Dr. Scott Englund is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Orfalea Center for Global International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

 

June 20, 2017 — A diverse battlefront runs from nightclubs in Florida and Paris, along the Mediterranean coast of France, through the Bosphorus Strait and among the shadowy discourses of online propagandists. It continues in the sieges of Iraqi and Syrian towns, through the ruins of Afghanistan, and deep in the jungles of the Philippines. While this varied topography presents a challenge, similar threats have been confronted before. Pundits, politicians, academics, and journalists frequently remind whoever may be listening that the United States and its allies face an enemy that is rigidly committed to a radical ideology in which the old political orders of liberalism, democracy, and a system of sovereign states will be torn down and replaced.1 This description, however, could apply equally to the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War 70 years ago and to the present global phenomenon of Salafi jihadism, the ideology that motivates terrorist organizations such as the so-called Islamic State, al Qaeda, and associated groups. Examining the West’s understanding and response to the ideology of communism and the Soviet Union and comparing them to the threat posed by Salafi Jihadism provides a lens that can help shape a practical and credible response to current threats. This article applies the strategy of containment at the beginning of the Cold War to the current threat of Salafi jihadism.

Just as containment was successfully deployed against the threat of Soviet-style communism in the Cold War, it may serve as an effective strategy against the present ideological struggle against jihadist terror organizations. Published anonymously as “X” in a 1947 Foreign Affairs article, George Kennan described a strategy for the ideological battle of his day that later came to be known as containment.2 Applying Kennan’s prescription to Salafi jihadism means persistent, patient pressure and unified resolve to counter perceived Salafist expansionism. In containing an idea, what Kennan called “superfluous gestures” and “outward histrionics” are counterproductive. Such political restraint, however, proved difficult to come by in a super-charged U.S. Presidential campaign. Promises by some candidates to quickly eradicate groups like the Islamic State through large-scale military action may make headlines, but these promises are disingenuous, misleading, and perhaps reveal a misunderstanding of the threat posed by groups like the Islamic State. Even after their inevitable military defeat, jihadi terror groups will still pose a threat to security in the Middle East and elsewhere. This article first reviews Kennan’s containment strategy, then turns to compare Salafi jihadism to the Soviet system that inspired Kennan’s 1947 analysis, noting some critical differences, and then applies containment to the jihadist threat.

Kennan’s Containment

Though jihadi groups represent a challenge to the peace and security of the Middle East and threaten terrorist violence abroad, one cannot conclude that this is either wholly unique and unprecedented or that the challenge they present is insurmountable. Their absolutist ideology and unwavering hostility to liberal political institutions is also nothing new. In 1947, George Kennan wrote of the Soviet Union:

subjectively these men [Soviet leaders] probably did not seek absolutism for its own sake. They doubtlessly believed—and found it easy to believe—that they alone knew what was good for society and that they would accomplish that good once their power was secure and unchallengeable.3

Kennan drew parallels between the Kremlin under Joseph Stalin and a religious order, operating in a world where the forces of good (the Soviets) would, through the inevitable progress of history, overcome the forces of evil (the global capitalist order):

The leadership of the Communist Party is therefore always right. . . . On the principle of infallibility there rests the iron discipline of the Communist Party. . . . Like the Church, it is dealing in ideological concepts which are of long-term validity, and it can afford to be patient.4

In confronting an uncompromising ideological opponent, one should expect that challenges to their motivating ideology would be either disregarded or subsumed into the narrative of a decaying, corrupt governing political order. Kennan observed:

Now it lies in the nature of the mental world of the Soviet leaders, as well as in the character of their ideology, that no opposition to them can be officially recognized as having any merit or justification whatsoever. Such opposition can flow, in theory, only from the hostile and incorrigible forces of dying capitalism.5

According to Kennan, Soviet leaders believed themselves to be absolutely powerful at home and infallible in their interpretation and application of their ideology; they could rest assured of their inevitable victory, and could not be criticized from without. The Soviets were a formidable ideological opponent; the political-ideological dimension of the challenge the Soviet Union posed immediately after World War II was greater than the threat they posed to the physical security of people beyond its immediate influence.

