Abstract

Our research builds upon a theory of emerging-state actors. We look to apply the theory in analyzing intervention and containment policies to use against emerging-state actors, using the Islamic State of Syria & Iraqi (ISIS) as the case study. We show utility across four military applications of simulation: understanding, forecasting and responding to adversary and societal behavior; understanding enemy command and control structures; and analyzing, forecasting and planning courses-of-action (COA). To do this, we created two baseline scenarios—one replicating the historical foreign intervention against ISIS and a counter-factual where no foreign intervention occurred. We then conducted a suite of experiments on contemporary military intervention policies in isolation, combination, at different timing windows and under hypothetical “best case” conditions as well as operationally constrained. Insights of these experiments’ tests include the influence of ethnographic envelopes, timing windows, the importance of actor legitimacy and the marginally diminishing returns of combat actions. Finally, we test a policy based on emerging-state actor theory incorporating these insights against the contemporary policies, historical baseline and two falsification policies. The emerging-state actor COA performs significantly better than others. Our research contributes a simulation, called the Emerging-State Actor Model (E-SAM). This simulation includes military, economic, political, social and information aspects (known asDIME-PMESII simulations) for both researchers and military planners concerned with irregular conflict.

Highlights

  • The rapid rise of the Islamic State of Syria & Iraq (ISIS) and its staying power created great uncertainty in terms of regional stability

  • It uses the ISIS case to explore a variety of intervention strategies to show how COAs designed with emerging-state actor theory in mind may have higher utility in certain circumstances than traditional counter-insurgency interventions

  • Our research adopts the dynamic hypothesis that ISIS is an emerging-state actor, which differs significantly from a classical insurgency

Read more

Summary

Introduction

The rapid rise of the Islamic State of Syria & Iraq (ISIS) and its staying power created great uncertainty in terms of regional stability. 108,000 foreign troops representing the interventions of Iran, Turkey, the United States coalition, Russia as well as the local Arab Shias and Kurdish Sunni’s incorporated in these efforts are included This scenario, called “baseline historical” looks to accurately replicate what happened from a historical perspective. (See Supplementary Materials Section B-8 Behavior Reproduction Results.) The second baseline, the “baseline without intervention”, is a counter-factual that assumes no such foreign intervention occurred It takes the same initial conditions of the baseline historical, contains the same policy choices of the Red and Green actor, but removes the incremental addition of 108,000 foreign troops into the theater that exist in the historical baseline. We create an intervention policy designed leveraging emerging-state actor theory and systems thinking. The paper finishes with a conclusion that summarizes the insights, discusses weaknesses and discusses future opportunities

Problem Description
Literature Review
The Emerging-State
Emerging-State
A: Eliminate
Importance
Importance of Ethnographic Envelopes
Course of Action Analysis under Operational Constraints
Policy-Timing
Diminishing Returns of Combat Actions
Perceived Legitimacy of Green Actor
Incremental Knowledge Gain
Examining
Findings
10. Conclusions
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call