The rise of ISIS in 2013 and 2014 occurred in a vacuum created by the breakdown of state authority in Iraq and Syria. In the Syrian Civil War, the group used a strategy of selective alliance and aggressive expansion. It exploited the “security dilemma” faced by Sunni populations who felt abandoned by the central governments in Baghdad and Damascus. By presenting itself as the only credible protector, ISIS induced a form of bandwagoning among local tribes and foreign fighters. It built a proto-state that controlled territory larger than Great Britain and governed millions of people. This success came from its ability to project strength and capitalize on the under-balancing of regional powers that were too divided by their own rivalries to unite against it early on.
The fall of the caliphate was a direct consequence of its failure to manage the global balance of threats. By conducting high-profile executions and global terror attacks, ISIS became so threatening that it forced naturally antagonistic actors into a massive counter-alliance. The Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS eventually grew to include nearly ninety nations. This massive “chain-ganging” of international forces—including the United States, Russia, Iran, and various local militias like the Syrian Democratic Forces—led to the loss of all territorial holdings by 2019. The group could not sustain a state while being at war with almost every major power simultaneously.
Gemini says: Alliance Theory suggests that political belief systems do not emerge from deep-seated moral values like equality or authority. Instead, these systems function as strategic tools to mobilize support for allies and opposition against rivals. Humans possess an evolved alliance psychology designed to detect and form these supportive networks because there is strength in numbers. Under this framework, the rise, fall, and global actions of ISIS reflect the group’s navigation of shifting alliance structures and its use of propagandistic biases to sustain its influence.
Humans choose allies based on similarity, transitivity, and interdependence. ISIS used markers like shared religious interpretations to coordinate with likeminded individuals. It exploited transitivity—the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend—to draw in those who viewed central governments as rivals. This created a self-reinforcing network where allies provided protection and resources, increasing their mutual interdependence.
Once these alliances form, groups use specific propagandistic biases to manage their reputation and attack rivals. Perpetrator biases allow groups to downplay their own responsibility for harm while minimizing the severity of the damage they inflict. Conversely, victim biases lead groups to embellish the harm done to them by rivals to mobilize third-party support. ISIS used these tactics to frame its territorial expansion as a defensive necessity for its allies, while categorizing all opposition as illegitimate rivals.
The eventual fall of the ISIS territorial state highlights the risks of failing to manage a super-alliance of rivals. By being a threat to a vast array of groups, ISIS forced naturally antagonistic actors into a transitive alliance against it. This mirrors how political parties in the United States coalesce into two super-alliances that combine various cultural and religious groups into polarized blocs.
The shift toward global terror attacks, such as the one at Bondi Beach, serves a strategic function in this alliance structure. Even without physical territory, ISIS uses propaganda to signal its continued allegiance to its global network. These attacks function as a “tag” or “marker” to assort with likeminded individuals and maintain common knowledge of the alliance’s existence. By praising such events, the group seeks to induce others to take sides, effectively “bridging” distant individuals into their conflict through shared enmity toward common rivals.
ChatGPT says: Alliance Theory treats movements like ISIS or ISIL not as pure ideology but as coalition machines. They rise when they solve alliance problems and fall when they stop doing so.
ISIS rose because it temporarily solved four alliance problems at once.
First, it offered radical status mobility. Young Sunni men across Iraq, Syria, and the diaspora were blocked from honor, income, and meaning. ISIS created an instant ladder. Join and you were no longer invisible. You were a soldier of history, a judge, an executioner, a hero. Alliance Theory says this matters more than belief. Belief follows status, not the other way around.
Second, it enforced brutally clear boundaries. ISIS drew sharp lines between in and out, believer and apostate, pure and impure. Boundary enforcement creates internal trust and emotional intensity. The cruelty was not a bug. It was the signal. Violence demonstrated commitment and deterred defection. That made the coalition feel strong and inevitable during its rise.
Third, it captured territory and ran a state. This is crucial. Control of land turned a symbolic alliance into a material one. Taxes, oil, courts, wives, jobs, housing. A real state allows patronage. Patronage stabilizes alliances. At its peak, ISIS looked like the winning team. Alliance Theory predicts rapid growth at that moment.
Fourth, it globalized belonging. ISIS offered a transnational identity that overrode local humiliation. A nobody in Europe or Australia could matter instantly. You did not need deep religious training. You needed rage, grievance, and a phone. The coalition exported identity before it exported fighters.
Its fall followed classic alliance collapse patterns.
First, it lost monopoly on violence. Once it faced sustained military pressure from multiple state actors, it could no longer guarantee protection. When a coalition cannot protect its members, loyalty evaporates fast.
Second, its internal costs exploded. Extreme purges, paranoia, and punishment are stabilizing only while winning. Once losing, they accelerate defection. Alliance Theory predicts spirals of distrust when enforcement exceeds benefits.
Third, it lost territorial control. Without land, ISIS could not distribute resources or status. The state project collapsed into a brand. A brand cannot discipline members the way a state can.
Fourth, rival Sunni alliances re-emerged. Local tribes and militias recalculated. ISIS no longer maximized survival or honor. They flipped.
This explains the shift from conquest to terrorism.
When an alliance loses the ability to govern, it often pivots to symbolic violence. Terror attacks serve three alliance functions even in decline.
They maintain relevance. Attacks force attention and remind sympathizers that the group still exists.
They lower the barrier to participation. Lone actors do not need training, travel, or coordination. The alliance becomes ideological rather than organizational.
They externalize failure. Instead of admitting defeat, violence reframes the struggle as eternal and global.
This is how ISIS-inspired attacks spread far beyond the Middle East, including incidents like the Bondi Junction area attack. In Alliance Theory terms, these are not centrally planned operations. They are franchise violence. The attacker borrows the brand to convert personal grievance, alienation, or psychological collapse into moralized meaning.
The key point is uncomfortable but important. Most of these attackers are not disciplined soldiers of a coherent movement. They are failed joiners. ISIS provides a narrative that turns isolation into martyrdom and personal rage into cosmic war.
Why did ISIS fail to regenerate at scale.
Because alliances compete. Post-ISIS, Sunni grievance is now fragmented across local militias, criminal networks, nationalist movements, and state bargains. No single coalition currently offers the same combination of land, status, certainty, and apocalyptic meaning. Without that bundle, you get sporadic violence rather than mass mobilization.
Forward-looking takeaway.
ISIS was not a historical anomaly. It was an extreme but predictable response to blocked status, weak states, and identity vacuum. You defeat such movements not only by killing leaders but by offering alternative alliances that provide dignity, order, and future paths. Where those remain absent, the stimulus for lone terror persists even after the flag falls.
