The War Against the Islamic State Is Just Beginning

It’s one of those moments in United Nations history when thousands of politicians and diplomats on the East River in New York are holding their breath. The Internet connections in Manhattan are completely overloaded, and traffic around U.N. headquarters comes to a standstill. Unlike his predecessors, President Obama appears to be taking the United Nations seriously. First he addresses the U.N. General Assembly, then he will chair a meeting of the Security Council — only the second time in U.N. history this has ever happened.

Obama is giving the speech he never wanted to give; a bitterly serious and at times almost monothematic speech: It’s a declaration of war on Islamic State. “No God condones this terror,” Obama said. “No grievance justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning — no negotiation — with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.” With this speech, Obama has finally arrived at a place he never wanted to go: Syria and Iraq.

Obama, of all people, who always wanted to get out of this region of ethnic, national and religious divisiveness. He was the one who wanted to overcome the burdensome legacy of his predecessor; the one who wanted a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, U.S. troops are returning to Iraq, first in the form of military advisors and ground crews servicing the aircraft engaged there. Obama still says he doesn’t support a return of combat troops to the region, but the warring governments, parties and clans there welcome the Americans back. That’s the gravitational force of the Near and Middle East — it can’t easily be escaped.

This president called for a pivot toward Asia. He wanted to break with the classic direction of U.S. foreign policy favoring Europe and the Middle East. The Pacific era has dawned, that much is evident. But it does not mean the end of the old eras; everything happens simultaneously. The start of this year saw the outbreak of a war in the middle of Europe that would have been thought impossible in the 1990s: A war of succession after the breakup of the Soviet Union, wherein Russia’s President Putin re-sliced the pie by conquering new territories and re-drawing borders. Obama was obliged to defend America’s NATO allies near the Russian border. Europe remains at the top of Obama’s list of worries.

The Near and Middle East, however, will remain the main focus in coming years because of its many intertwined wars, according to many politicians at the United Nations. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier spends a good deal of his discussion time in U.N. meetings on the Middle East. Behind the temporary textile-covered paper walls of the conference enclosures, he has 30-minute meetings with the foreign ministers of Arab countries as well as Iran. His American counterpart, Secretary of State John Kerry, does likewise. Naturally, other crises also threaten: Ebola in West Africa, as well as the Congo conflict. Then there’s the perennial question of how to win the war against the Islamic State.

Obama has deployed combat aircraft and cruise missiles against jihadi positions in Syria since midweek. More than three years after the start of the Syrian war and one year after the suddenly aborted intervention against Syria’s poison gas president, Bashar al-Assad. Many at the U.N. consider that too late. A minority think it premature, among those of course the Russians, who seem to be against everything the Americans undertake.

The big question that looms after the aerial attacks: Who will complete the military mission on the ground against the jihadi caliphate? That question is more easily answered in Iraq. The United States is arming the Iraqi army, the Iranians support the Shiites against the Sunni militias, the Germans are sending weapons to the Kurdish Peshmerga. But in Syria? Kurdish forces receive no weapons because of their close ties to the PKK, so national opposition to the Islamic State and Assad in Syria’s northwest remains too weak. Strengthening the Kurds and the national opposition forces is the biggest challenge in the fight against the Islamic State — and an American answer is not yet in sight apart from the planned arming of 5,000 “moderate” Syrian rebels.

But Obama made a historic promise before the United Nations: “I can promise you America will remain engaged in the region, and we are prepared to engage in that effort.”

The Arabs will remind him of that promise.