The beheading of a second American journalist and the execution of a British national have left US President Barak Obama and other Western leaders few options but to step up military operations against Islamist jihadists in Iraq and expand the battle into Syria.

The focus on confronting the militant jihadists however risks repeating the West’s failure to couple military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya with policies that address post-conflict reconstruction of healthy, pluralistic societies. Similarly, the lack of support for more moderate rebels in Syria failed to take into account the consequences of allowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to squash his moderate opponents and enable the rise of groups that cast him in the role of a bulwark against terrorism.

…James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies as Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute of Fan Culture of the University of Wurzburg and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a forthcoming book with the same title.