On the Containment of Islamism
A New Kennanist Strategy for the 21st Century
The problem of Islamism has been a concern of American foreign policy since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and naturally has had an even greater importance following the devastation of the 9/11 attacks. There have been three presidential administrations since 9/11. Each has represented a different phase in foreign policy vis-à-vis problems emanating from the Muslim world.
The Bush administration launched a “War on Terror” that was expeditionary and rooted in unilateral, neoconservative democratic idealism, beginning with a logical intervention in Afghanistan, but ending with an ill-conceived misadventure in Iraq. The Obama administration’s approach was a rebuke to this, focusing more on pragmatic multilateralism, but seemingly caught in an identity crisis between an also ill-conceived intervention in Libya and a highly inconsistent response in Syria. Although the Trump administration has increased activity in all the theaters of war active under the Obama administration, the former has lacked any clear long-term international strategy, owing both to Trump’s apparent personal disinterest in policy details and his sustained rebuke to internationalist engagement beyond military campaigns.
Although the distinctions between the administrations are important to consider, all of the administrations have had the same problem. None have ever developed a truly comprehensive strategy for dealing with Islamism in all of its forms, beyond just addressing matters country-to-country on an ad hoc basis. At the root of the problem is the simplicity with which the Presidents and their foreign policy staffs have identified and analyzed the matter of Islamism. American administrations have disproportionately focused on just militant Islamism that manifests in the spectacular violence of terrorist groups, lone wolves, and most prominently the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). What is sorely lacking, and needed, is a broad strategy that recognizes and addresses both militant Islamism and civil-political Islamism, the latter being a far more insidious problem that is the true threat of the present and the future.
Thus, we must revisit one of the most consequential foreign policy initiatives of American and indeed global history, the policy of Containment as applied to the Soviet Union and Communism. As Containment manifested in a variety of forms throughout the Cold War, the scope of this article will examine it exclusively via the original conception of its author, George F. Kennan. Kennan was a historian and a diplomat who was deputy chief of mission at the American Embassy in the Soviet Union in 1946, when he dispatched “The Long Telegram” explaining the reasons for Soviet behavior and how the United States should respond. The Telegram was reworked into a public article featured the following year in Foreign Affairs, entitled “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” and written under the pseudonym “X.”
Although Kennan was not without his own inconsistencies or vagueness at times, this article maintains that the purest form of Kennanist Containment was historically limited to the period from the Telegram through to the restoration of South Korea that Kennan approved of. The concept of Containment was, of course, invoked throughout the Cold War until the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, this article does not consider policies associated with Containment after South Korea’s restoration to be relevant to its scope and analysis, because Kennan himself did not approve of such policies beyond that point.
Readers may instinctively link Cold War engagements in the Middle East and among Muslim populations with the contemporary focus of this article. It is important to explain why such linkages are not congruent. Considering the case of Lebanon is useful as an example. It was an eventful locale of engagement in the Cold War and, yet, the circumstances will show that there is little parallel to the Containment this article is particularly concerned with.
The two principal American military engagements in Lebanon were during the 1958 Crisis, in line with the Eisenhower Doctrine, and the 1982 War. The former involved Operation Blue Bat with American forces intervening on behalf of President Camille Chamoun and the latter with American forces as part of the Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF). In 1958, American forces were defending the pro-Western Chamoun and the Maronite community against the agitations of Egypt and Syria (as the United Arab Republic), the latter Soviet-aligned and having mobilized Lebanese factions in the name of Arab nationalism. In 1982–3, the MNF sought the withdrawal of all foreign forces in Lebanon, being most especially concerned with Syria, the nascent Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Kennan later testified before Congress in 1966 that he opposed the 1958 intervention. He did not consider Lebanon as a site of Containment essential to American interests. Connecting Lebanon and Vietnam, Kennan asserted, “we are a great nation and our world position rests in the long run on things more substantial and more important than the propaganda victories of opponents.”
On the issue of Islam itself as relevant to this article, it is the case that in 1958, Arab nationalism had implied tinges of Muslim identity politics and in 1982, the United States was concerned about Iranian expansionism. However, among policymakers, the concerns with the former were principally about Soviet alignment and with the latter were principally about the new Islamic Iran as a state. Islam and Islamism were only incidental to American concerns and subsequent policy decisions, so this article maintains that there is no basis for direct comparison between Cold War Middle Eastern “Containment” and the adaptation of Kennanist Containment as envisioned here.
