President Barack Obama will have to act more forcefully and quickly in both Iraq and Syria if he does decide to take the fight to the Islamic State to preempt a barbaric fortress of anti-Western terrorists. [icopyright one button toolbar]

James Foley’s gruesome beheading underscores the urgency of unambiguous actions.

First, he will have to clarify whether he sees IS as terrorism in new guise or a qualitatively different bid for statehood capable of undermining the so far US-led world order.

He must decide whether this new strain of ideologically motivated warriors is just evil-minded crazies seeking an ephemeral spot in the sun. Or they constitute a fundamental challenge to the Pax Americana that even Russia, China and Iran accept currently and prefer to radical Sunni Islamic perversity.

It is worth recalling that the decline of every great power, including the Romans and Ottomans, began with attacks by determined asymmetrical enemies whose ability to survive retaliation encouraged other enemies.

Eventually, the others created alliances strong enough to fragment and bring down the great power and the world order it established. The process unfolded through unrelenting erosion of the great power’s stamina and wealth by asymmetrical warriors to final decisive war for a new world order.

If Obama decides to seek definitive victory over IS, the path will be lonely since Washington has no trustworthy ally in the neighborhood.

Its Western military allies, including Britain, Italy and France, have lent small helping hands in the recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Americans have always endured the worst of deaths, injuries and expenditures.

Victory will be harder still with local soldiers on the ground fighting for their own opportunistic theological agendas far removed from such Obama ideals as a unified secular democracy in Iraq.

Despite the catastrophic threat from conquest by IS, each of Iraq’s Shia, Sunni and Kurdish groups seems to have goals different from Obama’s desire for an inclusive Iraq.

The White House will also need massive diplomatic effort to get non-interference and support from governments with stakes in the neighborhood, including Syria, Iran, Turkey and Russia.

An unprecedented scale of coercion will be required to bring Iraqi Sunni, Shia and Kurds on the same page as Obama while conducting intensive diplomacy to prevent outside powers from instigating them to unravel regional borders and relationships among neighbors.

Some American analysts suggest that it is in the interests of neighboring Iran and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to cooperate covertly with Obama to defeat the IS.

That may be a misreading of the depth of distrust in the region of US policies for over 30 years. It is more likely that Teheran will prefer to benefit from a new allied Shia state in Iraq that could allow it to obtain influence over Basra’s oil and shipping terminals, thus sharply weakening Western and Saudi influence in the Gulf.

Teheran would benefit greatly from an independent, well-armed and oil rich Shia ally in the Gulf in addition to its friends in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It may not fear a Shia-Sunni showdown or the rise of a radical Sunni Islamic State because the new Iraqi Shia state would provide a buffer.

Western analysts tend to overstate the intrinsic violence of Arab Sunni and Persian Shia enmity. They forget that both religious denominations and ethnic populations have lived cheek by jowl with fewer large wars in recent centuries than among Christian denominations and European populations.

During the past 1,000 years, wars in the region occurred for national hegemony rather than religious domination. This was true also of the decade-long war between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Iran that killed more than a million people.

Some Americans expect Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to turn against IS to regain lost territory. They suggest discreet cooperation with Assad to destroy IS warriors. After that, the West could plot to depose him to bring democracy to Damascus.

Such talk treats Assad like a babe in the woods despite ample evidence of his resilience and cunning.

It also assumes that Russia, which is currently hostile to Washington, will allow inclusive pro-Western regimes to take root in Iraq and Syria against the interests of its current friends in Teheran and Damascus.

Moscow, Ankara and Teheran may also disallow a militarized pro-US enclave to stabilize in Iraq’s Kurdish region. Turkey and Iran do not want to see the rise of a powerful Kurdistan enriched with oil from Kirkuk and control over the vital Mosul dam.

Ankara fears that a stronger Kurdish Peshmerga heavily armed by Washington will protect safe havens for anti-Turkish PKK fighters who have long sought to “liberate” Turkey’s Kurdish population.

Teheran fears that Peshmerga fighters will be a US proxy at its borders and foment trouble through Iranian Kurds.

Both Turkey and Iran were alarmed when the Peshmerga, PKK and Syrian Kurds came together last week to save the Yazidis near Sinjar by creating a humanitarian corridor from the mountain’s north side. They may try to scuttle close relations among the Kurdish militias.

Both countries also have influence on Iraqi Kurdish politicians and may exploit longstanding squabbles to prevent stabilization of a democracy patterned on Obama’s vision.