hard-nosed realism” sounds like an absurd joke.
Here’s why it isn’t.

War is Just Politics by Other Means

Carl Von Clausewitz, one of history’s foremost military strategists, famously called warfare an “extension of politics by other means.”
What he meant is that unless military action grows out of and complements a solid, sustainable political strategy, it will fail.
That was true in his day of formalized warfare; in today’s world, it’s even more critical an insight. This conflict and others like it around the world are rooted in people, not states—in ideology and religion, sectarian frictions, political exclusion and social marginalization, resources and access.
None of these respond to force or can be bombed out of existence.
In other words, if “defeat ISIS” isn’t couched within a clear, realistic plan to do the human, political, diplomatic and development work necessary to fix the problems that gave it rise, the mission will fail.
In its failure, it will leave behind the seeds of a new threat in fertile soil, just as ISIS itself grew from the roots of al-Qaida.

Peacebuilding means doing the hard work of analyzing the causes and conditions that lead to violence and instability.