STUDY GUIDE
United Nations Security Council
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
2
GREETINGS ........................................................................................................................... 3
THE UNITED NATIONS ....................................................................................................... 5
UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL ....................................................................... 6
BRIEF LOCAL HISTORY .................................................................................................... 8
THE ISLAMIC STATE IN IRAQ AND SYRIA ................................................................ 11
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 11
GOALS, STRUCTURE AND CHARACTERISTICS ............................................................... 13
ISIS TERRITORIAL CLAIMS ............................................................................................ 14
ENEMIES AND ALLIES.................................................................................................... 15
RELEVANT INTERNATIONAL CONCEPTS ................................................................. 16
SOVEREIGNTY ............................................................................................................... 16
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT ....................................................................................... 17
ARGUMENTS ON TWO DIFFERENT SIDES ................................................................. 18
THE CASE AGAINST INTERVENTION .............................................................................. 18
RAND PAUL’S FATAL PACIFISM .................................................................................... 21
QUESTIONS A RESOLUTION MUST ANSWER (QARMA) ........................................ 24
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Greetings
Dear delegates,
It is an honor to be your director for United Nations Security Council committee of
Simulações Anglo 2015. My name is Yago Krügner Figueiredo and I am a former student of
Anglo São José, currently attending USP and FGV - majoring, respectively, at Law and
Business Administration.
My first Model United Nations (MUN) experience was precisely at SiAn, in 2009. As
a matter of fact, back then my committee was a United Nations Security Council, regarding
the 9/11 attacks. So here we are, six years later, to simulate the same organ with an equally
relevant matter: the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Not only our theme is an indispensable subject to be understood in current days, but
also the form through which we are going to be able to talk about it enriches the debate at an
exponential level. The opportunity to explore different countries’ points of view - while
defending one that is not necessarily your own - is very unique.
To try to help you, thus, with this effort, Gabriel Zulietti and I have put together this
Study Guide. Our expectations are that you read this document with the same passion that we
have deployed to write it. We’ve carefully selected references, definitions and arguments in
order to facilitate the process of preparation for our debates. However, it is obviously your
role to seek for more information regarding our theme to be able to defend whatever is your
nation’s point of view with more authority.
This Guide only goes to a certain point, in that it exposes the difficulties and explains
the current situation of our topic but does not deliver a solution to all the problems it raises.
That is, then, you’re responsibility. The delegates are supposed to seek for resolutions that, in
accordance with the United Nations’ purposes, deal with ISIS in whichever way they seem fit.
Best of luck!
Sincerely,
Yago Krügner Figueiredo
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Dear delegates,
It is with great pleasure that I present myself as your sub-director of Simulações Anglo
2015. My name is Gabriel Zulietti and I am currently a second year high school student at
Anglo São José.
This year, in the United Nations Security Council, we will be discussing about an
important matter in our society: The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which is a very
significant subject to be studied and understood nowadays. Inside our committee, you,
delegates, must strongly discuss and debate with iron fists defending your nation’s point of
view in order to get the best resolution in accordance to the United Nations ideals.
I hope that this study guide prepared by Yago Figueiredo and I serve you as a base for
your researches and preparation for our debates and I hope as well that Simulações Anglo
shows to be as marvelous to you as they are to me.
Cordially,
Gabriel Zulietti.
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The United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization established on October 24th,
1945, to promote international cooperation. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states;
there are now 193. The UN Headquarters resides in international territory in New York City,
with further main offices in Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna. The organization’s objectives
include maintaining international peace and security, promoting human rights, fostering social
and economic development, protecting the environment, and providing humanitarian aid in
cases of famine, natural disaster, and armed conflict.
The UN has six principal organs: the General Assembly (the main deliberative
assembly); the Security Council (for deciding certain resolutions for peace and security); the
Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) (for promoting international economic and social
co-operation and development); the Secretariat (for providing studies, information, and
facilities needed by the UN); the International Court of Justice (the primary judicial organ);
and the United Nations Trusteeship Council (inactive since 1994). UN System agencies
include the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Program,
UNESCO and UNICEF. The UN's most prominent officer is the Secretary-General, an office
United Nations headquarters in New York, seen
from the East River.
held by South Korean Ban Ki-moon since 2007.1 2
1
Section adapted from: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations>
2
You will notice, throughout this document, that there are a lot of “Wikipedia” references, which
may appear strange to some of you that still have a bad image of the website. This view, however, is
outdated and incompatible with current academic developments. Wikipedia has strengthened its
content in the past years and it is now a reliable source of information, specially the articles written in
English and about big themes such as the United Nations, ISIS and general countries’ information. The
delegates are encouraged to use the English Wikipedia as a reference, as long as they also use other
sources to legitimate even further their findings and as long as they specify their sources when it is due.
