"For there has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited," counseled the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu over 2500 years ago. Its physical caliphate is indeed destroyed, but as a symbiotic system comprised of ideologically linked components that drew mutual benefit from each other’s existence, ISIS is far from defeated. The remaining components - multiple regional wilayats (provinces), and an international cloud of aspirants ‐ still threaten the international order.
"The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish . . . the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive."
ISIS always has been savvy and adept at strategic communications; sometimes, as in this instance, although certainly coincidental, the timing could not have been better for them. |