Kennan’s prescription for foreign policy under such circumstances is now well known: “a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” He cautioned that “such a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics: with threats or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward ‘toughness.’”6 He suggested that the United States create in the world an image of consistency, harmony, and peaceful prosperity:

It is rather a question of the degree to which the United States can create among the peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the problems of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a World Power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the major ideological currents of the time.7

He cautioned that disunity is a balm to one’s opponents in an ideological battle: “by the same token, exhibition of indecision, disunity and internal disintegration within this country have an exhilarating effect.”8

Kennan’s prescription for patiently squeezing the Soviets was sometimes criticized as being not aggressive enough. It was, after all, a strategy for containing and eventually strangling the Soviet Union, not abruptly destroying it. Applying containment to the present struggle against jihadism may be similarly criticized as not doing enough, but of critical importance are persistence, patience, and consistency along multiple vectors of action (some of which are clandestine), and coordinated efforts with allied states. In a political contest, opponents attempt to create differing visions of a political reality and then try to convince people that the vision they create is preferable. The United States and its allies were arguably better than their Soviet opponents at this kind of competition during the Cold War. In its present conflict with jihadist terror organizations, the United States has been notably less successful.

Since 1947, Kennan’s blueprint for containment has evolved as successive administrations were confronted by the Soviet challenge. For example, Fareed Zakaria argued in 1990 that Ronald Reagan’s administration thought of itself as implementing containment, “but one quite different from any previous version of containment.” He concluded that in spite of its high-risk tendencies, Reagan’s version of containment was successful.9 In a Cold War postmortem, Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry argued that over 50 years, with small changes occasionally, “the basic thrust of Western policy toward the [Soviet Union] remained remarkably consistent.”10 They concluded that though containment must have played an important role in the ultimate demise of the Soviet system, it cannot be the sole cause. Writing in 1989, Paul Kreisberg laid out how changes in Soviet economic and military behavior in the late 1980s meant that containment was on its “last gasp” and innovation in U.S. foreign policy was overdue.11 The sudden and unpredicted collapse of the Soviet Union cannot be attributed to a single cause. However, as a pillar of U.S. foreign policy for six successive administrations, containment served to provide a stabilizing force that contributed to the implosion of the Soviet system.

Kennan later regretted the extent to which his prescription for containing the Soviet threat became dominated by military means at the expense of other avenues. Writing in Foreign Affairs in 1987, Kennan sought to contextualize his containment prescription and apply it to the political realities of the late 1980s. When the article was first written as a memo for the new Secretary of Defense in December of 1946, Kennan admitted, “there was no way that Russia could appear to me as a military threat.” What he did see was an “ideological-political threat.”12The populations of Europe and Asia had been traumatized by World War II and the infrastructure of their societies had been devastated; this made them vulnerable to the political vision of Soviet propagandists. Military conquest was not necessary where people willingly accepted communist promises of a near-to-hand utopia, as was almost the case in Greece and Turkey in 1946.

Kennan’s views on what motivated Soviet aggression changed some over the years. In the final decade of the Soviet system, Kennan was suggesting that an essential element in confronting the Soviets was to seek to understand their perspective and the environment in which they operate.13 Writing in the last years of the 1980s, Kennan suggested, “what most needs to be contained, as I see it, is not so much the Soviet Union as the weapons race itself.”14 Furthermore, “the first thing we Americans need to learn to contain is, in some ways, ourselves; our own environmental destructiveness, our tendency to live beyond our means and to borrow ourselves into disaster.”15 Of course, war is sometimes necessary—Kennan was no pacifist. What Thomas Schelling called the “diplomacy of violence” is a legitimate means of achieving a political outcome in some cases.16 Properly accomplished, containment keeps the widest array of policy options open to ultimately defeat jihadism.

Black Is the New Red

No analogy is perfect, but this does not limit the utility of comparison. In this section, Salafi jihadism is compared to the Soviet ideology Kennan confronted in 1946. First, and perhaps most obviously, communism is a distinct political ideology borne of an economic theory, while Salafi jihadism is a religious interpretation of sacred texts. This important distinction does not render comparison useless, however. In both cases, a core belief system drives and constrains behavior. Importantly, both the communists of the past and the jihadists of the present wage a battle they believe will shape the future of the world. Both belief systems assure their adherents of inevitable success. For the communists, their victory would be a result of the forces of history, and for Salafi jihadists, their victory is divine destiny.

