On Sept. 19, just days before the U.S.-led airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) expanded into Syria, the militant group released a 55-minute documentary, “Flames of War,” warning about direct military confrontation with the United States. ISIL made similar taunts when it executed Western hostages, seized U.S. weapons sent to Syrian rebels and co-opted groups that were trained to fight against them. Why is ISIL so eager to lure the United States into battle? While ISIL has unrivaled access to multiple revenue streams, a vast array of arms and command tens of thousands of soldiers, the one thing it lacks is local popular legitimacy — a big problem for a group that aspires to form a caliphate. However, the expanded foreign intervention will likely help ISIL mitigate this challenge by galvanizing the public against the U.S.-led coalition, with ISIL portraying itself as the only force capable of repelling these malignant invaders. Meanwhile, the U.S. will be drawn ever deeper into a war of attrition in which its enemies, nonstate actors, have little to lose and everything to gain.

Bolstering ISIL’s legitimacy

Western powers risk glamorizing the very actors they are ostensibly seeking to undermine while their reactionary policies play into the hands of the enemy. In a word, the best way to defeat ISIL is to simply refuse to play its game.

Given the complex dynamics involved, military interventions typically last much longer than projected and cost much more in terms of lives and resources. They rarely achieve their initial stated goals and often result in adverse second-order effects. Campaigns against ideologically driven nonstate actors tend to be even more risky and less successful because the enemy is extremely flexible and often has little to lose. This fact was underscored by former Defense Intelligence Agency head Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s recent testimony that the United States is “no safer” as a result of its 13-year war on terrorism. In many respects, the problem has grown worse. As an official extension of this indefinite war, the campaign against ISIL will probably be equally counterproductive. The blowback has already begun. Thousands have turned out across Syria to protest coalition airstrikes. Even moderate Syrian rebels, who are funded and trained by Washington, have condemned the strikes as ineffective, citing the fact that their leadership was not consulted or briefed in the selection of strategic targets. The protesters and some members of the armed Syrian opposition deplored the civilian casualties and the fact that the coalition has already begun targeting non-ISIL rebel groups, such as the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, while there have been no strikes against Syrian government targets. Once an ally of the moderates, al-Nusra Front has evolved into a rival in part because of U.S. policies designed to help distinguish the “good“ rebels from al-Qaeda. Until now, al-Nusra Front was focused on and has been extremely effective against the Syrian government, but it is now vowing reprisal attacks against the United States for the latest strikes. Worse still, the attacks have pushed al-Nusra Front toward rapprochement with ISIL. Far from being divided against one another, the militants are uniting against a common enemy: the U.S.-led coalition and its proxies, including the moderate Syrian rebels. These developments will not only endanger the United States and its regional interests, allies and local agents but they will also strengthen the Syrian regime and the region’s extremists.

A better alternative