Recently, President Barack Obama admitted that his administration didn't have a strategy for dealing with the Islamic State (IS). Now, apparently, it does, Well, at least it has a direct goal: "Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL," announced Obama to the American public. And it has the tactics to achieve this through American airstrikes against IS, including in Syria, through the training and equipping of Syrian rebels more to the west's liking, and through stronger efforts from the Kurds and the Iraqi military. Plus there will apparently be a wider regional effort against IS from some Arab nations. Leaving aside the achievability of an end result of the destruction of IS by a country that in 13 years has been unable to finish al-Qaeda, there are at least two major reasons to suggest caution with regards to the strategy being pursued by the United States. And that caution connects to one of the reasons why the fight is now being taken to IS by the west: the terrorist threat posed by the organization. 1. There are the strong elements of a sectarian conflict underway in both Syria and Iraq. Indeed, one of the reasons IS has been so successful in Iraq is because of Sunni discontent against Shia domination out of Baghdad. Now the west may be and will be perceived in some quarters as siding openly with the Shias and other minorities against the Sunni majority. General David Petraeus specifically warned of the dangers of the United States finding itself in such a position three months ago when he said that this "cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias or a Shia-on-Sunni Arab fight." IS which has proven adept at propaganda will now make a great deal of how the United States and other western countries can be viewed as siding with Shia Iran or the Shia dominated Iraqi government or the government of Bashar al-Assad. It will portray itself as the sole champion of Sunni Muslims and will use this message as a recruiting tool and as a means of encouraging retaliation. 2. Far from reducing the risk of terrorism, western military intervention increases the chances of IS terrorist attacks on western nations. This is the ultimate irony: a military intervention designed to ward off a terrorist attack increases the chance of a terrorist attack. But we have already experienced such a scenario in the form of the 7 July 2005 London bombings in response, as the former head of the Security Service (MI5) admitted publicly to American and British intervention in Iraq. It is often forgotten that IS, unlike al-Qaeda, is more of an insurgency and less of a terrorist organization. And as an insurgency, its numbers seem to be growing: the Central Intelligence Agency has just tripled its estimated number of IS members to approximately 31,000. Labelling as an insurgency is, of course, not to deny its brutality and that it engages in terrorism, merely to point out how complex the situation is and how potentially difficult it will be to achieve Obama's stated aims. Western intervention will likely degrade IS as an insurgency and what will be left will be much more solidly a terrorist organization. And one with a major grievance against western powers because of their attacks. Couple this with the presence of thousands of western citizens in its ranks, and IS will possess both the motivation and ability to strike back which they will have absolutely no hesitation to do so since at that point they will have nothing to lose. As both of these points suggest, no one knows how any of this will play out which is one of the reasons why Obama's previous caution deserves praise instead of ridicule. The dominance of IS could not have predicted and the speed of events in the Middle East over the last several years point to the grave danger of being unable to anticipate the consequences of actions either in the short or long term. Striking back against an organization that has brutally beheaded two American journalists might offer satisfaction, but it won't necessarily offer security.