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United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the United
Nations and it is charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. Its powers
include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of international
sanctions, and the authorization of military action through Security Council resolutions: it is
the only UN body with the authority to issue binding resolutions to member states.
A “binding resolution” is a document approved by one of the United Nations’
subsidiary organs that obligates the parties to follow whatever has been decided. Generally,
member states do follow these resolutions, for they know that the results to not following
them could be unwanted. Here are four articles of the UN Charter that relate to this issue:
Article 25
Article 42
The Members of the United Nations agree to
Should the Security Council consider that
accept and carry out the decisions of the Security
measures provided for in Article 41 would be
Council in accordance with the present Charter.
inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it
may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as
Article 41
may be necessary to maintain or restore
The Security Council may decide what measures
international peace and security. Such action
not involving the use of armed force are to be
may include demonstrations, blockade, and other
employed to give effect to its decisions, and it
operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members
may call upon the Members of the United
of the United Nations.
Nations to apply such measures. These may
Article 46
include complete or partial interruption of
economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal,
Plans for the application of armed force shall be
telegraphic,
made by the Security Council with the assistance
radio,
and
other
means
of
communication, and the severance of diplomatic
of the Military Staff Committee.
relations.
Security Council resolutions are typically enforced by UN peacekeepers, military
forces voluntarily provided by member states and funded independently of the main UN
budget. As of 2013, 116,837 peacekeeping soldiers and other personnel are deployed on 15
missions around the world.
Fifteen members compose the Security Council. The great powers that were the
victors of World War II - China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US - serve as the body's five
permanent members. These permanent members can veto any substantive Security Council
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resolution, including those on the admission of new member states or candidates for
Secretary-General. The Security Council also has 10 non-permanent members, elected on a
regional basis to serve two-year terms. The African bloc is represented by three members; the
Latin America and the Caribbean, Asian, and Western European and Others blocs by two
apiece; and the Eastern European bloc by one.3
In our committee, not all of the actual current states will be represented. While we
will keep most of the original members, there will be five alterations:
Permanent members
Non-permanent members
Chad
China
Egypt
Iran
France
Iraq
Jordan
Russia
New Zealand
Spain
United Kingdom
Syria
Turkey
United States of America
The United Nations Security Council Chamber, in New York.
Venezuela
3
Section adapted from: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council >
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Brief local history
During the Cold War, there was a lot of tension between the United States of America and the
Soviet Union. In fact, the entire world saw itself polarized between the capitalist and the socalled communist ideology. One of the most prominent materializations of this dispute was
the Soviet War in Afghanistan4, which took place from 1979 to 1989. On one side, Soviet
troops aided local Marxist rebels that wanted to implement a socialist government in
Afghanistan. On the other, a group called “Mujahedeen” fought for the maintenance of the
capitalist society.
Wanting to prevent further Soviet expansion, the USA felt it was important to assist
the Mujahedeen fighters in order for the local government not to lose control over the
valuable lands it held. The CIA then launched a program called Operation Cyclone5, whose
official purpose was to assist local Afghani forces against the Soviets. During its most active
years, the operation’s costs reached some $630 million dollars – it was one of the most
expensive US intelligence operations ever undertaken.
However, opposing official US information, analysts claim that Operation Cyclone
was vital to strengthen – with money, arms and training – a group known as Maktab alKhidamat (MAK). This group played a central role in the 1989 Soviet withdrawing, as well as
the following chaotic events in Afghanistan. Their leader was a man called Osama bin Laden.
A few months later, a couple of thousand kilometers to the west, Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein declared that his country’s neighbor, Kuwait, was selling petroleum in higher
amounts than it was allowed by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC). Saddam proceeded to invade Kuwait, and thus began the First Gulf War.
As this was a disproportional measure undertook by the Iraqi government, and as the region
held enormous amounts of oil wells; the United Nations Security Council authorized Member
States to “use all necessary means” 6 to repel the invasion, which allowed the USA-led
military action know as Operation Desert Storm to take place. The western allies held so
much more power than Hussein’s army, that only 100 hours after the ground operations began
a cease-fire was achieved.
4
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_War_in_Afghanistan >
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone >
6
See the full UNSC resolution at: < http://migre.me/oOUwO >
5
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Operation Desert Storm used heavy air support before engaging in ground operations. Many oil
wells were incinerated and a lot of Iraq’s army facilities were engaged by jet fighters, which took base
most notably in Saudi Arabia.
Following the events of the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein found himself in a very divided
country. Sunnis and curds were fighting for the control of the country, and the lack of
government power during the civil war allowed terrorist groups to rise. Remarkably, AlQaeda in Iraq (AQI) began its activities in 1999.
