A Military Assessment of the Islamic State’s Evolving Theory of Victory

Michael J. Mooney writes for War on the Rocks:

Brace for it, America. Terrorist attacks like those seen over the past 19 months in Western Europe will soon be occurring within the borders of the United States. The Paris attacks of November 2015, the surge in Western Europe in the summer of 2016, and now in the United Kingdom all portend a very grim future. This essay posits that the Islamic State is at a strategic inflection point and has produced a new “theory of victory.”

Battered within the caliphate, its regional wilayats under increasing pressure, the Islamic State has turned to the final component of its being — an international “cloud” of aspirants — to conduct an asymmetric urban guerrilla campaign against the civilian populations of those countries aligned against it, specifically targeting Western nations. A steady bloodletting, they calculate, will keep the Islamic State in the 24-hour news cycle, send a message of relevance, strength, and defiance to the international community, and, most consequentially, erode popular support in these key countries for the coalition war against the Islamic State. Ultimately, the Islamic State leadership calculates, this theory of victory will lead to the ultimate achievement of their political objective.