In both cases, local political considerations shaped the manner in which their beliefs were adopted and adapted. Vladimir Lenin’s Russia was different from Mao Zedong’s China, which was different from Abimael Guzmán’s Shining Path in Peru; each had distinct features that differed across place and time, each had unique political and social forces that drove different applications of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Similarly, local sociopolitical conditions shape how the dominant Salafi ideology is manifested through the constellation of terrorist organizations that assert its religious superiority. In spite of some differences in application, a core belief system that inalterably divides the world into two oppositional camps remains.

Other important differences should be noted: no jihadist terror organization possesses the massive industrial complex and economy the Soviets did; though the Islamic State has successfully seized modern military equipment, nothing they have compares to the massive Soviet Red Army. Secondly, though eventually the Soviet nuclear force actually posed an existential threat to the United States and its allies, presently no terror group poses such a threat—in spite of claims made by some political leaders. Thirdly, the Soviets had a rigid, centralized structure for interpreting Marxism-Leninism and possessed the power to demand loyalty to that interpretation—not that schisms did not exist, notably the break between Soviet and Maoist systems. Presently, no single jihadist group can legitimately claim to dictate its interpretation of orthodoxy to others, though many rivals have attempted to do so. In fact, the declaration of a caliphate by the Islamic State was denounced by al Qaeda leadership and organizations affiliated with al Qaeda.17

However, similarities between Salafi jihadist organizations and the Soviets deserve some attention and can help policymaking. Just as Marxism-Leninism sought the establishment of global socialism and the ascendance of the proletariat through revolution, Salafi jihadism expects to spread its authority through violence in order to replace a corrupt, decadent order.18 Like the Soviets 70 years ago, jihadist terrorist organizations capitalize on upended political orders, the chaos that accompanies and follows open warfare, and public anxiety: “[Whole nations] had just been seriously destabilized, socially, spiritually and politically, by the experiences of the recent war. Their populations were dazed, shell-shocked, uncertain of themselves, fearful of the future, highly vulnerable.”19 Written by Kennan to describe Europe and Asia after World War II, it could just as easily describe much of the Middle East and North Africa now, as well as Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and the southern reaches of the Arabian Peninsula.

As was argued by Robert Hutchings in Foreign Policy 12 years ago, the phenomena of al Qaeda and Soviet communism were born of political circumstance and sustained by a commitment to a particular ideology.20 For Salafi jihadists and the communists in the Kremlin, the correct application of ideology is key to correcting political imbalance and restoring political Islam and Russia, respectively, to their rightful place of leadership in the global order. The ideological dimension of jihadi groups is often discussed, but too often considered separately from the more tangible dimensions of the threat of violence they pose, the mayhem they cause in the territories where they operate, or funding and supply-chain logistical issues. Properly understood, ideology is central to the existence of any of the jihadist terror groups, justifying and explaining both means and end. It has been argued that al Qaeda is more than an organization, but is representative of a myth and an ideology, which is being immortalized as Nazism and Marxism-Leninism was in the 20th century.21

Salafi jihadism claims to represent an ideological purification and correction, and repentance from prior errors; ultimate victory over the present decadent and decaying order is only a matter of time and piety. Salafism is a relatively modern interpretation, being traced to the 19th-century Iranian scholar Jamal al din al Afghani. It is revivalist, seeking to interpret contemporary events through original Islamic principles. Afghani sought to understand how Islam, which had been dominant for so long and produced so much wealth, could have fallen behind and was now subject to Western imperial projects.22 Both the Islamic State and al Qaeda embrace Wahhabi-Salafism, which focuses on the elimination of idolatry (shirk) and affirming the oneness (tawhid) of God. Its adherents view themselves to be the only “true” Muslims and they engage in the practice of takfir, or declaring other Muslims to be unbelievers.23

A schism has developed between al Qaeda and the Islamic State, although they both agree on the central principles of Salafi jihadism; their differences center on long-term strategy and local tactics. Al Qaeda takes a long view of restoring the caliphate; the Islamic State is committed to its tactics of hyper-violence, even against fellow Muslims, and sees benefits to its high-risk, incendiary style. Al Qaeda sought to attack and disrupt what it viewed as the “far enemy,” the West, and to chase it from Muslim lands. The Islamic State chose to attack the “near enemy” in order to quickly establish its caliphate.24

