The KGB taught many of these terrorists how to terror, and they're much more powerful, so of course they can out-terror them.

> Soviet secret services have been described by GRU defectors Viktor Suvorov and Stanislav Lunev as "the primary instructors of terrorists worldwide."[4][5][6] According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, KGB General Aleksandr Sakharovsky once said: "In today’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon."[7] He also claimed that "Airplane hijacking is my own invention" and that in 1969 alone, 82 planes were hijacked worldwide by the KGB-financed PLO.[7]

> Lt. General Pacepa described operation "SIG" (“Zionist Governments”) that was devised in 1972 to turn the Arab world against Israel and the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures#Guerrillas

This total BS. Joint graves and monuments to young soldiers killed in Afghanistan in almost every city is a good reminder about how "effective" USSR was at international politics.

Or: how a dictatorship deals with dissidents.

More on topic, should the US castrate relatives of ISIS leaders and threaten to bomb Mecca? That would be really effective. /s

Maybe!

If you want to control the area you threaten the local leaders into submission, this was how the West colonized the world. Then you collect their resources, but does the US still need oil at $20 a barrel?

So, it remains unclear what the objectives are with ISIS.

No because they know that the US would never do it, and wouldn't be even in a position to make that threat. The Soviets however could care less about political, perceptual, and moral implications of such threats and often acted upon them.