At this point, however, the main control center of Al-Qaeda was back in Afghanistan, a
country that was been controlled by a militia called Taliban (who sheltered and aided bin
Laden’s unlawful activities). Pursuing its objectives to fight western influences in the Arab
world, the group carried out attacks to the World Trade Center buildings, to the Pentagon and
attempted to also do so to the White House, on the 9th of September 2001.
As a response to these acts of terror, the United States carried an UN-authorized invasion
of Afghanistan, in order to stop the spreading of extremist and deranged visions of Islam –
which is, at its core, a peaceful religion. Along with the United Kingdom, US troops took
control of Kabul in less than four days and implemented a temporary government that lasted
until 2014.
In 2003, American president George W. Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein was
developing chemical mass-destruction weaponry, and under that pretense he invaded Iraq.
This invasion was not allowed by the Security Council and later on UN inspectors proved
there were no chemical weapons being developed. Not only do the United States suffer
criticism for the Iraq invasion to these days among western countries, but also they have
achieved much more hatred among the terrorist groups that were established in Iraq. A few
years after the American occupation, AQI started calling themselves “Islamic State of Iraq”
(or ISI).
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A few years down the road, two months before the USA killed Osama bin Laden in
Pakistan, in 2011, the Arab Spring encouraged the Syrian population to rise against Bashar
Al-Assad, whose family has been governing the country for decades. Syria is still currently in
civil war, and ISI has a great fault in that. The group actively fights Assad’s government and
holds very large portions of land in northern Syria.
United States Air Force delivers humanitarian aid for Syrian opposition forces.
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The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
Introduction
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a jihadist rebel group that controls territory
in Iraq and Syria and also operates in eastern Libya, the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, and other
areas of the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia. The group's Arabic
name is transliterated as ad-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah fī al-‘Irāq wash-Shām leading to the Arabic
acronym Da‘ish or DAESH. The name is also commonly translated as the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria or Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham and abbreviated ISIS. In June 2014, the
group renamed itself the Islamic State (IS) but the new name has been widely criticized and
condemned, with the UN, various governments, and mainstream Muslim groups refusing to
use it.
Current ISIS flag.
The United Nations has held ISIL responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes,
and Amnesty International has reported ethnic cleansing by the group on a "historic scale".
The group has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, the European
Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, India, and Russia. Over 60 countries are directly or
indirectly waging war against ISIL.
The group originated as Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in 1999, which was renamed
Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn - commonly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) when the group pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2004. Following the 2003 invasion of
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Iraq, AQI took part in the Iraqi insurgency. In 2006, it joined other Sunni insurgent groups to
form the Mujahideen Shura Council, which shortly afterwards proclaimed the formation of an
Islamic state, naming it the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The ISI gained a significant presence in
Al Anbar, Nineveh, Kirkuk and other areas, but around 2008, its violent methods, including
suicide attacks on civilian targets and the widespread killing of prisoners, led to a backlash
from Sunni Iraqis and other insurgent groups.
The group grew significantly under the leadership of
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (picture on the right), and after
entering the Syrian Civil War, it established a large presence
in Sunni-majority areas of Syria within the governorates of
Ar-Raqqah, Idlib, Deir ez-Zor and Aleppo. Having expanded
into Syria, the group changed its name in April 2013 to the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, when al-Baghdadi
announced its merger with the Syrian-based group al-Nusra
Front. The group remained closely linked to al-Qaeda until February 2014, when after an
eight-month power struggle, al-Qaeda cut all ties with ISIL, citing its failure to consult and
"notorious intransigence".
On June 29th, 2014, the group proclaimed itself to be a worldwide caliphate under the
name "Islamic State", and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was named its "caliph". As caliphate it
claims religious, political and military authority over all Muslims worldwide and that "the
legality of all emirates, groups, states, and organizations, becomes null by the expansion of
the khilāfah's (caliph's) authority and arrival of its troops to their areas". This is while ISIL's
actions have been widely criticized around the world, with many Islamic and non-Islamic
communities judging the group to be unrepresentative of Islam.
ISIL is known for its well-funded web and social media propaganda, which includes
Internet videos of the beheadings of soldiers, civilians, journalists, and aid workers.
The group gained notoriety after it drove the Iraqi government forces out of key western
cities in Iraq while in Syria it conquered and held ground attacks against both the government
forces and rebel factions in the Syrian Civil War. It gained those territories after an offensive,
initiated in early 2014, which senior U.S. military commanders and members of the U.S.
House Committee on Foreign Affairs saw as a reemergence of Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda
militants. This territorial loss implied a failure of U.S. foreign policy and almost caused a
collapse of the Iraqi government that required renewal of U.S. action in Iraq.
