By teaming up with Saudi Arabia and other reactionary governments, the US-led campaign against Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria and Iraq could create more extremism in the region, James Dorsey, a scholar at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University told RIA Novosti.

“The US is reverting to a misguided policy that has spawned more virulent forms of militant Islam, and is thus sowing the seeds of more extremist groups,” Dorsey said.

The scholar added that the US-led response is more extensive and fraught with danger than the war on terror that followed 9/11.

“The policy focuses on military rather than political solutions and promotes status quo regimes whose autocracy chokes off opportunities for the venting of wide-spread discontent and anger, leaving violence and extremism as one of the few, if not the only, option to force change,” Dorsey concluded.