The wars against Islamic State and al-Qaida show that military responses may seem to work in the short term but don’t change much in the long run.
The sustained assault on IS’s two main strongholds could be followed by years of local and global insurgency.
The White House has decided that the Islamic State is now a major threat to the region and will expand its troops on the ground to 1,700, as full-scale war becomes almost inevitable.
The growing prospect of western-backed military intervention to reverse the spread of Islamism in west Africa is good news for an evolving al-Qaida movement.
The conflict in Syria leaves western powers with no good choices, and their agony is intensified by Islamist advances in west Africa. The search for intelligent security responses goes on.