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Goals, structure and characteristics
From at least since 2004, a significant goal of the group has been the foundation of an Islamic
state. Specifically, ISIL has sought to establish itself as a Caliphate, an Islamic state led by a
group of religious authorities under a supreme leader - the Caliph - who is believed to be the
successor to Muhammad. In June 2014, ISIL published a document in which it claimed to
have traced the lineage of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi back to Muhammad, and upon
proclaiming a new Caliphate in June, the group appointed al-Baghdadi as its caliph. As
Caliph, he demands the allegiance of all devout Muslims worldwide.
Regarding ISIS’s financing, many experts claim they are now an auto sufficient
organization, which means they have developed ways to get money on their own. This issue
is highly important, because it is often suggested that an efficient way to defeat the terrorist
group is by cutting their access to resources such as money and weaponry. Brazilian analyst
Gustavo Chacra, who writes for O Estado de São Paulo, explains7:
“Basically, ISIS controls a huge territory. It is, therefore, more similar to Taliban that
to Al-Qaeda. Bin Laden’s net was sheltered by a State (Taliban controlled
Afghanistan), while ISIS is the State itself on the areas it controls in Iraq and Syria. I
have listed four main ways through which ISIS finances its operations:
1) Extortion – ISIS charges tributes and taxes in the areas that it holds and, in
several cases, requires money in order not to kill someone or not to close a store,
for example.
2) Theft – when it dominates cities, ISIS takes control of local banks. In Mosul, an
Iraqi town, they have acquired tens of millions of dollars in the city’s bank.
3) Contraband – ISIS detains a few oil wells in Iraq and in Syria. Through
middlemen, they are able to sell it to other regions of the planet.
4) Kidnapping – ISIS kidnaps citizens from other countries, including people from
the Occident, and asks for enormous quantities for the rescue.
In mid-2014, Iraqi intelligence obtained information from an ISIS operative which
revealed that the organization had assets worth US$ 2 billion, making it the richest jihadist
group in the world. About three quarters of this sum is said to be represented by assets seized
after the group captured Mosul in June 2014; this includes possibly up to US$ 429 million
looted from Mosul's central bank, along with additional millions and a large quantity of gold
bullion stolen from a number of other banks in the city.
7
Available at: < http://internacional.estadao.com.br/blogs/gustavo-chacra/quem-financia-o-isisno-iraque-e-na-siria/ >
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Exporting oil from oilfields captured by ISIL brings in tens of millions of dollars. One US
Treasury official has estimated that ISIL earns US$ 1 million a day from the export of oil.
Much of the oil is sold illegally in Turkey. Dubai-based energy analysts have put the
combined oil revenue from ISIL's Iraqi-Syrian production as high as US$ 3 million per day.
Estimates of the size of ISIS's military vary widely from tens of thousands up to 200,000
fighters. ISIS relies mostly on captured weapons. Major sources are Saddam Hussein's Iraqi
stockpiles from the 2003 - 2011 Iraq insurgency and weapons from government and
opposition forces fighting in the Syrian Civil War and during the post-US withdrawal Iraqi
insurgency. The captured weapons, including armor, guns, surface-to-air missiles, and even
some aircraft, enabled rapid territorial growth and facilitated the capture of additional
equipment. The group also has a long history of using truck and car bombs, suicide bombers,
IEDs, and has used chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria. ISIL captured nuclear materials from
Mosul University in July 2014, but is unlikely to be able to turn them into weapons.
ISIS territorial claims
ISIL territorial claims refer to announcements of territorial control and aspirations of control
by ISIL. No nation recognizes the organization as a state. As of November 2014, ISIL had
claimed provinces in Iraq, Syria, and eastern Libya. ISIL also claims provinces and has active
members in Algeria, Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, but it does not control any defined
territory in those countries. The group has attacked and temporarily held territory in Lebanon
on a number of occasions, but it is not known to have announced a province there.
The red marked regions are under ISIS control; while the white areas refer to regions for which ISIS
claims, but doesn’t necessarily exercise control.
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When the group renamed itself and announced the establishment of the Islamic State
of Iraq in 2006, it claimed authority over seven Iraqi provinces: Baghdad, Al Anbar, Diyala,
Kirkuk, Salah al-Din, Ninawa, and parts of Babil. In April 2014, the group claimed nine
Syrian provinces, covering most of the country and lying largely along existing provincial
boundaries: Al Barakah, Al Khayr, Raqqah, Homs, Halab, Idlib, Hamah, Damascus, and
Ladhikiyah. A new province was created in August 2014 called al-Furat - "Euphrates" which incorporates territory on both sides of the Syria–Iraq border.
