The Strategic Logic of Large Militant Alliance Networks
About this episode
This episode discusses the strategic logic behind militant group alliances and their implications for organizational capacity and counterinsurgency efforts.
Episode 148 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast explores why militant groups form alliances, and what the content of those alliances can tell us about their organizational capacity. Drawing on an article Professor Chris Blair co-authored with Phillip Potter, The Strategic Logic of Large Militant Alliance Networks, this episode offers a new framework for understanding militant cooperation. Reflective of the comparative advantage model, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State each pursued alliance networks not simply from a position of strength, but to compensate for distinct organizational deficits–with al-Qaeda seeking operational reach after 9/11, and the Islamic State seeking ideological legitimacy after its split with al-Qaeda. The conversation explores how these dynamics played out with these two groups and how practitioners might use these insights to efficiently disrupt militant alliances in an era increasingly focused on great power competition. Dr. Chris Blair is an Assistant Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics. Professor Blair’s research mainly engages with questions of how counterinsurgency policies affect civilian and rebel behavior and how prospective…
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