Before engaging directly with Kennan’s framework, it is essential to define and problematize the matter of Islamism itself. This requires a foray into Islamic intellectual history, with a consideration of the socio-intellectual structures produced by it. The following section will outline how both Traditionalist and Modernist Islam have, for different reasons, been unnecessarily auto-limiting, producing gaps in Islamic philosophy that have made room for, and negatively shaped, the troublesome phenomenon that is known as Islamism.
Islamism as Islamic Intellectual Failure
Although this section will consider Muslim historical choices on Islamic theology on their own terms, it is important to acknowledge that there are many varieties of Islamism, with some also partly shaped by reaction to external, historical developments, such as colonialism and foreign intervention. That said, Islamist “reaction” itself, as a phenomenon that has necessarily provoked particular diplomacies and securitizations on a global scale, remains a unique response. It has no scaled and qualified equivalent among non-Muslim populations that have also suffered colonialism and foreign intervention. It is the very histories and worldviews that arose out of Islamic intellectual history and its failures that still make Muslim “reaction” a unique category unto itself.
Between the 8th and 10th Centuries, Islamic rationalism had its heyday as early Abbasid scholars studied a combination of Islamic, Greek, and Indian texts, reconciling them into forms of secular philosophy. The intellectual foundation of this open approach was a scholastic theology (Kalam) known as al-Mu‘tazilah. The central tenet of the Mutazilites was a belief in the separate, “created” status of the Quran. This did not mean they rejected the Quran as Divine Revelation, but it did signify that the Quran was not co-terminus with God and, therefore, could be critiqued and analyzed like other texts.
Following this early period, however, more conservative caliphs paved the way for changes among the intellectual elite. The seminal change arrived in the form of a former Mutazilite, Abu Hasan al-Ash‘ari (874–936), who asserted that the Quran was “uncreated” and, thus, co-terminus with God. This shift necessarily altered and limited further developments in Islamic rationalism and gave birth to Asharite Kalam. Later, the most well-known Asharite of history, al-Ghazali (1058–1111), wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers, an incisive critique of Greek metaphysics. The effect of his work went far beyond metaphysics, however, for Muslim intellectuals en masse eventually considered all Greek philosophy as incompatible with Islam. The critique of al-Ghazali by Andalusian polymath Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126–98), The Incoherence of the Incoherence, circulated belatedly and, unfortunately, did not reverse the intellectual shift brought about by al-Ash‘ari and consolidated by al-Ghazali.
These developments served as the basis for what is known as Traditionalist Sunni Islam with its Schools of Thought (Madhahib, singular Madhhab) of Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh). Traditionalists adhere to the practice of Emulation (Taqlid), enforcing adherence to established principles within their respective Madhhab and, consequently, discouraging the use of individual interpretation (Ijtihad). If and when changes have occurred, they are necessarily minimal and conform to established principles (Ijtihad f-il Madhhab). It should be noted that, officially speaking, Traditionalists are politically quietist, since Asharite doctrine enforces cooperation with temporal authorities. This is why Traditionalists are swift to condemn terrorism and other forms of militancy against civilians or the state, but can also be swift to endorse civil-political Islamist agendas if Islamist factions hold temporal power.
This stagnant state of affairs was sustained until the advent of Islamic Modernism at the turn of the 20th Century, the progenitors of which most prominently include Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1839–97) and Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905). Modernists emphasize reform (Islah) and direct engagement with the Quran and the Sunnah using Ijtihad. While they challenge the stagnation and staleness of the Traditionalists, the Modernists have also been auto-limiting on their own terms as well. This is because their fetishization of “authenticity” often makes them confrontational, politicized activists, who take textual purity, ipso facto, as a symbol of Islam’s compatibility with Modernity. Thus, en masse, the Modernist return to the foundational texts has not led to a broad-based Muslim Enlightenment founded on the kinds of exegetical textual critiques that were true of the Mutazilites.
As the scholar Clifford Geertz once wrote, “stepping backward in order better to leap is an established principle in cultural change; our own Reformation was made that way. But in the Islamic [Modernist] case the stepping backward seems often to have been taken for the leap itself, and what began as a rediscovery of the scriptures ended as a kind of deification of them. [sic] Islam, in this way, becomes a justification for modernity, without itself actually becoming modern.”
The dysfunction caused by stagnation on one side and textual fanaticism on the other has directly led to the development of Islamism today. Islamism is thus defined as a politicized Islamic activism rooted in a frustrated and chauvinistic Muslim self-awareness regarding Islamic civilizational stagnation. Islamism manifests militantly and/or civil-politically. It ironically draws much theological inspiration from the backwardness of Traditionalism, while repackaging it into a confrontational, textualist Modernism that sidesteps a genuine Muslim Enlightenment in favor of a disingenuously immediate and unilaterally declared Modernity.
