http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-can-the-islamic-state-survive.html?ref=opinion&_r=0Can the Islamic State Survive?
MAY 23, 2015
Ross Douthat
THE fall of an autocrat leads to foreign occupation and civil war. A revolutionary movement with a messianic vision capitalizes on the chaos to gain power. The revolutionaries rule through terror and the promise of utopia, and inspire copycats around the world. But other nations impose a quarantine, internal rivals regain ground, and despite initial successes the new regime seems unlikely to survive — especially once outside powers, including the United States, join the fight against it.
This is the story to date of the Islamic State, which defied predictions of its imminent collapse by capturing Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria last week. A “tactical setback,” President Obama called these developments, and quite possibly they are; it’s still hard to imagine that the self-styled caliphate can long endure.
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