On 13 November 2014, al-Baghdadi released an audio-recording in which he stated:
"We announce to you the expansion of the Islamic State to new countries, to the countries of
the Haramayn [Saudi Arabia], Yemen, Egypt, Libya [and] Algeria". In these countries he
announced the creation of five new provinces, each with a governor, while nullifying all local
jihadist groups. These areas were singled out because the group had a strong base in them
from which it could carry out attacks. However, according to analyst Aaron Zelin from the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, only the groups in Sinai and Libya exercise any
territorial control and the pledges from Saudi Arabia, Libya and Yemen are anonymous and
not from known groups. The Long War Journal writes that the logical implication of alBaghdadi's declaration is that the group will consider Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb illegitimate if they do not nullify themselves and submit to
the group's authority.
Enemies and allies
Every Islamic country in the world is against ISIS, as well as the vast majority of western
democracies. Currently, the armies of the following countries are at war against ISIS: Iraq,
Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan and Yemen.
Also, there is a coalition led by NATO8 that carries airstrikes and other forms of nonground attacks. The following countries are involved with this coalition: United States (as the
leader), Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal,
Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
As far as supporters go, there are very few agents or organisms that endorse ISIS’s
actions. Even Al-Qaeda has considered that the group is too extreme in its actions. Most
notably, Boko Haram9 is a terrorist group that endorses DAESH.10
8
See at: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO >
See at: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram >
10
Section on ISIS adapted from:<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant >
9
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Relevant international concepts
Sovereignty
One of the main concepts to take into account when discussing international legislation for
any given subject is sovereignty. The United Nations Charter states, in its second article, that
the “organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members”. But
what is sovereignty? For our international studies purposes, we can comprehend two
definitions to this concept:
I) De jure sovereignty
The Latin expression “de jure” means “of law” or “concerning the law”. We can
understand it as the legal and institutional definition of sovereignty, and it means “the
effective right to exercise control over a territory”.
II) De facto sovereignty
“De facto”, on the other hand, means “of fact” or “in reality”. It applies to the
actual ability of a given State to control its population via legitimate means, and
provide them with public services and protection.
In international law, sovereignty means that a government possesses full control over
affairs within a territorial or geographical area or limit. Determining whether a specific entity
is sovereign is not an exact science, but often a matter of diplomatic dispute. There is usually
an expectation that both de jure and de facto sovereignty rest in the same organization at the
place and time of concern. Foreign governments use varied criteria and political
considerations when deciding whether or not to recognize the sovereignty of a state over a
territory.11
11
Paragraph from: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty >
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Responsibility to protect
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P or RtoP) is a proposed norm that sovereignty is
not an absolute right, and that states forfeit aspects of their sovereignty when they fail to
protect their populations from mass atrocity crimes (namely genocide, crimes against
humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing). The R2P has three "pillars":
1) A state has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war
crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.
2) The international community has a responsibility to assist the state to fulfill
its primary responsibility.
3) If the state manifestly fails to protect its citizens from the four above mass
atrocities and peaceful measures have failed, the international community has
the responsibility to intervene through coercive measures such as economic
sanctions. Military intervention is considered the last resort.
While R2P is a proposed norm and not a law, its proponents maintain that it is based on a
respect for the principles that underlie international law, especially the underlying principles
of law relating to sovereignty, peace and security, human rights, and armed conflict.
R2P provides a framework for using tools that already exist (i.e., mediation, early
warning mechanisms, economic sanctions, and chapter VII powers) to prevent mass
atrocities. Civil society organizations, states, regional organizations, and international
institutions all have a role to play in the R2P process. The authority to employ the last resort
and intervene militarily rests solely with United Nations Security Council (UNSC).12
12
Subsection from: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect >
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Arguments on two different sides
This section will feature two articles with relevant points to our discussions. The first one,
written by Adrian Bonenberger, makes a case against an intervention to agains ISIS. The
second, by Richard A. Epstein, argues in favor of taking more energetic action.
The case against intervention13
On September 10, President Barack Obama delivered a widely anticipated speech addressing
the alarming growth in the scope and power of the militant group known as the Islamic State
in Iraq and Syria. The president announced that in order to defeat ISIS, the United States
would ramp up military intervention in the Middle East, arming insurgent groups in Syria and
Iraq and using airstrikes to support allies in the region. The speech was important. For the
first time since he announced a surge in Afghanistan at the beginning of his presidency—a
surge in which I played a small role, as a company commander deployed to Kunduz
Province—the president is publicly and deliberately committing the U.S. military to ongoing
actions in that area. Tuesday, he made good on that promise, hitting Islamic State and Al
Qaeda targets in Syria and Iraq with airstrikes and cruise missiles.
The civil wars in Syria and Iraq have provoked widespread outrage: anger at the
unscrupulous and repressive leaders, Assad and al-Maliki, who have governed the countries
so ruthlessly; horror at the brutal sectarian violence; grief for the shattered families, the
refugees—over 2 million and counting—and the nearly two-hundred-thousand lives lost so
far. The natural human response to such suffering is to try to end it as quickly as possible, by
any means necessary. In this case, however, acting on that desire is the worst thing America
could do. Recent historical evidence suggests that if we intervene, we are less likely to end
the suffering than to compound it, stretching the killing out over decades instead of years.