This section has intentionally considered issues related to Sunni Islam and not Shi‘a Islam. Shi‘a Islam, most pertinently the dominant branch of the Twelver Shi‘a, has developed along different lines and further reinvented itself given the hegemony of the Islamic Republic of Iran over Twelver populations in other countries. This has been exacerbated by Ruhollah Khomeini’s innovated principle of Guardianship of the Jurists (Vilayat-e-Faqih) that has centralized temporal and religious authority among clerics, which has no equivalent within Sunni Islam.
Therefore, so long as the official theology of the Islamic Republic of Iran is sustained by the state, American foreign policy cannot make any meaningful impact on Twelver Shi‘a Islamism. Not much is lost in this concession, however, since Sunnis make up at least 80% of the global Muslim population and there remains ample opportunity to contain the development of Islamism within Sunni communities. This article will proceed first to a consideration of Kennan and how his original analysis of Soviet behavior might also apply to Islamist trends.
Civilizational Insecurity
Kennan’s foundation for understanding Soviet conduct was rooted in examining internal Russian dynamics in order to understand the external manifestations of Soviet foreign policy behavior. He began by considering the issue of insecurity. In the Telegram, he considered Russian insecurity as historical and cultural, given the early vulnerability of Rus’ tribes to Mongol-cum-Tatar dominions and, following that, an ascendant and powerful West. Later, writing as X, he deemphasized this aspect of insecurity and focused more on the problem of capitalist encirclement.
Kennan considered domestic events such as Stalin’s Great Purge as fundamentally linked to Russian paranoia regarding external actors. There are several parallels here to the status quo in the Muslim-majority world. Already discussed is the Muslim self-awareness regarding the weakness and stagnation of Islamic civilization. Moreover, the Muslim-majority world has been conducting, in ways big and small, its own sort of great purge in the form of social and legalistic vanguardism that perpetually redefines what is “properly Islamic” as well as making minorities increasingly feel unwelcome and vulnerable. What is not properly Islamic is primordially linked with the West, Zionism, or secularization.
Much like the Soviets this balance is a zero-sum affair, so minorities and heterodox Muslims have been fleeing through the decades, leaving the Muslim-majority world even more homogenous and increasingly consisting of puritans and chauvinists. This trend can be traced back to the social environments that provoked Middle Eastern and North African Jews to leave their home countries following hostile Muslim reactions to Israel’s creation, hostility that had already manifested years earlier in violent pogroms. Although these events were not broadly Islamist in the strictest sense, they signaled a shift toward more puritanical discourses on citizenship and identity, discourses that portrayed native Jews as agents of Zionism and native Christians as agents of Western Christendom.
Islamists and others have maintained these discourses across many Muslim-majority countries. In addition to the depletion of native Jewry in the Muslim-majority world, in total 200,000 Christians have fled Egypt and 1,125,000 have fled Iraq. The numbers out of Syria have been difficult to determine precisely, but analyses indicate Christians have suffered specific targeting and disproportionate violence.
Ideology
Kennan considered Soviet neuroses at the time to be a merging of Russian insecurity with Communist ideology, the Marxist-Leninist iteration of which was “the fig leaf of [Soviet] moral and intellectual respectability.” He went on to write, “with its basic altruism of purpose, they found justification for their instinctive fear of [the] outside world, for the dictatorship without which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they did not dare not to inflict, for sacrifice they felt bound to demand.” Islamism is also a utopian ideology and like most utopian visions, Islamism requires a unilateral capture of the state to enact its agenda, one that is necessarily coercive and even in its civil-political forms, cannot tolerate dissent. Like the Soviets, Islamism as an ideology gives Islamist leaders the fig leaf of respectability they need to justify all the draconian actions they take when in power.
Most civil-political Islamists are in favor of procedural democracy because it helps them attain power, but once in control Islamists tend to dismantle, or prevent the development of, substantive democracy that provides a challenge to their power. Islamists cannot imagine any alternative because their ideology does not allow it. One such example is Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have had overwhelming success electorally, namely by appealing to both Ottoman-Muslim cultural sentimentality and a “New Turkey” vision based on economic-liberalist development.
Despite this runaway success and the structural weakness and staleness of the main opposition party, the AKP government has still moved forward in neutralizing the Turkish Army in favor of a loyalist National Police through personnel changes and funding cuts, as well as conducting a purge of bureaucrats and academics by sacking and jailing thousands. The Islamist conception of Islam’s inalienable relationship to state power is absolute, so even political success is not enough to depart from chauvinistic socio-political tendencies. “Many of them are too ignorant of [the] outside world,” Kennan asserted, “and mentally too dependent to question [sic] self-hypnotism, and who have no difficulty making themselves believe what they find it comforting and convenient to believe.” Although he was writing about the Soviets, Kennan could have very well made such a statement about Islamists.
