Welcome to the post-Westphalia dystopia

Since the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) declared a caliphate, a lot has been written about the movement — but still more remains unclear.

Analysts are wondering if the group should be taken seriously, how it defines Islamic law and how it will be implemented, where it came from and how it’s financed. Some compare the Islamic State’s (IS) meteoric rise to the ascent of the Taliban, which ideologically and militarily might be true — but there is an essential difference between the two.

While the Taliban and most other Islamist movements function in the Westphalian state model, IS rejects it. It is effectively the first post-Westphalian entity to arise since the end of colonialism, and the consequences could be dire.

The nation state as we know it today is a result of the Westphalian peace agreements, signed in what is now Germany in 1648, which ended the 30 Years’ War. During this war, different states and principalities linked to either the Catholic or Protestant faith would support citizens in other principalities to get rid of their rulers, if those rulers adhered to the other faith. With the Westphalian peace, all states agreed that this was a bad idea, and that each state had absolute sovereignty over all people living in its boundaries, but no sovereignty beyond those boundaries. Additionally, all states were defined as equal, and war was recognized as a legitimate medium of conflict resolution between states.

The key element of the Westphalian system was not borders per se, but the idea of absolute sovereignty. The border at which one sovereignty ends and another begins is a product. If there can be no overlap of sovereignty, and all territory falls under a certain sovereignty, then a border automatically emerges. As a result, the Westphalian system has no problem with borders changing or states emerging or disappearing, as long as the sovereignties in each resulting territory are clear and absolute.

The Westphalian state model stood in contrast to the old empire, which in principle recognized no borders and whose sphere of influence usually would not end at a specific line, but would fade out. Influence would have a varying character, and could include semi-sovereign sub-units, which would pay tribute more or less regularly  — a classical example would be the Ottoman Empire.

The real implementation of the Westphalian system has never been as clear as theory would suggest. In a sense, colonialism was a challenge to the Westphalian system as European states turned into empires. But unlike the empires of Tamerlane, Rome or Persia, the new European empires were simultaneously obsessed with expansion and with boundaries. Expansion ended once all territory fell under the sovereignty of a European state, and imperial possession was only fully secured once its boundaries were demarcated from neighboring colonies of other imperial powers. This obsession eventually stuck us with lots of artificial borders in Africa and the Arab world.

Since then, there were all kinds of countries and groups that wanted to change the colonial borders, or that questioned where the borders really were. As a result, new countries like South Sudan appeared, countries like Libya invaded neighbors like Chad, and territories like the Halayeb triangle remained somehow ambivalent. However, these represented no challenges to the Westphalian system as such, as none of these groups were trying to do away with borders.

But even after the end of colonialism, the Westphalian system keeps being challenged. Firstly, supra-national institutions like the European Union, the United Nations and the International Criminal Court limit the absolute sovereignty of states within their borders. Secondly, international military interventions motivated by the so-called “responsibility to protect,” such as the Kosovo and Libya interventions, claim that the international community can bear responsibility for minorities or civilians in sovereign states, especially if these minorities are threatened with genocide. Thirdly, during the Cold War, communism — at least in principle — wanted to overcome the division into state-units, but even in the communist bloc this never happened. The Westphalian system proved to be rather obstinate.

While all these developments were mere modifications of the Westphalian system, the Islamic State attempts to overcome the system completely. Reflected in its name change from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to simply 5h3 Islamic State, the movement does not aim to establish governance within specific borders, but rejects borders as such. In a video produced by the IS, a young fighter called Abu Safiyya declared that “there are no nationalities. We are all Muslims, there is only one country.” He goes on to refer to all national flags as “kafir” (infidel).

Therefore, in its conception of the state, the IS has more in common with the empire of Alexander the Great than with the Taliban in Afghanistan. This might be one aspect which makes IS attractive for radical Muslims from around the world. They do not propose a particular national vision, but rather an internationalist utopia.