Beyond this, the danger is that such a move will play right into the hands of those we
wish to defeat. It is important to understand that ISIS does not simply want to kill Americans.
True, they don’t like us, and they don’t mind venting their frustration on those citizens
unlucky enough to fall into their clutches. But their primary objective is to unify the Middle
East under a particularly grim and violent form of Sunni Islam. And the best recruiting tool
for ISIS, as for Al Qaeda, has been an America bent on intervention. The limited
interventions that we typically undertake today, relying on drone strikes and/or house raids by
special forces, all too often set communities against America; such actions may kill one or
five or thirty “bad guys”—and create ten or fifty or five hundred more.
13
Article by Adrian Bonenberger, available at: < https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/caseagainst-intervention >
19
This is why ISIS has dedicated so much propaganda toward the West, and why it makes
such a gruesome show of beheading Western journalists: ISIS is terrified that America will
not get involved. American interventions can make a potential ISIS recruit out of someone
whose uncle's house was destroyed by a drone, or help ISIS demagogues blame the United
States for the plight of refugees stuck in camps. To someone who has suffered loss or
displacement, religious extremism may seem attractive in comparison. When an extremist
mullah cuts off the hand of a thief, the act may be barbaric, but it has a measure of logic
behind it—unlike, say, a drone strike that wipes out a family celebrating a wedding. Having
America as a military enemy helps miscreants like Al Qaeda and ISIS galvanize constituent
populations in ways that they cannot if they are seen as merely waging a battle for supremacy
with rival believers or ethnic groups. What ISIS relies on is a kind of bait-and-switch. They
need us as their enemy.
Proponents of a limited intervention against ISIS advocate a combination of
counterterrorism plus the military help of a regional proxy. But who should that be? Since
neither Iran nor Assad’s Syrian government are acceptable, we are actively considering both
the Kurds and the moderate Syrian rebel alliance known as the Free Syrian Army (or FSA).
Both options come with severe drawbacks. Arming the Kurds means abandoning the
geographical structure of Iraq—a structure that has remained intact since the era of British
rule—while enraging and destabilizing our NATO partner Turkey, which has its own Kurdish
separatist problem. As for the FSA, they are notoriously unreliable; any weapons or aid we
give them tend to end up in the hands of ISIS or the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.
We cannot simply will a politically convenient partner into existence. In the absence of
such a partner we are likely to fall back on the “whack-a-mole” approach of targeting and
killing high-ranking terrorists via air strikes or drone strikes, or with Special Operations
soldiers such as SEALs, Rangers, Delta, and other deployable (and often deniable) assets. The
primary argument against this approach is that we’ve been doing it since September 11, 2001,
and the bad guys keep coming. Meanwhile, there's no sign that the ever-popular resort to
"surgical" airstrikes will deliver what we want. In his masterful book, The Limits of Air
Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam, Mark Clodfelter argues that bombing does
very little to stop people from picking up arms in a conflict. What I observed in two and a half
years of combat in Afghanistan convinced me he is right.
And what is it that we want, in fact? What rationale lies behind the move to expand our
military actions in the region? Some who support greater military intervention in Iraq and
Syria cite concern that the United States is about to be attacked by ISIS. But these concerns
are wildly inflated; when weighed against, say, the violent deaths caused by the drug war in
Mexico, or the potential for thermonuclear war with Russia, the actual threat posed to
America by ISIS is trivial. ISIS and Al Qaeda are primarily interested in attacking other
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groups in their area, with a notable but secondary or tertiary desire to export their violence to
America. And intelligence agencies agree; as the New York Times reported recently, no
intelligence exists to suggest that ISIS is planning an attack on the United States.
As for using the military for humanitarian missions, yes, there are times when
intervention makes sense as a last resort, when all other options have been exhausted and we
must act to avert catastrophe. Bill Clinton has said that doing nothing during the Rwandan
genocide was his greatest regret as president. But such actions require “boots on the
ground”—and nobody on the left or right is advocating a full-scale, boots-on-the ground
invasion of Iraq or Syria. Air power alone, meanwhile, has rarely stopped a genocide, and the
groups we’ve paid over the years to act as our proxies have usually ended up conducting
ethnic cleansings of their own. Furthermore, we have not used sanctions to discourage the
states, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, that are supporting ISIS; indeed we haven't even
explored that possibility, at least not publicly. Either stopping genocide isn’t our real
objective—whether it should be is a different discussion—or we’re applying the wrong set of
tools to the problem.