There is a brief corollary to this discussion of ideology. Today many Islamists are making common cause with naïve sections of progressives in the West. The latter are alarmed by a resurgence of right-wing nativism and ethno-nationalism, with many deciding to prioritize and fetishize multiculturalism über alles.
This fetishization has created the odd occurrence of many progressives defending Islamist perspectives, believing they are merely defending personal faith and not ideology. Once again, Kennan made a statement on Soviet tactics analogous to this, noting that the Soviets wanted “‘democratic-progressive’ elements [to be] utilized to maximum to bring pressure to bear on capitalist governments along lines agreeable to Soviet interests.” Western progressives today must not be so naïve to think that all of the partners in their coalitions have the same openhearted, pluralistic motivations that they do.
Expansionism
Kennan viewed Soviet expansionism not as a military issue, but as a political, civil-society, and economic problem in strategic countries where dissatisfaction would favor Marxist movements. His disapproval of a military dimension of Containment manifested in his opposition to the development of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which he considered an unnecessary military provocation. Given their war fatigue, Kennan believed Soviet expansionism to be calibrated to socio-political influence and dominance. For the Soviets, “it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure.”
Islamist expansionism in the West has not been considered a pressing problem, due to the confidence in the stability of the international state system and the exercise of immigration vetting as a way to prevent the entry of militant Islamism. However, destabilization arising from the Iraqi, Syrian, and Libyan Civil Wars, as well as ecologically motivated migration from Africa, have brought a surge of Muslim migrants into Europe. The foolishness of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open invitation also created a nightmare of Social Darwinistic proportions in several ways.
The disorganized and desperate stream of people hoping to take advantage of German policy included young and single men, family men, and women of varying family status. The haphazard nature of the influx has created abuse and exploitation that could have been avoided had Merkel not incentivized the trek. Contrary to popular belief, women have, on average, constituted half the migrant population and many solo men are actually husbands traveling ahead to apply for their families’ asylum. However, incentivizing even these family men was also a mistake. Even conservative projections of migrant intake, and its subsequent burdens on public resources and state/civic apparatuses, are likely four or more times less than the real intake number if family asylum is properly taken into account.
With regards to the young and truly single men, sociological principle would deem such an influx as destructive for any society regardless of who those men are. However, it is worse in this context because these single Muslim men come from societies where social and sexual dysfunction is rampant. This is due to regressive cultural-religious norms that have prevented the normalization of gender equality and sexual openness, especially outside of marriage. Marriage itself is wholly dependent on economic prosperity that is lacking in much of the Muslim-majority world, compounding the dysfunction.
This destabilization, though not centrally planned, has played into the hands of Islamist actors seeking to weaken Western governance and solidarity. Of course, unlike in the Cold War, Islamists do not have any central superpower authority, but there are still actors who can and have taken advantage of the situation. ISIL has been one in recruiting and encouraging lone wolves to attack European populations. The more insidious threat, however, comes from state and civil society actors looking to exploit the presence and nostalgic solidarities of Muslim populations in Europe.
Once again, and unfortunately since it is officially a NATO ally, the example of Turkey is instructive. Erdoğan and the AKP have used their popularity with Turks in Europe to sow protest and disorder in Germany and other European countries. One example was when 50,000 Turks were organized into a protest in Cologne in August 2016 because a German court refused to allow Erdoğan to address Turkish-Germans via videoconference. Turkey has also used its National Intelligence Organization (MIT) to conduct both intelligence gathering and suppression against ethnic Turks in Europe they consider a threat to the regime. In doing so, they naturally recruit within Turkish communities by appealing to a combination of ethnic and religious pride.
There is also an ideological proliferation issue that goes beyond just ethnic Turks. The Turkish government and affiliated associations have been on the ground in places like Kosovo, spreading Islamism among Muslims through social welfare apparatuses funded and run by the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA). Its worldwide presence includes 42 countries. As far as this writer is aware, its public activities do not yet include Western Europe, but it is vital that governments in the West fully assess the threat posed by TIKA and apparatuses like it.
State Construction
Muslim-minority populations in Western Europe, therefore, serve as potential proxies for external Islamist actors, especially influential Islamist state actors within Muslim-majority countries. Given the troublesome international connections that already exist, it is important to consider the socio-political constitution of Muslim-majority states. Out of 51 Muslim-majority states, 26 are Islamic States or have Islam enshrined as the Official Religion, 3 make no declaration on Islam, and 22 are officially secular.
