Leading out front

President Obama’s forceful speech to the United Nations last week appeared to mark a sharp—and welcome—turn in his thinking about Islamist terrorism and the wisdom of U.S. retrenchment.

Rather than dwell on the things a war-weary United States can’t do, Obama spoke with resolve and passion about what America must do. He called out Russia for its aggression against Ukraine and the patent mendacity of its propaganda, promised U.S. help in rolling back the Islamic State, and said Washington would play a leading role in in combatting Ebola and climate change.

{mosads}Gone was the ambivalent note that often creeps into the president’s meditations on American power and the global responsibilities that go with it. Nothing in this speech smacked of “leading from behind.”

Crucially, Obama also brought a new and deeper sense of realism to America’s approach to Middle East turmoil. Up until now, his foreign policy has revolved around the conceit that his administration is “ending America’s wars.” Six years later, it’s glaringly apparent that wars don’t end and terrorists don’t stop killing just because we’ve decided to pack it in.

If “peace through retrenchment” has been a disappointment, so too has the administration’s claim that smashing al Qaeda would somehow close the book on the confrontation that began on 9/11. Instead, the jihadist threat has mutated like some alien virus and manifested itself in new and even more virulent terrorist gangs in the Middle East and beyond.

At long last, Obama put the jihadist threat in context. The danger arises not from any aberrant group of Sunni psychopaths, but from “the cancer of violent extremism that has ravaged so many parts of the Muslim world.” In other words, the president identified the Islamist ideology as the core problem, and he challenged Muslim communities to reject it without equivocation.

This was at least a tacit acknowledgment of something the president has been loath to talk about until now: Violent extremists like al Qaeda and the Islamic State sit on the nether end of a continuum of religious identity that runs through the Muslim Brotherhood and other Salafist groups, all the way to the Muslim mainstream. Even though they reject terrorism, many Muslims feel some affinity for the extremist cause and some offer moral and financial support.

This was an important shift for Obama, who previously has stressed America’s mistakes rather than the crisis of political legitimacy in the Muslim world that has bred violent extremism. He spelled out a four-part strategy for international action to contain the Islamist contagion and discredit its hateful creed.

Step one is degrading and eventually destroying the Islamic State. “There can be no reasoning—no negotiation—with this brand of evil,” he declared, in language reminiscent of his predecessor. “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.”

For the normally detached and coolly analytical Obama, this fight seems to have become personal. At the same time, he outlined a division of labor calculated to reassure Americans that Washington is no longer in the business of invading or occupying Middle East countries. The United States and its Sunni Arab allies will pound the Islamic State from the air, while training and equipping Syrian and Iraqi forces to drive IS fighters out of their countries.

Will it work? Much depends on the Iraqi government’s capacity to reach a political accommodation with Iraq’s Sunni minority and build an effective and truly national fighting force. Will the Kurds go beyond defending their turf from IS incursions and spill their blood to help liberate Sunni regions now absorbed into the IS “caliphate?” Can Sunni tribal leaders once again be induced to turn on their puritanical Islamist overlords? It’s possible that these things could happen, but not without vigorous U.S. pressure and mediation.

Syria is a tougher nut to crack, because we have no effective allies on the ground. It will take at least a year to build up a competent “moderate” force that can stand against both the Assad regime and Islamist insurgents. Meanwhile, Obama is beset by domestic doubts about the wisdom on arming Syrian rebels who could wind up fighting alongside radical Islamists. Many in Congress are hopping mad about not being consulted on U.S. airstrikes in Syria, and even some staunch Obama allies, like Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), insist he needs new authority from Congress to fight IS.

What was striking about the U.N. speech, however, was Obama’s new emphasis on attacking the problem at its creedal roots. “The ideology of ISIL or al Qaeda or Boko Haram will wilt and die if it is consistently exposed, confronted and refuted in the light of day,” he said. “That means cutting off the funding that fuels this hate. It’s time to end the hyprocrisy of those who accumulate wealth through the global economy, and then siphon funds to those who teach children to tear it down,” Obama added, in a not-so-subtle jab at Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states that have been prolific sources of terrorist funding. For good measure, he punctured a cherished Middle East shibboleth by denying that the conflict between Israel and Palestinians is the root cause of the region’s ills. 

Obama also underscored the essential link between sectarian conflict and the chronic failure of representative government in the Middle East. In Iraq after the U.S. invasion, bloody strife between dispossessed Sunnis and newly empowered Shiites drew al Qaeda acolytes, who then launched a savage campaign of car bombings and suicide attacks against Shiite civilians. The Syrian civil war, dividing roughly along sectarian lines, likewise sucked in jihadis from around the world, providing shock troops for the Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliates.  

While assiduously avoiding the “D” word—democracy—the president argued persuasively that the only lasting solution to sectarian rivalries is through the creation of inclusive, pluralistic governments that allow everyone—including women—to participate equally in economic and political life. “…(T)here is no other way for this madness to end,” said Obama, who pledged to expand U.S. initiatives that support entrepreneurship, youth and civil society.

In closing, the president appealed to Muslim youths to build better societies rather than enlisting in an apocalyptic holy war against non-believers. “Ultimately, the task of rejecting sectarianism and extremism is a generational task—a task for the people of the Middle East themselves,” he told them.

The generational timeline is an important message to Americans, too. Despite his best efforts, Obama has failed to extricate America from the Middle East quagmire. Now he seems committed to a patient, long-term effort to use American power and influence to tip the balance in the world’s most combustible region toward stability, decency and peaceful co-existence.

In reaffirming the necessity of American leadership to global order and the preservation of liberal values, Obama has put himself squarely in his party’s internationalist tradition. And not a moment too soon.

Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist-left public policy think tank..