With all the money we have spent—on military invasions, bombs, carrier-group
deployments, handouts to corrupt Afghans and Iraqis masquerading as well-intentioned
reconstruction efforts—and all the blood we’ve shed, it’s worth reviewing the fruits of our
labor. Afghanistan: the Taliban in control of large swaths of countryside, warlords in control
of most of the rest. Iraq: an unmitigated disaster, recoverable only by allying with a country
led by Holocaust-deniers. Libya: equally grim, thanks to well-armed and dedicated Islamist
fighters. Egypt: back under the control of a hated dictator. Yemen: beset by Al Qaeda, Sunni
separatists in the east, and Shia separatists in the north and west. Syria: twice as bad as Iraq, if
that’s possible.
This is what intervention has produced—or at least failed to prevent.
There are ways to fight ISIS and Al Qaeda without using bullets or bombs. We can hit
them where it really hurts: by reaching the people they cultivate as future fighters. The best
way to curb these groups is to address the situation that gave rise to them in the first place—
namely, the refugee camps, like those in Pakistan that provided so many Pashtun Sunnis
willing to fight against the Soviets, and the secular Afghans that succeeded them. Our best
long-term chance for success is to take responsibility for refugee camps, making sure that the
2 million displaced Syrians have a chance at a normal life. Make sure they’re educated, to
Western standards. Fed, to Western standards. Brought into the global community. That’s the
real fight. There isn’t much we can do about the eighteen-year-old jihadist who's carrying an
M4 he picked up off the body of an American-trained FSA militiaman or Iraqi soldier. Our
real target is the ten-year-old kid who’s listening to a radical Islamic preacher tell him that the
only true way is jihad.
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Violence begets violence, revenge begets revenge. America has sufficient resources to
keep fighting for years, but not indefinitely, and that’s exactly what Osama bin Laden
hoped—that we’d exhaust and bankrupt ourselves, fighting in a thousand little conflicts,
while providing a recruiting tool for his side's propagandists. Dropping bombs won’t
restabilize the region in the short run, while empowering groups like ISIS (or worse) in the
long run. With aid, however, we can prevent ISIS from coming back ten times stronger a
decade from now. Iran seems fully committed to propping up Iraq and Assad’s regimes. Let’s
let them. It’s time we started spending our money on the future, instead of continuing to
condemn our present to an irretrievable past.
Rand Paul’s fatal pacifism14
For my entire professional life, I have been a limited-government libertarian. The just state
should, in my opinion, protect private property, promote voluntary exchange, preserve
domestic order, and protect our nation against foreign aggression. Unfortunately, too many
modern libertarian thinkers fail to grasp the enormity of that last obligation. In the face of
international turmoil, they become cautious and turn inward, confusing limited government
with small government. Unwisely, they demand that the United States keep out of foreign
entanglements unless and until they pose direct threats to its vital interests—at which point it
could be too late.
The most vocal champion of this position is Senator Rand Paul. Senator Paul has been
against the use of military force for a long time. Over the summer, he wrote an article entitled
“America Shouldn’t Choose Sides in Iraq’s Civil War,” for the pages of the Wall Street
Journal arguing that ISIS did not threaten vital American interests. Just this past week, he
doubled down on this position, again in the Journal, arguing that the past interventions of the
United States in the Middle East have abetted the rise of ISIS.
His argument for this novel proposition is that the United States should not have sought to
degrade Bashar Assad’s regime because that effort only paved the way for the rise of ISIS
against whom Assad, bad as he is, is now the major countervailing force. Unfortunately, this
causal chain is filled with missing links. The United States could have, and should have,
supported the moderate opposition to Assad by providing it with material assistance, and, if
necessary, air support, so that it could have been a credible threat against Assad, after the
President said Assad had to go over three years ago. The refusal to get involved allowed
Assad to tackle the moderates first in the hope that the United States would give him a pass to
tackle ISIS, or, better still, even assist him in its demise, as we might well have to do. It is
14
Article by Richard A. Epstein, available at: < http://www.hoover.org/research/rand-pauls-fatalpacifism >
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irresponsible for Paul to assume that the only alternative to Obama’s dithering is his strategy
of pacifism. Paul’s implicit logic rests on a worst-case analysis, under which no intervention
is permissible because the least successful intervention may prove worse than the status quo.
It is hardly wise to wait until ISIS is strong enough to mount a direct attack on the United
States, when its operatives, acting out of safe havens, can commit serious acts of aggression
against ourselves and our allies. It is far better to intervene too soon than to wait too long.
It is instructive to ask why it is that committed libertarians like Paul make such disastrous
judgments on these life and death issues. In part it is because libertarians often have the
illusion of certainty in political affairs that is congenial to the logical libertarian mind. This
mindset has led to their fundamental misapprehension of the justified use of force in
international affairs. The applicable principles did not evolve in a vacuum, but are derived
from parallel rules surrounding self-defense for ordinary people living in a state of nature.