Whereas Islamic States have Islam and comprehensive Islamic Law (Shari‘a) enshrined in their constitutions, the second group only statutorily declares Islam as the Official Religion and may or may not apply Shari‘a in personal law. Even between the states that have no declaration or are secular, Islamism is increasingly playing a significant role in socio-political development, such as in Indonesia that has no exclusive declaration and in Turkey that is officially secular.
It is worth acknowledging that Muslim-majority states are not the only countries whose constitutions and policies are informed by religion and that such inspiration does not automatically yield destructive returns. Western secularism is hardly monolithic itself. In just Western Europe, there is the “hard” Laïcité of the French Republic and the “soft” secularism of the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, with established churches led by their respective monarchs. Furthermore, there is the strong tradition of Christian Democracy throughout Europe, which some analysts have equated to “moderate” forms of Islamism.
This article disagrees with that assessment, for the very reasons discussed regarding Islamic intellectual history. Christian Democracy and forms of soft secularism in the West are products of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Even supposedly “moderate” forms of Islamism today, however, have no equivalent historical and intellectual bases, at least en masse beyond individual “Muslim Democrats” such as the late President Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia.
Returning to the matter of Muslim-majority states, a greater number are enshrining Islam officially within the state or, short of that extreme, enforcing laws and social norms informed by a strict understanding of Islam that thematically, but not substantively, aspires to be Modernist. Countries as different as Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Egypt all began as secular states that later adopted Islam as their Official Religion. Some of the changes in these countries were at the behest of secular leaders, but Islamist actors, who certainly drew on popular support, applied the pressure.
The gap between thematic and substantive Islamic Modernism stems from the aforementioned civilizational insecurity. This insecurity yields a desire for modern education and technology, but the absence of intellectual development alongside results in an Islam that remains theologically underdeveloped and, thus, manifests into socio-political chauvinism. Regarding the Marxist-Leninist state project, Kennan wrote “it afforded pseudo-scientific justification for their impatience, [sic] for their yearning for power and revenge and for their inclination to cut corners in the pursuit of it.” The predominant Modernist fallacy within Islam provides the pseudo-scientific justification for the intellectual impatience and revanchist discourses found among Muslims today, flaws that then fundamentally affect state construction.
Just as the processes were flawed for the Marxist-Leninist Soviet state project, so too are they flawed for the Islamist state project. This is always an important aspect to keep in mind when forming policy to counter Islamism. Its bold rhetorical declarations and manifestations of strength are also the foundations for its weaknesses. Political Islam, though it has delivered on economic development like that in Turkey, has mostly done so by logically and easily undoing the burdensome state socialism of its non-Islamist predecessors.
Beyond such circumstantial success, the Islamist project is one that typically introduces socio-political chaos and, thus, eventual societal decline. This is due to an obsession with ideological, populist fever over substantive and pragmatic broad-based agendas. As was true of the Soviets per Kennan, “their views, therefore, on the positive program to be put into effect, once power was attained, were for the most part nebulous, visionary and impractical.”
Bridging the Two Containments
With these foundational factors of insecurity, ideology, expansionism, and state construction taken into account, it is feasible to analyze the transferability of Containment from the Soviet Communist threat of the past to the Islamist threat of the present. It is worth noting that Kennan lived four years beyond 9/11. Although he was on the record about opposing the Iraq War, to this writer’s knowledge, he did not make other public statements regarding the problems of Islamism and the Muslim-majority world.
Kennan first defined Containment as “the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy.” A necessary concession is that Kennan’s own assertions were at times vague or assumed a congruent understanding between his internal thoughts and how others actually read his writings. He was justifiably frustrated that many actually thought the Soviet Union was keen on more war.
However, his other disparate opinions, like approving of South Korean restoration for Japan’s sake but disapproving of the Vietnam War, were products of an unclear categorization of essential versus peripheral American interests. He argued, of course, that understanding the difference between the essential and the peripheral was the key measure for an effective, contingent Containment. Yet, the seemingly arbitrary nature of which policies he consequently supported or opposed indicate a manifest confusion in the interpretation and implementation of his original thoughts.
The critical parts of early Containment, definitively in line with Kennan’s thinking, were the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. These policies set a basis of political and economic aid for Europe, with the additional option of military aid, but not direct military engagement, with essential allies like Greece and Turkey. Eventually, it also included more unsavory alliances, like with Francoist Spain, in order to secure the Mediterranean. Originally, Kennan also sought a distinction between Soviet influence and other international Communism, the presence and activities of the latter possibly being unimportant to American strategy depending on the locale.