Political, temporal victory is integral to spiritual revival and ascendancy. An Islamic State spokesperson made its political objectives clear:

We inform the Muslims that, with the announcement of the caliphate, it has become obligatory for all Muslims to give bay’a and support to Caliph Ibrahim. Void is the legitimacy of all emirates, groups, administrations, and organizations to which his [Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s] authority extends and his army comes.25

Violence is inherent to their ideology, as interpreted by al-Baghdadi who, in May of 2015, declared:

O Muslims, Islam was never for a day the religion of peace. Islam is the religion of war. Your Prophet (peace be upon him) was dispatched with the sword as a mercy to the creation. . . . He fought both the Arabs and non-Arabs in all their various colors. He himself left to fight and took part in dozens of battles. He never for a day grew tired of war.26

Salafi jihadism, therefore, combines the puritanical strains of the Wahhabi tradition with a commitment to violence in pursuit of political ascendency. Violence is necessary to create utopia; in some cases, as with the leaders of the Islamic State, religious warfare provides the opening notes of the apocalypse.27

Applying Containment

Kennan’s 70-year-old advice can be fruitfully applied to the present ideological conflict. The intervening years have suggested that Kennan’s read of Soviet conduct exaggerated their expansionist strategy, but given the Kremlin’s inscrutability and open hostility at the time he wrote, his urgency may be forgiven. It may not be possible to deter an organization like the jihadi terror groups the same way that the Soviet Union and Stalin—a realist with an instinct for institutional survival—were deterred. However, Kennan’s principal stricture was patient resolve in containing and squeezing the perceived threat from international communism. Swagger, grand gestures, fruitless engagements were contraindicated. Kennan understood that in open warfare the Soviet Union could not be defeated without great cost, and skirmishes would likewise harden their resolve. Instead, persistent containment through positive example, negative consequences for bad behavior, and above all, unified action and harmony, were advised. Political competition is natural in liberal democratic societies, but the current level of discord in the United States and Europe must comfort jihadi ideologues in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

Just as it took 44 years from when Kennan’s “X” article was published before the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and their ilk will likely present challenges for many years. The important question is how well the threat they pose can be managed and reduced in the interim. Its fight against radical terrorist groups has forced U.S. military planners to rethink what “winning” looks like as it confronts the challenges posed by terror groups spread across the globe, and notably active in Syria and Iraq.28

To differing degrees, the Islamic State and al Qaeda play a three-level game: first, a clandestine transnational effort to infiltrate Western states and commit terrorist acts; second, a propaganda program designed to win support in areas where they assert some level of influence; and finally, a military campaign to take and hold territory. During the Cold War, the Soviets (and arguably, the United States) followed a similar multilevel effort to undermine opposition governments with acceptable levels of deniability, win hearts and minds openly where it could, and engage in military action only where necessary, through proxies if available. Containing Salafi jihadism requires a similar strategy: first, intelligence-driven efforts to detect, disrupt, and destroy jihadi terror operations; second, laying bare jihadi groups’ own hypocrisy, contradictions, and immorality both to undermine their ideological authority and to drive a wedge between it and potential supporters; and finally, fighting it in the open only where absolutely necessary, killing jihadi leaders and destroying terrorist financial and material infrastructure.

First, detect and disrupt clandestine plots to carry out terrorist attacks outside “hot” battlefields through an intelligence-driven effort, relying on well-placed human intelligence assets, appropriately tasked technical assets, and disciplined, rigorous analysis. Today’s Intelligence Community was designed and built to contain the Soviet threat. During the Cold War, intelligence activities flourished in a classic head-to-head contest with the Soviet Union. Assets were recruited over cocktails, microfilm was left in dead-drops, spy planes flew overhead, covert operations changed the political map abroad, while back home there was little oversight, and the American people knew almost nothing of what was happening. An instructor with the Office of Strategic Services, the World War II predecessor to today’s Central Intelligence Agency, is famously supposed to have said that their ideal candidate was a “Ph.D. who can win a bar fight,” and the same is true today. In today’s fight, recruits will likely need to have spent considerable time living and working abroad in dangerous places; they might not have a spotless record or have the smoothest path to security clearance adjudication. The difficult, disciplined, and quiet work of intelligence is just as important now as it was in the Cold War, and requires patient investment and cultivation.

