抄録
Since its inauguration of self-claimed “Caliphate,” “Islamic State (IS)” has been posing growing threats to the global security and existing world order. By scrutinizing its ideological propensity, statecraft and expansion strategy, while putting emphasis on the comparison with its Jihadi forerunner Al-Qaeda, this article highlights the core of IS threats as its possibility of expanding offshore “provinces.”
Since the end of the 1980s, jihadi proto-states are proliferating over the poverty ridden anarchic Muslim regions in the North Africa, Middle East and Central Asia. Albeit short-lived, some of them succeeded in establishing more or less systemized Sharia rule over a certain amount of territories. Compared with those antecedents, IS shows by far formidable resilience with centralized and somewhat stable administrative mechanisms and rich and constant flow of external resources in the form of foreign mercenaries, smuggled arms and ammunition and affluent donations. By combining its internal and external assets, IS now strives to accomplish its eternal objective, i.e. unification of Muslim umma under the resurrected caliphate.
As the US led coalition has hitherto shown no impressive record in fighting against IS, the threat of jihadi takeover of additional swathe of land is strongly felt among the countries with sizable Muslim population. This led them to consider ad-hoc joint measures to combat against jihadists and several yet abortive plans of new regional cooperation have surfaced. In this regard, the conspicuous records of Shanghai Cooperation Organization merit attention. Starting from moderate attempts of security information exchange, SCO has grown into a political-economic regional structure that can rival the EU or NATO. IS and its possible extension into the other Muslim regions may precipitate the similar organizations as SCO and give birth to a new multipolar global system. The negative side effects of the consequence loom large in the future of Japan. As Tokyo has casted die for unconditional support of the US global strategy, its future lies in a narrow pass that leads either to the total isolation among its neighbors or ever lasting attrition dictated by Washington in the name of the “war against terror.”
https://ror.org/02rqvrp93 
