The Islamic State

Chapter 6 is about the Islamic State. IS in some respects stood as the outlier among these cases. It adamantly rejected the sovereignty of all existing states and asserted that its own independence represents the recreation of the medieval Islamic caliphate. In so doing, IS disrupted not just Syria and Iraq but the entire structure of the international system. Still, much like other separatists, IS also used the vocabulary of self-determination derived from the Wilsonian moment to denounce the existing regional order and offer its own alternative. It similarly sought to establish undisputed physical control over territories left unguarded by Syria and Iraq, creating parallel state institutions that supplanted the nominal sovereign.