Bracing for the "forever" war.

• Author: Howell, Llewellyn D.
• Position: The World Today - Unending conflict with Islamic fundamentalism

THE WORLD is going through a transformation--in many ways. Its population is exploding. Its resources are diminishing. Its climate is changing, in part thanks to the way that population is using those resources. Most important for the planet's social foundations, the world is changing politically. We are shifting from a world organized around nation-states to one organized around cultures.

The biggest mistake the U.S. is making in foreign policy is to continue to see the world in nation-state blinders. China controls countries like Suriname and, according to Howard W. French--associate professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism --has a "Second Continent" in Africa. Libya has two governments, neither of which control much. The Russians control and govern parts of Georgia and Ukraine.

However, each of these is a function of a government controlling something else. In the Middle East, we have what political scientist Samuel Huntington described a quarter-century ago as a "clash of civilizations" that has resulted in the disappearance of and irrelevance of traditional nation-state governments. ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) or "the Islamic State" controls, at the moment, an area that includes half of Iraq and two-thirds of Syria. Its borders grow and shrink day-today. Even if these borders dwindle down to nothing, the Islamic State still will exist. Islamic exceptionalist radicals as far away as the Philippines will make it so. The Islamic State is a functioning entity in the minds of young, unemployed, and alienated males throughout the Muslim world.

Other entities claim themselves as Islamic States or have pledged themselves to be a part of ISIS. Boko Haram, fanatics from central Africa, is one such entity. So is the Egyptian group called Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and others in Yemen, Afghanistan, Algeria, and the Philippines. Islamic State supporters in Libya pose a particular threat to southern Europe, where nearly 140,000 refugees made their way to Italy in 2014. How many radicals are among them? Some reports indicate that as many as 200 foreign fighters per day are joining the fight in Syria and Iraq. Whatever the numbers, many are attracted and Western countries are trying to limit their exits and readmittances.

With increasing calls in the West for the destruction of the Islamic State after beheadings of hostages and the burning of a captured Jordanian pilot, we need to start thinking about exactly how...