The transferability of Kennan’s Soviet Containment has continuities and discontinuities in application toward Islamist Containment. The latter makes local versus international distinctions difficult, because the problem of Islamism lies not just among parties, movements, and state-directed actors, but also among individual Muslims as well because of the gaps in Islamic intellectual development. As much as some policymakers insist on an utter divorce between Islamism and Muslims en masse, such an automated and fixed assessment ignores the realities and limits policy responses.
Economic aid to Muslim-majority countries is not something new. Yet it has gone directly to leaders who have misused the funds or not appropriated them to address development efficiently. The United States needs to establish a new type of international cooperative body for Muslim countries that properly coordinates aid and technical assistance, like the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC-cum-OECD) did for the Marshall Plan.
There is a fallacy, however, associated with this liberal, economic developmentalism. The problem with economic aid is not just its particular administration and distribution. Developmentalism also assumes economic improvement will miraculously yield democratizing, pluralizing, and secularizing Muslim-majority societies.
This assumption is empirically false and, furthermore, can mobilize militant actors that often use the issue of aid to delegitimize states. It has already been noted that procedural democratization with Islamism typically leads to rollback or stagnation in substantive democratization, pluralism, and secularization. Moreover, new Muslim middle classes, self-aware and wishing to justify themselves on Modernist Islamic terms, have not just passively embraced Islamism, but have typically been at the forefront of founding and sustaining civil-political and militant Islamist movements.
The economic aid aspect of Containment against Islamism, therefore, must be tied to a program of socio-intellectual reforms. Without these reforms, there is no meaningful and sustainable way to contain Islamism and the economic aid alone would be wasteful. The requisites and implementations of this program may vary between countries, but it is important for Western actors to provide the academic expertise and assistance for a broad-based agenda of Islamic intellectual reform.
The University of Chicago and McGill University have established institutional histories of supporting this type of work. Many of their Muslim students since the latter half of the 20th Century have taken their intellectual theories and methods back with them to their countries. The original Indonesian Renewalists, pluralistic Muslim scripturalists who went on to serve in government, academia, and civil society in Indonesia, were exemplars of this.
The main dilemma of Kennanist Containment applied here, then, is that this type of combined economic and social agenda does depend on a degree of Muslims’ consent and interest in opening up new frontiers of intellectual engagement with their own faith’s history and traditions. Encouraging a return to earlier Mutazilite Kalam may offset this sense of newness. Still, policymakers should expect the explicit use of the term to spark Traditionalist Asharite and Modernist Salafi resistance among Sunnis, albeit for different reasons.
The facilitation of this type of Containment may also be delivered through different means and democratic means may not be the best way of achieving effective Containment. Enlightened Western autocrats through history, with comprehensive agendas that avoided personal corruption, often achieved progress that democracy on its own could not have so efficiently. The same might prove to be true for the Muslim-majority world, so long as socio-intellectual reform accompanies broad-based development and prosperity.
It is important to conceive of how this might apply to the contemporary milieu. Significant attention has already been paid to Turkey so it is sensible to begin there. It is important to recognize that Turkey is not the same country it used to be and, thus, not the same ally. Erdoğan has obnoxiously interfered in European domestic affairs by riling up European Turks and Muslims. Furthermore, he has used the threat of releasing further refugee populations in his own country into Europe to hold the continent hostage to his demands.
As painful as this will be, it is essential to reconsider Turkey’s place in NATO and the broader Atlantic framework. An initial and prolonged isolation of the country followed by an offer of the aforementioned program of aid-for-reform will be the necessary prescription, as Erdoğan’s personality means he will only respond to confrontation. Contacts with nonpartisan Turkish technocrats should also be established and maintained as the process unfolds. In many ways, this rupture has already happened given American investment with Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria. It is time the United States finalized the rupture, for denial of it is only hurting American and European interests at this point.
Speaking of Iraq and Syria, the United States must continue to collaborate closely with quasi-state actors like the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq and the Kurdish-led Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS). That is not to say that we cannot possibly maintain and further grow a friendly relationship with the Iraqi national government. There are simply limits to that relationship given the dominance of pro-Iranian, Shi‘a Islamist/nationalist parties in the government. Limiting our relationships to official, internationally recognized state engagements, and/or counterproductive attempts at state reunifications, limits our policy responses and is completely at odds with a pragmatic recognition of reality. For those entities that are already friendly to us, an introduction of the aid-for-reform program should commence as soon as possible.
