Will McCants on "A Caliphate Without a Caliphate"
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 July 2016
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will McCants, a Senior Fellow at Brookings and the Director of the Project on US Relations with the Islamic World, comes on the podcast to discuss ISIS’s involvement in the recent spate of terrorist attacks across the globe. To what extent has ISIS really been involved in these attacks? How does their involvement reflect a change in strategy or a response to recent territorial losses? And how does group that presents itself as a caliphate continue to exist without controlling any land?
It’s the Lawfare Podcast Episode #179: Will McCants on “A Caliphate Without A Caliphate.”
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Transcript
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| 0:27.2 | and the aftermath. |
| 0:35.6 | You would expect that their political project would have been utterly discredited in 2009 |
| 0:42.4 | because of their defeat. |
| 0:44.2 | They didn't even own territory, but it's at that point where it became the most popular |
| 0:49.0 | and jihadists were the most energized to see it happen. |
| 0:54.1 | And I anticipate you will see something similar in the short if they completely lose |
| 1:00.4 | their rebel governments in a rock and Syrian a little bit in Libya. |
| 1:05.2 | They lose it. |
| 1:07.3 | I anticipate that the jihadist community will be doubly energized to try and bring it back |
| 1:15.3 | in the short term. |
| 1:18.3 | They have persuaded their followers that territory is everything. |
| 1:23.4 | And they've delivered the goods. |
| 1:25.9 | So it has to cost them then when they lose that territory. |
| 1:30.4 | They will explain it away, but there will be a cost. |
| 1:32.8 | But what I argue is that it will not be fatal in the short term. |
| 1:38.7 | It will only energize their followers. |
| 1:41.2 | That loss will have to be enduring for it to really discredit their political program. |
| 1:50.8 | I'm Quinta Juresic and this is the Law Fair podcast July 16, 2016. |
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