Jihadism’s Global Struggle, and Where It’s Gaining

In 2018, Barak Mendelsohn wrote, “Bound to Fail: Transnational Jihadism and the Aggregation Problem,” where he argued that transnational jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State would continue failing to turn local victories into a lasting caliphate, allowing counterterrorism forces to contain them without costly U.S.-led interventions. Eight years later, we asked Barak to revisit his arguments.Image: Adam Jones/FlickrYour article opened with al-Baghdadi’s 2018 call for lone-wolf attacks in the West, and you argued that Islamic State-inspired attacks at t