Say that “success” means establishing a caliphate that controls a large chunk of territory - say, at least half the size of Iraq - and maintains it as a persistent, established entity, without being dislodged by enemies from outside or within.
For that to happen, seems like back in 2014 (or perhaps in the future, in the 2020s), a group like ISIS would need:
[ul]
[li]An isolationist American government that does not care to intervene (neither Obama nor Trump were averse to striking ISIS); or a US public that opposed war at all costs.[/li][li]An Iraqi government that is inept and weak; or[/li][li]A Syrian, Turkish or other regional government that is inept and weak;[/li][li]A very deep, bitter clash between Sunnis and Shias that a group like ISIS can exploit;[/li][li]Some sort of 'wild card" to help ISIS have an X-factor: say, the acquisition of a nuclear device or some of Assad’s WMDs.[/li][li]Some sort of strong, longterm income such as oil exports or something that could generate wealth.[/li][li]Finally, there would need to be a perception of permanence - a perception in ISIS, the Arab world, and the West itself that ISIS was here to stay for good and could not be dislodged.[/li][/ul]
Well, if the Allah they believe in got off his ass and actually performed some of the miracles he’s allegedly capable of performing, they’d win easily.
The most likely way of achieving this would not be to displace or partition an existing state, but to take power in it, in much the way that theocrats took power in Iran in the late 1970s.
That is possible, precisely because it was done in Iran. Whether an ISIS-run government could hold on to power is another matter, of course. To do that succesfully, at the very least they’d have to limit the means by which they sought to extend their caliphate outside the borders of the state in which they took power. Iranian-type efforts to export the revolution you can get away with (obviously), but start annexing the territory of other states, and things head south for you pretty quickly.
So every country’s government must be weak and inept and then a mad group can succeed ? Having no opposition must certainly help.
In actuality, the Syrians, Russians, Americans and most involved seem to have acted as forcefully as possible. Not always wisely, but certainly not rolling over.
*Some sort of 'wild card" to help ISIS have an X-factor: say, the acquisition of a nuclear device or some of Assad’s WMDs.
*This reminds me of that old favourite cartoon: ‘*Then a miracle occurs’.
*
UDS, I understand as as Westener, your understanding and knowledge of Iranian and Middle eastern history and politics is going to be limited, but fuck, that was a bad post. You really think that ISIS is like the Iranian mullah’s? The Iranian Ayatollah’s had been part of Iranian politics for generations if not centuries. ISIS is a nihilist entity, which grew out of a devastating war imposed on the region by outsiders (including your country) which destroyed whole societies and displaced millions; I mean there is a slight difference.
No, I don’t think ISIS is at all like the Iranian mullahs; there are huge differences. But they start out in the situation that the Iranian mullahs started out in; they have an ideology which calls for implementation through the agency of a state. How can this be achieved? And my point is that it’s much easier to achieve this by taking power in an existing state than by grabbing land from an existing state or states and trying to construct a brand new state.
The comparison of the strategic situation of the two movements isn’t intended to imply any ideological similarity between them. It’s entirely coincidental that both movements are, or claim to be, Islamic. My analysis would be just as apt if the group which took power in Iran had been, say, a revolutionary Trotskyite group.
Yes, this is really the only thing that matters and it would change everything. We’ve seen something like this before with the Bolivarian revolution. If Muslims got tired of their current dictatorships and longed for pure theocracy, and ISIS became popular, then all of those governments would actually fall pretty quickly and ISIS would have its caliphate.
First, the group would have to lay off the cold-blooded murdering … I mean, gee whiz …
A large scale caliphate isn’t all that bad of an idea … for several hundred years that region was under Ottoman control and things have just gone to shit since that empire collapsed in 1918 … the national divisions are just the old mandate colonial divisions, no real thought put into it except to keep France and England from exploiting the same areas … France exploits Syria, England exploits Iraq … so today perhaps a caliphate over the whole region could establish semi-autonomous states set along more natural boundaries with far more respect to ethnic and cultural identities … the Kurds are going to fight forevermore to have their own nation, and I don’t blame them to be honest …
Helpful would be deciding whether the Prophet Mohammad’s son-in-law was the second or fourth iman … because that seems a very silly thing to fight over for 1400 years … again I say, gee whiz …