The notion that Assad “won’t fight” Islamic State was always wrong. T
he notion that “defeating Islamic State also requires defeating Bashar Assad” was, likewise, always wrong. By now it should be obvious that the Syrian Arab Army has played a role in degrading Islamic State in Syria — not alone, of course, but with Russian and Iranian partners, not to mention the impressive
U.S.-led coalition. In marked contrast to pundit expectations, the group’s demise was inversely related to Assad’s power. Islamic State’s fortunes decreased as his influence in the country increased.
Some of the best political science research over the past couple of decades finds that militants are less likely to emerge in response to political grievances than from propitious conditions for them to organize. For Islamic State, the “opportunity model” of terrorism was always a better fit than the “grievance model.” After all, this is a group that set up shop in the desert, far away from the Syrian military; preyed on soft targets like the Yazidis who never oppressed the Sunni population; and planted affiliates in countries known not for their anti-Sunni government, but the lack of a functioning one.
As in Iraq a decade earlier, regime change in Syria would have created the ultimate power vacuum for Islamic State to flourish.
Moreover, the notion that
pumping arms and fighters into Syria would mitigate the unrest is actually the opposite of what study after study has established.
The conflict literature makes clear that external support for the opposition tends to exacerbate and extend civil wars, which usually peter out not through power-sharing agreements among fighting equals, but when one side — typically, the incumbent — achieves dominance.
The Realist paradigm reminds us that the U.S. need not share the same ideology of a nasty international actor to countenance working with him against a mutual foe.
With its sensitivity to overspending and blowback, Realism also emphasizes the dangers of militarily picking foreign governments around the world.
Although the Islamic State’s caliphate is dead, Assad’s war on terrorists in Syria is very much alive. Let’s hope future analysis of this conflict avoids the kind of anti-empirical ideological advocacy that helped give rise to Al Qaeda in Iraq and then Islamic State in the first place.
Max Abrahms is a professor of political science at Northeastern University and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. John Glaser is director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Equally contrary to analyst predictions, the group imploded right after external support for the “moderate” rebels dried up. The weakening of the rebels was a major setback for Islamic State because Assad could finally focus his firepower on the group.
Fewer weapon shipments into the theater, moreover, meant fewer arms fell into the hands of Salafi jihadists.
How strange, then, that
we haven’t heard many pundits acknowledge their mistakes; they’re not itching to atone for having almost forced another regime-change mission based on discredited analysis.
The now-defunct conventional wisdom was not only stubbornly anti-empirical, but unmoored from the political science literature. With few exceptions, international relations scholars seemed content to stand back and watch think tank pundits do the day-to-day Syria analysis while ignoring the red flags dotting the research landscape.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed...story,amp.html
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