Let us recall that the assumption that the international state system must be maintained at all costs is a relatively new concept in our human history of international affairs. The Peace of Westphalia, which laid the groundwork for the later phases of the Reformation and eventually the Enlightenment, was an acceptance that there could be a productive status quo in maintaining the de jure status of a united dominion while accepting the de facto status of independent sub-dominions. The opportunity to influence and deal directly with reasonable state and quasi-state actors is something American policy should not pass on. Advancing the aid-for-reform agenda wherever and whenever possible will allow small, but meaningful, impacts to be made in Muslim-majority communities in terms of economic development, governance, and human capital. Those factors, built up alongside the socio-intellectual reform being advocated for will mean a higher probability of measurable success for Containment.
The focus of this article has been on the Containment against civil-political Islamism, but of course militant Islamism remains relevant and should be addressed. The coalition effort against the principal territory of ISIL has been effective and military aid should continue to the Kurdish authorities and the Iraqi national government to prevent any territorial resurgence of the group. In the areas held by our allies, aid programs will weaken the chance of ISIL returning to take advantage of desperate populations. Local allies, however, must be the principal ones to handle such matters, as any direct American involvement dominated by our own ground troops will be thoroughly counterproductive.
In a way, this is congruent with Kennan’s endorsement of the Truman Doctrine for Greece and Turkey. Military action should only occur to the extent that it secures and facilitates the political, social, and economic agenda. For a more complicated situation like Iraq where central government authority has returned to Sunni Arab areas, for example, we must convince the Shi‘a dominated government that implementing a version of the Containment program among their Sunni population is completely in their interest. It will mean less time spent preparing and dealing with possible future conflict based in and among Sunni populations. With that must come a compromising, but necessary, agreement that should we be able to operate civilly among the Sunni population, we would, in turn, pledge to not meddle in internal Iraqi Shi‘a affairs. We indicate to Shi‘a authorities that our program will calm their restless Sunni population, while also indicating to Sunni regional powers that our program will be uplifting said populations.
The breakdown in central authority and the rise of a rogue, militant group like ISIL between Iraq and Syria has been a horrific affair. However, that complex setting has also given us an opportunity to blueprint all of the aforementioned aspects of Containment even with such complications. Replicating this formula to other Muslim-majority countries is possible, for depending on the circumstances, there is a multi-tiered way to form productive relationships with state, quasi-state, and local grassroots actors to enact a Containment agenda.
Domestic Dilemmas
Thus far, this outline for an external Containment of Islamism depends on an abundance of factors far beyond the control of Western policymakers. Therefore, it is necessarily realistic to consider an additional iteration of Containment, one focused on Muslim and non-Muslim populations outside the Muslim-majority world. The same economic and social program must be pro-actively applied in Western countries as internal Containment.
This would naturally involve a degree of coercion, principally through state-mandated education programs that may be integrated into existing curricula. These programs ought to apply to all citizens, given that awareness of political Islam is now a global prerogative and because Islamism often manifests in educated, middle-class families, Muslim-borne and converted. Civil libertarians would likely consider this a terrible overreach of state authority, but the problem of Islamism cannot be treated with a soft approach that interprets this issue as one of religious freedom. Islamism has nothing to do with religious freedom and is a destructive ideology that must be treated the same way the free entities of the West treated Fascism and Communism.
However, if and when Containment manifests only in this most narrow and domestic way, it is a concession that the United States and its Western allies will have to accept a further degree of collapse and conflict to occur in some parts of the Muslim-majority world. Such collapse and conflict may be inevitable and perhaps even necessary from the standpoint of socio-political evolution. Europe’s own history with religious conflict and realignment illustrates as much. Western involvement in the Muslim-majority world might then be limited to military aid to state and local actors that would secure natural resources and establish safe zones that will limit any further influx of Muslim migrants to the West. However, once again, direct Western military involvement with ground troops should no longer be considered a primary option unless local allies are facing fatal collapse.
In addition, regular Muslim immigration to the West, with the exception of entrants for educational purposes explicitly connected to instruction in exegetical theology, must also enter a moratorium. The risk of growing the number of Islamists in the West is far too high, especially while implementing the different aspects of internal Containment. This is not to unjustifiably generalize Muslims or fix Muslim attitudes as immune to evolution and alteration. Yet, it remains the case that for any community of people, social evolution requires time and incremental shifts.
Such leaps are only realistically possible for Western Muslim-minority populations if they are given a chance to adjust on their own terms generationally. This would not be possible while adding new individuals from the outside, with unaltered attitudes, into Western Muslim communities. It is actually unfair to theologically critical Western Muslims, who are already at the forefront of fighting for intellectual evolution in their own communities, to add to their burden with counter-productive population increases that outpace their ability to effect change.