Presently, intelligence is a very public topic, and the people (and Congress) want results. Much of intelligence still needs to be done quietly, however, and “serving in silence” remains the ideal. In today’s fight against jihadism, the same principles will apply, though the settings may look different. Clandestine service officers need to be recruited and trained, human assets need months of development, analysts with rigorous methodological skills must be employed. Gone are the days of Embassy parties; today’s intelligence needs to be done in tents, on horseback, with dangerous people. Analysts, formerly confined to cubicles in a headquarters building, need to be deployed to the field. Intelligence collection at home is perhaps just as important as collecting abroad, as recent “homegrown” jihadist attacks have proved. Surveillance in aid of detecting the potential radicalization of individuals will push the legal limits of a liberal democratic society.

Secondly, deploy an effective counter-propaganda operation and lay bare jihadi contradictions, exaggerations, and hypocrisy. The varied sociopolitical geography of Salafi jihadism will require a finely tuned approach. Any message originating in the United States will be immediately discredited. Therefore, overt U.S. Government projects should not be considered. Covert counter-information operations will need to be given priority.29 This effort will lean heavily on intelligence gathered in the field. The people who produce such messages need to know the local language, the local idioms and slang, the jokes, the history, and the taboos. The right message, delivered in the right way, to the right people requires much effort—and mistakes will be made. Attention needs to be turned home, as well as abroad. The most cost-effective means of carrying out a terror attack in the United States is to convince a disaffected young person to use his own resources to wreak havoc at home. Even if defeated militarily, the online presence of jihadist groups may persist; eliminating or neutralizing the radicalizing effects of these groups may prove to be the most challenging.

Part of this effort will be to avoid giving too much credit to jihadist groups that will inspire attacks against civilian targets in the United States and allied countries. Because terrorism at its core relies on an emotional response on the part of the witnesses to violence, the best counterterrorism policies necessarily require two distinguishable, but related tasks: first, actually reducing the risk of an attack, and secondly, making people feel more secure. Underlining and reinforcing radical linkages between an individual who acts in the name of a Salafi jihadist organization does little but unrealistically amplify that organization’s operational effectiveness. An act of violence that both inflicts harm and raises the profile of the group that inspired the violence is a double-win for the terrorist organization. An effective domestic communication plan, therefore, includes elements directed toward preventing people from choosing to commit acts of violence while resisting the urge to over-hype the combat effectiveness of an organization that may inspire violence.

Finally, fight openly only when absolutely necessary, limiting exposure, and relying on proxies wherever possible. Using drones to kill jihadi leadership and technical experts (especially those responsible for media operations) are important tactical victories, but they do not, on their own, constitute a counterterrorism strategy. In containing the Soviets, only twice (on the Korean Peninsula and in Vietnam) was a corps-size force deployed to combat, and never in direct contact with the Red Army. Much smaller, detached units of advisors or special operations forces units were sparingly deployed. Routine naval and air patrols were far more likely to make contact with their Soviet counterparts, but were never required to engage. Nuclear deterrence, and an approach to open warfare that was inculcated by the destruction wrought by World War II, meant military engagement was restrained, indirect, and respectfully cautious.

In the 15 years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has deployed two force-size armies to two different theaters of operation and has maintained deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan up to the present day. According to a RAND study, as of 2011, to support Operations Iraqi Freedom (and follow-on operations) and Enduring Freedom, the U.S. Army alone supplied over 1.5 million Soldier-years (that is, one Soldier deployed for 1 year, or 2 Soldiers deployed for 6 months, each). The total Soldier-years of all Services exceed 2.3 million. The same RAND report assessed that only 4 percent (or 20,000) of the Active component of the U.S. Army has not deployed and are available to do so.30 As of September 2016, in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, over 6,000 U.S. military personnel are deployed to Iraq, and according to the Defense Department, it spends on average $12.3 million every day on the combined joint task force.31 This is unsustainable. Smaller is better in the present fight. The complexity of the battlefield in Syria is a prime example of how U.S. forces can be dragged into settling scores among long-feuding local factions. Success against Salafi jihadism requires policymakers to lean on intelligence, deploy conventional forces only when absolutely necessary, and respect the long-term commitment of military action when it is employed.

