Is It Mainly Tactics?

This chapter introduces the puzzle of the military endurance and combat effectiveness of ISIS/IS, though outnumbered and outgunned by substantially stronger state and nonstate militaries. Beginning with the academic study of insurgency dating back to Lawrence, Mao, Templar, Lansdale, Guevara, Galula, Hoffman and more recent scholars; this book explores traditional factors associated with insurgency success, such as the support of an external power, popular support from the disaffected population, sanctuary, geography or topography, regime type, or other factors, which might, individually or in combination, be explanatory of ISIS/IS endurance and expansion. Most of those factors are found not to be especially significant, so the chapter focuses on the military strategies and tactics employed by ISIS/IS and central to its successes. The chapter then argues that the military tactics employed by ISIS/IS in the four countries and elsewhere better explain their expansion and endurance. The chapter concludes by outlining a framework of analysis explaining ISIS/IS combat effectiveness in the four countries and beyond.