The ISIS Paradox: Strength in Weakness

By Michael W. S. Ryan

Dr. Michael W. S. Ryan is currently a Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Middle East Journal. Ryan is the author of Decoding Al-Qaeda's Strategy: The Deep Battle Against America (Columbia, 2013), a recent U.S. Naval War College Case Study, "ISIS: The Terrorist Group That Would Be a State" (August 2015), and numerous articles on Middle Eastern radical groups. He served in senior positions in the federal government including the U.S. Department of State and the Pentagon.  

ISIS is a terrorist group attempting to become a state. It inherited al Qaeda’s strengths, including international networks, battle tested military doctrine and strategy, and a radical religious ideology, Jihadi Salafism. The ISIS ideology has a proven record in recruiting foreign fighters worldwide to support jihadist insurgencies and terror cells.

ISIS also has some competitive advantages over al Qaeda that make it currently more dangerous to American interests and security. These advantages include the powerful imagery of the Islamic Caliphate battling the forces of tyranny and corruption in the fires of the end-times and a mastery of online social media platforms to deliver its messages and establish its global brand. ISIS has also exceeded al Qaeda in its mastery of Islamic religious apologetics. Recruited Baathist military and intelligence specialists help plan brutally coercive governance strategies inherited from the master of rule-through-terror, Saddam Hussein. The organization’s character as an adaptive guerrilla group is allowing it to spread to dozens of new locations, vastly complicating America’s military and intelligence campaign against it.

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