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A month or so ago, nobody had heard of the Islamic State. Now it is the dominant force of the middle east and all policy, military and political, across the region of Iraq and Syria is reactive to its advance. On the one hand this new grouping is a game changer, but on another it is damaging to over-estimate its power. The announcement by the Pentagon’s top general, backed by the US Secretary of Defense, that it will be necessary to attack its base in Syria to seriously damage it, is the first tangible sign of a foreign policy shift for long advocated by this blog. It also demonstrates that the Pentagon is ahead of the game over the State Department which is tied up in knots as it views the mounting chaos of its verities. Likewise the FCO in London.
The game changing nature of the Islamic State is that it is the embryonic beginning of what must become a new Sunni state occupying Sunni tribal areas of what was Syria and Iraq. The fact that within its ranks are bloodthirsty extremists of nihilist persuasion must not deter the West from seeing the long term opportunity for stability that the concept offers. We can look back on the wild and irrational confusion in Iran after the fall of the Shah and compare it with the functioning state of today, to observe the truth that the barbaric revolutionaries of today beget the moderates of tomorrow. The West must recognise that the Islamic State has succeeded because it is backed by much more moderate Sunnis in the territory it controls as well as the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. It is to all of those the West must now turn diplomatically in order to bring an end to unacceptable human suffering.
Militarily the position is rather different. The advance of IS must be checked to those areas where the majority Sunni populations support it. The vastly superior military capability of the US, France and Britain, allied to ground forces of the Kurds and Iraqi regular troops may already have achieved this in everywhere but Syria; and here the Pentagon has signalled it is willing to strike. When the President authorises this, his forces will be on the same side as Assad. Also lined up in diplomatic support with some covert military involvement will be Egypt, Iran, Russia, Turkey and Israel. Essentially this means that realistic diplomatic imperatives and pressing military options will finally have shredded the last sheet of the calamitous foreign policy which has been driven for the West by Washington and London since 9/11.
The Islamic State has ambitions far beyond those which it will be allowed to fulfil. When its leaders look back on the highwater mark of their enterprise they will see that it was immediately before the grizzly decapitation on video of an innocent, courageous and admired journalist. This cruel and sadistic act was designed to bring America to its knees and call off its air campaign. The effect was the opposite and in spades. The whole world rose in protest. The Security Council was united in condemnation, a rare event. Not only did this unnecessary death of an innocent demonstrate the cruel streak in the current leadership of IS. It demonstrated also a huge error of judgement which has cost it its goal.
Meanwhile in the United Kingdom a troubling revelation hangs. It was British hands that swung the sword which dealt the fatal blow.