Post the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel has, in the name of re-establishing deterrence has essentially embarked on a ‘total war’ strategy in the Middle East. To paraphrase a Foreign Affairs magazine essay,’ The Axis of Resilience’ by Reynad Mansour a strategy of total war unmoored from politics or a political approach re the end game will do nothing but exacerbate the conflict in the Middle East to the detriment of civilians’.

The implication is stark: the conflict, militarized to the hilt, will now, in all likelihood, spill across generations. Peace and stability in the region, then remain elusive. With due respect to the author of the essay in contention, the insights that are adumbrated in it are pretty prosaic and pedestrian. It is a given, for instance, that decapitation of militant groups work- but only up to a point. While this is neither the central insight of the essay nor what the author is actually saying but insurgent and militant groups mutate and evolve. A clear-cut instance of this is the mutation of Al Qaeda into ISIS.

Even though both exist in a rump form but these still remain. Al Qaeda, from the perspective of Ondrej Filipec, mutated into ISIS not merely because of ideology but in terms of structure, strategy , tactics and approach: while Al........

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