John V. Whitbeck

For French President François Hollande, the attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, carried out by French and Belgian citizens, fundamentallychanged everything.

Hollande’s prior, oft-repeated mantra that “Assad must go” was consigned to the memory hole. Defeating and destroying ISIS became France’s urgent priority and the French president set out to pull together a “grand coalition” of all concerned states to achieve this objective – a worthy goal if it were possible.

However, Hollande’s travels last week and his meetings with British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Russian President Vladimir Putin made it apparent that the attacks in Paris have not changed the priorities of other states that might be concerned.

For the Sunni Gulf Arab states, the priorities remain regime change in Syria (regardless of what might replace the regime), keeping Shiite Iran down and fighting perceived Iranian proxies (most notably now in Yemen).

For Turkey, the priorities remain regime change in Syria (regardless of what might replace the regime) and keeping the Kurds down, both in Turkey and in Syria.

For the United States and the United Kingdom, the priorities remain regime change in Syria (regardless of what might replace the regime), keeping Russia down and keeping the Sunni Gulf Arab states happy.

For Russia and Iran, the priorities remain preventing another successful example of Western-induced regime change in the region (after the Western “successes” in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya) and preserving the Syrian state, their long-time ally, and its state structures (with or without Bashar Assad).

For other countries without strong views on the merits or demerits of regime change in Syria, ISIS does not appear to cause undue concern. Their governments may also recognize that even modest or token involvement against ISIS would, without having any constructive impact, raise the risk of retaliation against their own people – perhaps, as in Paris, by “their own people.”

For many Sunnis living in ISIS-controlled areas, the group’s harsh, austere, often brutal rule appears preferable to a return to what are widely perceived by Iraqi and Syrian Sunnis to be Shiite-dominated or even Iranian-dominated governments.

Since it is recognized that aerial bombardments alone cannot defeat and destroy ISIS; since Western “boots on the ground” would be an avidly sought boon to ISIS; and since the Sunni states of the region, which should logically fear ISIS more than states elsewhere, currently show no interest in deploying their ground forces against fellow Sunnis, what are Western states to do?

Perhaps, rather than succumbing to hysterical calls for intensified violence in the Muslim world and more restrictions on civil liberties at home, which will stimulate more conversions to militancy while diminishing the quality of life for all, Western states should do the following: relax, accept that ISIS is an ugly reality that is here to stay, at least for some time; accept that containment is the best that can be hoped for in the near term (and can best be achieved by the Iraqi and Syrian governments and their own military forces); and sit back and wait for the aura of excitement created by ISIS to wear off. In that way it would become a failed state like so many other regional states in which the West has previously intervened, allowing the peoples of the region to sort out their problems in their own way.

While it would clearly be desirable for ISIS to cease to exist sooner rather than later, that could only be achieved by a massive commitment of ground forces by the Sunni states of the region. And it would only become conceivable if Western states were to cease to claim ownership of the “war” against ISIS, and to cease to ensure through their bombardments that the Sunni states sit back, rest easy and commit their resources to pursuing other priorities.

Through its ill-conceived experiments on the Muslim world, the West has played the role of Dr. Frankenstein in creating the monster now called ISIS. Therefore, it can be argued that the West has a moral responsibility to do everything in its power to right its wrongs in the region.

It would take a level of wisdom and courage rarely attained by Western politicians to recognize that, under the current circumstances and notwithstanding their moral responsibility, Western states can now achieve more by doing less.