How ISIS Fights: New Books in National Security

In this great interview from New Books in National Security, Omar Ashour, author of How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt, talks to host Jeffrey Bristol about his work.

They discuss the origin of Ashour’s study and how ISIS franchises spread. The interview also explores the potential threats of ISIS as an international terrorist organisation and why it grew as quickly as it did. They also look ahead to what the future might hold for ISIS.

Find out more about the interview over on New Books Network, or listen below:

Richard Bennet and Alexander Noyes, "War at Arm's Length: How America Can Build Effective Partners Through Military Assistance" (Yale UP, 2026) – New Books in National Security

An in-depth examination of how the United States can build more effective partner militaries. Military assistance has a bad reputation. Large-scale attempts to build partner militaries in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam cost the United States billions of dollars and ended ignominiously, with the collapse of local forces as American troops withdrew. Arms transfers of sophisticated, American-made weapons often appear to do more harm than good. Yet military assistance and support—operating indirectly through partners—when done right, can deliver remarkable strategic results for the United States and its partners. Working effectively with partner militaries is one of the most pressing national security challenges for the United States today. In their latest book, War at Arm's Length: How America Can Build Effective Partners Through Military Assistance (Yale University Press, 2026), Richard Bennet and Alexander Noyes offer a systematic look at military assistance in the twenty-first century, examining a frequently deployed but often misunderstood set of tools that allows the United States to leverage partner militaries to achieve national security objectives. Bennet and Noyes posit that two main factors—the degree of interest alignment on security issues and the level of institutional capacity of the receiving force—will be the most important variables in Washington’s ability to build militarily effective partners. Our guests today are Doctor Richard Bennet, who is a senior research associate at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, and Doctor Alexander Noyes, who is a fellow in the Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of Volatile States in International Politics (Oxford University Press, 2023).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security
  1. Richard Bennet and Alexander Noyes, "War at Arm's Length: How America Can Build Effective Partners Through Military Assistance" (Yale UP, 2026)
  2. Witold J. Henisz, "Geostrategy by Design: How to Manage Geopolitical Risk in The New Era of Globalization" (Disruption Books, 2024)
  3. Damien Van Puyvelde, "The DGSE: A Concise History of France's Foreign Intelligence Service" (Georgetown UP, 2026)
  4. Jeffrey Whyte, "The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War" (Oxford UP, 2023)
  5. Charles L. Glaser, "Retrench, Defend, Compete: Securing America's Future Against a Rising China" (Cornell UP, 2025)

About the Author

Cover Image of How ISIS Fights

Omar Ashour is an Associate Professor of Security and Military Studies and the Founding Chair of the Critical Security Studies Programme at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. He is the author of How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) as well as the editor of Bullets to Ballots: Collective De-Radicalisation of Armed Movements (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

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Helena Heald
Helena Heald
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