Libertarian theory has always permitted the use and threat of force, including deadly force if
need be, to defend one’s self, one’s property, and one’s friends. To be sure, no one is
obligated to engage in humanitarian rescue of third persons, so that the decision to intervene
is one that is necessarily governed by a mixture of moral and prudential principles. In
addition, the justified use of force also raises hard questions of timing. In principle, even
deadly force can be used in anticipation of an attack by others, lest any delayed response
prove fatal. In all cases, it is necessary to balance the risks of moving too early or too late.
These insights help shape the serious libertarian debates over the use of force. Correctly
stated, a theory of limited government means only that state power should be directed
exclusively to a few legitimate ends. The wise state husbands its resources to guard against
aggression, not to divert its energies by imposing minimum wage laws or agricultural price
supports on productive market activities. Quite simply, there are no proper means to pursue
these illegitimate ends.
In contrast, self-preservation and the protection of others form the noblest of state ends.
The late economist and Nobel Laureate James Buchanan always insisted that a limited
government had to be strong in the areas where it had to act. Perhaps his views were
influenced in his time as an aide to Admiral Chester Nimitz in the Pacific theater during
World War II. In responding to aggression, the hard questions are strategic—are the means
chosen and the time of their deployment appropriate to the dangers at hand? Move too
quickly, and it provokes needless conflict. Move too slowly, and the situation gets out of
hand.
Senator Paul errs too much on the side of caution. He would clamp down, for example, on
the data collection activities of the National Security Agency, which allow for the better
deployment of scarce American military resources, even though NSA protocols tightly restrict
the use of the collected information. It is wrong to either shut down or sharply restrict an
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intelligence service that has proved largely free of systematic abuse. The breakdown of world
order makes it imperative to deploy our technological advantages to the full. Sensible
oversight offers a far better solution.
The same is true in spades about the use of force in Iraq and Syria, where matters have
deteriorated sharply since Paul’s misguided plea for non-intervention in June. It was foolish
for him to insist (and for President Obama to agree) that the United States should not
intervene to help Iraqis because the Iraqis have proved dangerously ill-equipped to help
themselves. Lame excuses don’t wash in the face of the heinous aggression that the Islamic
State has committed against the Yazidis and everyone else in its path.
Rand Paul likes to insist that the initial blunder was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Whether
that invasion was right or wrong is irrelevant today. The question now is how to play the hand
that we have been dealt. Whatever the wisdom of going into Iraq, peace had been restored by
the surge when President Obama took office in 2009. Since then Iraq’s factionalism has
grown because Obama signaled disengagement the day he took office, and found himself
unable to forge a status of forces agreement in Iraq in 2011. Being eager to get out, he could
not figure out a credible way to stay in.
Unfortunately, Rand Paul writes as if Iraq’s many deficits are fixed facts of nature,
wholly independent of the flawed U.S. policies that he has consistently backed, in sync with
Obama’s aloof detachment. Yet these policies, tantamount to partial unilateral disarmament,
have given our worst enemies the priceless assurance that they can operate largely free of
American influence and power. There is nothing in libertarian theory that justifies dithering at
home as conditions abroad get worse by the day.
A nation that believes in the primacy of liberty has to defend it at home and abroad, and
do so over the long haul, without imposing artificial deadlines on its military commitments.
Our enemies place no such limits on their efforts to kill and uproot innocent people. Our
limited airstrikes have shown that force can make a positive difference. Only a fresh
willingness to confess error about the President’s decision to remove ground troops from Iraq
and keep all American forces out of Syria can reverse the present downhill trend.
Containment is wishful thinking, not a stable option. Sadly, where the Islamic State goes,
there we must ferret them out.
The American people may be weary of war. But they will become wearier still from the
chaos that will follow if we neglect to fight the forces of death and destruction. Senator Paul’s
position is inexcusable. It renders him unfit to serve as President of the United States should
he be eyeing the 2016 candidacy. Our commander-in-chief cannot be a bystander in world
affairs. He has to have the courage to lead and rally a nation in times of trouble, lest the
liberties that we all cherish perish by government indifference and inaction.
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Questions a Resolution Must Answer (QARMA)

Are the countries occupied by ISIS capable of fighting the group by themselves?

Should these countries’ sovereignties be outlawed?

Should ISIS be fought by an international coalition?

Should the Security Council allow the usage of force?

What other means should be deployed to fight ISIS?

Are there any non-violent options?

Should there be sanctions to other organizations and/or countries found to be helping
ISIS in any way?

Is some sort of reparations to the civilian victims in order?

If so, where should these reparations aids come from?

Are there any humanitarian actions that can take place?