It would, however, be a mistake to assume that the IS is archaic or medieval. The way the movement quickly spread, the way it was able to make use of its opponents’ weaknesses, the way it uses social media as tool to advertise and recruit, but also as a tool of strategic warfare, demonstrates that the IS is clearly adapted to and rooted in the modern world. The IS is more Mad Max than Salah al-Din. Essentially, the IS is forced to adapt its strategies to spread its governance entity in a world organized by the Westphalian system. This means that the caliphate is clearly not pre-Westphalian, but post-Westphalian.

Interestingly, this construction of a post-Westphalian caliphate is one of the points of disagreement between the IS and other radical militant groups, such as Al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nusra. The newly declared Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi argues that the people need to reject all the elements of the “kafir” modern states. With such a pronouncement, he clearly differentiates the IS from movements like the Taliban or the Muslim Brotherhood, which attempt to control power in a modern state and do not question the reference frame of the state as such. He also rejects Al-Qaeda, which is a global organization based on country chapters, which reinforces the nation state as a conceptual basis.

The rejection of the modern state as an innovation incompatible with Islamic doctrine is based on the idea of the ummah. In a modern context, ummah would mean nation, or community, but traditionally it refers to the collective of all believers as they were ruled by one governance entity during the time of the Prophet, and then to a greater or lesser degree under the different caliphs. Following a literalist interpretation such as Baghdadi’s, the return to such a governance entity would be prescribed by the Sunnah.

However, the appeal of such a claim is not exclusively religious. When an IS fighter in a VICE reportage declared, “No to borders, and no to the Sykes-Picot Agreement!” this is clearly picking up on an anti-imperialist, pan-Arab discourse. Sykes-Picot was an agreement signed in 1916 that divided the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire outside the Arabian Peninsula into areas under British or French control. Sykes-Picot is seen by many as the source of the often arbitrary borders in the Middle East, which is only partially true. The IS even produced a video called “The End of Sykes-Picot,” in which its members explain their understanding of the agreement and their plan to eradicate its effects. These references to Sykes-Picot demonstrate how the IS is attempting to give the concept of the caliphate a modern-style, anti-imperialist, pan-Arab and pan-Islamic appeal.

This different thinking means that the IS might try to expand its control in all of Syria or all of Iraq, or might not. The short-term direction of the group’s expansion is not ideologically determined, but strategically motivated. Therefore, it is equally possible that the IS would choose to concentrate forces to attack elsewhere. Recent attacks in Lebanon might indicate an expansion of the movement’s struggle into this direction. But it is also not a given that more attacks on neighboring countries should be expected. At least for now, it seems that Jordanians are not worried that the IS will attack the kingdom. Indeed, it would make sense for the IS to avoid spreading its forces too thin, and not to open too many fronts.

However, it is entirely unclear if the IS will be able to maintain the level of expansion that makes the movement attractive to radical Muslims around the world. For now, the “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” logic plays to the Islamic State’s advantage, as countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia are hesitant to weaken the IS, if that could strengthen Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. In Iraq, one would expect that conflicts within the central government and regional conflicts between Baghdad and Kurdistan are secondary considering the common enemy, but this is apparently not the case.

Nevertheless, with every country the IS attacks, it gains new enemies and becomes more vulnerable. Additionally, other states should be interested in stanching financial support for the IS and the movement’s recruiting activities in their territories, even if the IS has not yet attacked that state. This might lead to a change of strategy in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. This also means that the IS might either slow down for strategic reasons, or get bogged down by local concerns and be forced to stop expanding into additional countries. Basically, this would mean that the IS would give up on its claim of a post-Westphalian caliphate, even if this change would not be openly communicated.

Alternatively, the IS could try to maintain its expansionist policy. The ability to expand will basically be determined by three factors: the number of fighters who join the IS from around the world, the level of local support and the degree to which the West is ready to get involved. While the number of fighters joining the IS seems to be to the movement’s advantage, one would expect that local support should be lower in more clearly defined nation states, such as Turkey, Kurdistan and Iran. That would limit the Islamic State's ability to expand north or east. However, local support might be higher when heading south, in particular considering the high number of Jordanian fighters reported to fight for the IS. Regarding the involvement of Western states, this remains to be seen, but US President Barack Obama’s government seems to be ready to play a role, maybe even with ground troops.

Either way, a quick further expansion would likely result in overstretch, and the caliphate could collapse as quickly as it appeared.