Defeating ISIS likely means a regional war that will cost many lives, but America’s existence is not in danger, according to a co-author of the new book ISIS: The State of Terror.
“We don’t view ISIS as an existential threat to the United States,” J.M. Berger, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Tuesday at the New America Foundation.
“Its primary tool against the United States in the immediate future is terrorism, and terrorism on a scale that is something we need to fight, and something we need to be concerned about, but it’s not going to topple the United States.”
Berger said the American people have displayed remarkable showings of resilience in the face of terrorism over the years, adapting to necessary responses, and going after perpetrators.
After 9/11, “the government went on. People went to work the next day,” he said.
“Fundamentally we’re a very resilient country, and we’ve come I think to understand that.”
ISIS is a much bigger problem in the regional sense, according to Berger, and the U.S. should still look at ways that it can improve the situation there.
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