And what does one do with a creature like ISIS, which is not recognized as a state but has all the
appearances of one? When the U.K. voted on whether to bomb ISIS after the Paris terrorist attacks, one
of the arguments against the action was that the British military would be conducting raids inside what
was still de jure Syrian territory, when Assad’s government, unlike the Iraqi government, had never
invited the U.K. to do so. The speeches in Parliament were the stuff of the 1930s—neo-Churchills and
neo-Chamberlains invoking appeasement, fascism, and civilizational challenges. It was a discourse
belonging to 20th-century wars, not to the endless subtleties and permutations of the 21st.
Gray-zone conflicts are the dark flip side of globalization; we can all mess with each other in more
insidious ways.
So how can democracies compete in this environment? Ben Nimmo, a defense analyst and former NATO
press officer, suggests a new doctrine of “information defense” where governments and transnational
bodies support exchanges between journalists, think-tank scholars, and academics in areas that could
soon suffer a propaganda attack. That way, when Russia launches its next disinformation campaign in,
say, Moldova or the Arctic Circle, there will be independent experts with networks and knowledge of the
region capable of establishing what is really going on there. Laura Jackson proposes a similarly
preemptive approach for the Three Warfares, encouraging the permanent stationing of cameras on
military vessels in the South China Sea and the satellite streaming of Chinese island construction to
better stop “unilateral, yet subtle, revisions of reality.” Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York
University, advocates a “non-kinetic NATO” equipped to counter challenges such as corruption. Russian
doctrine argues that corrupting another country’s elites is part of “new-generation” war. Isn’t it
therefore time for the West to consider corruption a security issue?
One of the most thought-provoking proposals concerning ISIS comes from Srdja Popovic, a former
student leader of the Otpor movement, which helped overthrow Slobodan Milsosevic in Yugoslavia, who
is now a guru for non-violent revolutionaries around the world. The Islamic State rules over a population
of some 6 million, many of whom don’t subscribe to its ideology but have been convinced that ISIS is the
best available supplier of security and welfare services. In a recent article, Popovic and co-author Alia
Braley give the example of Suad Nofel, a woman living in the Islamic State’s “capital” of Raqqa, Syria
who spent three months protesting outside ISIS headquarters, holding up signs with slogans like, “Don’t
tell me about your religion, but show it in your behavior!” and, “No for oppression, no for unjust rulers,
no for atonement, and yes for thinking!” “Her story,” write Popovic and Braley, “is but one of many in
which Syrian and Iraqi civilians have nonviolently confronted IS and lived to tell the tale. These
underreported stories are a testament to the fact that despite its murderous image, IS is actually
dependent upon maintaining goodwill and real support among Sunnis. Like any governing body, the
power of IS is primarily dependent on the cooperation of those it seeks to govern.”
Instead of a military-driven strategy to, in the words of U.S. President Barack Obama, degrade and
destroy ISIS, Popovic and Braley advocate focusing on non-violent measures. ISIS “seems to feed off of
[military] opposition,” they write. Western governments should first help activists inspire those living
under ISIS with a more attractive vision for the region’s future than the Islamic State’s puritanical
religiosity—and with a safe haven for Sunni Muslims under attack from Shiite militias and Assad’s
troops. Then they should target ISIS’s potential Achilles’ heel: the provision of community services.
“Many technocrats and skilled workers of all kinds have fled IS controlled areas, and those who remain
may simply have had no other place to go,” Popovic and Braley point out. “IS is severely taxing and
demanding exorbitant bribes from all sectors of the business and working community. … [F]armers have
largely fled and the crop for next year remains dangerously unplanted. … The ranks of administrators,