Conclusion

Important, though admittedly less exciting, debates will need to happen about precisely when and where the United States absolutely must fight, or what is and is not legal or ethical in collecting the intelligence it needs. The real work of counterterrorism is often quiet, behind-the-scenes, and away from the public’s eye. Open warfare in Iraq and Syria may achieve one goal: the disintegration of the Islamic State’s leadership and its ability to wage an insurgency, but it will not contain the transnational threat remnant jihadi groups may pose. Clear-eyed and unafraid, the work of defeating jihadi terror will mean careful analysis of threats, assessments of countermeasure effectiveness, then the application of the appropriate tools to a well-defined threat.

Like Stalin’s Kremlin in 1947, the leaders of Salafist jihadist groups around the globe believe themselves to be locked in a world-altering battle in which they will inevitably be victorious. As Kennan advised, the longer the rest of the world can deny them any semblance of victory and lay bare their own hypocrisy and contradictions, then the end of this particular challenge is achievable through patient, thoughtful opposition and defense. “Surely, there was never a fairer test of national quality than this,” concluded Kennan.32 JFQ

Notes

1 Daniel Byman, Al Qaeda, The Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

2 George Kennan [as X], “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs 25, no. 4 (1947), 566–582.

3 Ibid., 569.

4 Ibid., 572–573.

5 Ibid., 570.

6 Ibid., 575.

7 Ibid., 575.

8 Ibid., 581–582.

9 Fareed Zakaria, “The Reagan Strategy of Containment,” Political Science Quarterly 105 (Autumn 1990), 374.

10 Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, “Who Won the Cold War?” Foreign Policy 87 (Summer 1992), 131.

11 Paul H. Kreisberg, “Containment’s Last Gasp,” Foreign Policy 75 (Summer 1989), 146–163.

12 George Kennan, “Containment Then and Now,” Foreign Affairs 65, no. 4 (1987), 885–890.

13 Paul Hollander, “The Two Faces of George Kennan: From Containment to Understanding,” Policy Review (Summer 1985), 28–34.

14 Kennan, “Containment Then and Now,” 889.

15 Ibid.

16 Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press 1966), chapter 1.

17 Thomas F. Lynch III, The Impact of ISIS on Global Salafism and South Asian Jihad (Washington, DC: Hudson Institute, August 2015), available at <https://hudson.org/research/11608-the-impact-of-isis-on-global-salafism-and-south-asian-jihad>.

18 Cole Bunzel, From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic State(Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, March 2015), available at <www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/03/ideology-of-islamic-state>.

19 Kennan, “Containment Then and Now,” 886.

20 Robert L. Hutchings, “X + 9/11,” Foreign Policy 143 (2004), 70–72.

21 John Turner, “From Cottage Industry to International Organization: The Evolution of Salafi-Jihadism and the Emergency of the Al Qaeda Ideology,” Terrorism and Political Violence 22, no. 4 (September 2010), 541–558.

22 Ibid., 543.

23 Bunzel.

24 Lynch.

25 Ibid., 31.

26 “Islamic State Releases ‘al-Baghdadi Message,’” BBC Online, May 14, 2015, available at <www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32744070>.

27 William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015).

28 Anna Mulrine, “In Syria, a Test of Obama’s ‘Good Enough’ Military Doctrine,” Christian Science Monitor Online, May 13, 2016, available at <www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2016/0513/In-Syria-a-test-of-Obama-s-good-enough-military-doctrine>.

29 Scott Englund, “Killing Anwar: Targeting Jihadi Propagandists Only Part of the Solution,” War on the Rocks, January 14, 2016, available at <http://warontherocks.com/2016/01/killing-anwar-targeting-jihadi-propagandists-is-only-part-of-the-solution/>.

30 Dave Baiocchi, Measuring Army Deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2013), available at <www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR145.html>.

31 “Operation Inherent Resolve: Targeted Operations Against ISIL Terrorists,” Department of Defense, available at <www.defense.gov/News/Special-Reports/0814_Inherent-Resolve>; Helene Cooper, “U.S. to Send 600 More Troops to Iraq to Help Retake Mosul from ISIS,” New York Times, September 28, 2016, available at <www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/world/middleeast/obama-troops-iraq.html?_r=0>.

32 Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” 582.