The rise of ethno-nationalism in the West has understandably alarmed mainstream conservatives, centrists, and liberals alike. However, we cannot allow far-right politics to affect what should be a rational and urgently necessary debate on Muslim immigration. Extensive research from reputable organizations like Pew indicate that Muslim attitudes globally on social and theological matters remain disturbingly reactionary and illiberal.
An immigration moratorium is a difficult, unsavory, but essential aspect of internal Containment that is fundamentally about recognizing and accepting probability and risk as they apply to the personal dispositions of far too many Muslims globally. It will also reduce Western temptations for ethno-religious registration and other forms of apartheid. Inversely, pluralistic Muslims who would be allies against Islamism in the Muslim-majority world must, in fact, remain there. This will prevent further brain drain and, at the very least, pause the chauvinistic homogenization of the Muslim-majority world. The latter cannot pluralize if all of the pluralists have left.
Accepting the Limits of Power
Returning to Kennan, his own thoughts would seemingly justify such difficult and unsettling choices as well. Although supportive of Democrats and the father of a most internationalist policy, his journals reveal that this disposition was also tempered by degrees of Burkean skepticism, nativism, misanthropy, and a belief in Anglo-Saxon philosophical supremacy. While the Head of Policy Planning Staff at the State Department, Kennan wrote a memo stating how “we should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
Although not a commentator on Muslim affairs per se during his career, a journal entry regarding his visit to Iraq might very well be extrapolated to the broader Muslim-majority world. Kennan said Iraqis were “inclined to all manner of religious bigotry and fanaticism, condemned by the tenets of the most widespread faith to keep a full half of the population, namely, the feminine half, confined and excluded from the productive efforts of society by a system of indefinite house arrest.” Separately, he also concluded “the main determinants of change will be and must be, as in any other great country, internal. Over the long run no outside force can ever make great, lasting and beneficial changes in another country’s life.”
Quoting Kennan here is not meant as a fatalistic statement or one that overturns this article’s previous assertions. Rather, it is meant as a realistic reminder that the economic and social program advocated for in this article will necessarily have its limits. Should these programs fail, the United States and its allies must not assume that any last-ditch military interventions will produce favored outcomes. The whole point of this exposition has been to argue for a complex and best effort engagement, but no set of policies should ever be enacted and implemented as some kind of suicide pact. If and when Containment fails in a given locale, measured military support against rogue entities may still be required, but should only be applied to protect vital interests and resources, not to force a sweeping change in status quo.
The quintessential lesson about Containment, as it applied to the Soviets and Communism and may now apply to Islamism, is that it is an ever-shifting test of identifying the essential versus the peripheral. Upon the application of different forms of political, social, and economic power on essential interests, an honest assessment thereafter is necessary regarding the extent and limits of that power. Kennanist Containment, unlike later “Containment,” was about using influence and resources with greatest efficacy while avoiding a self-destructive overextension and misplaced use of power.
Understanding and accepting the dynamic, and at times unsavory, aspects of Containment against Islamism is about adopting an evolving and pragmatic approach that involves judgment-driven leadership enacting policies that will have to outlast any single administration and policy staff. This is a tall order considering the internal tumults of both the United States and the European Union. Given the depth and breadth of Muslim dysfunction, however, it is an order that cannot be sidelined or minimized.
As Kennan asserted in his journals, “the record indicates that in the short term our public opinion, or what passes for public opinion in the thinking of official Washington, can be easily led astray into areas of emotionalism and subjectivity which make a poor and inadequate guide for national action.” Society is overcome with emotionalism, subjectivity, and partisan spitefulness. The only reason why the Islamist threat could possibly achieve any measure of sustained victory is if such self-destructive impulses are sustained. Those of us in the West, regardless of our individual origins, must remember that we have been capable, on so many occasions, of sober and measured leadership over the long-term that dynamically weakened and defeated threats that once seemed insurmountable. Let us begin again.
This article was first published in April 2018 and was originally entitled “Mr. Kennan Goes to the Muslim World: Containment Applied to the Problem of Islamism.”
Changes and additions since then include the title, the photo featuring Kennan’s headstone, hyperlinks to subsequent pieces derived from this work, a caption adjustment to respectfully account for Syafii Maarif’s passing, and settings alterations to take advantage of Medium’s implementation of SEO. However, the substance of this article and its arguments remains unchanged.
This writing greatly benefited from the editorial input of Jade Saab, Editor of Reformer. This does not imply a general or specific endorsement of the article or the arguments within it from either Jade Saab or Reformer.
