In 2006, in the midst of a fierce war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice famously stated that the world was witnessing the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” She was right—but not in the sense she had hoped. Instead of disempowering Hezbollah and its sponsor, Iran, the war only augmented the strength and prestige of what is known as the “axis of resistance,” a power bloc that includes Iran, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas in Palestine.

Last week, the spokesman for the Saudi military, General Ahmed Asseri, announced that Saudi Arabia is “is ready to participate in any ground operations that the coalition (against Islamic State) may agree to carry out in Syria” and that its decision to move into the war-torn country is “irreversible." However, given that the Saudis and their allies in the newly formed Islamic Coalition are conducting massive joint operational military exercises—codenamed Northern Thunder—in preparation for very possible military interventions in the near future, it’s clear that the Kingdom-led multinational coalition will not stop at ISIS....

In this Washington Post op-ed, two former U.S. ambassadors, Nicholas Burns and James Jeffrey, make the diplomatic case for America to create a safe zone in Syria. They advocate a much stronger American role to: 1) push for humanitarian corridors into Syria to help civilians under siege from the Assad government and rebel groups and some at risk of starvation; and 2) that the Administration reconsider its refusal to form a regional coalition to engineer a safe zone in northern Syria along the Turkish border where civilians can flee to safety enforced by a No Flight Zone in the same area and; 3) that we should commit American soldiers to help organize and police the zones in order to recruit the majority of the zone's soldiers from our allies and partners.

Republican and Democratic presidential candidates should be able to agree on one stark foreign policy reality: The tide hasn’t turned in the war against the Islamic State. In the 18 months that the United States has been working to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the group, it has grown to become a global force that can strike targets in Europe, Asia, Africa and America.

Let’s say Islamic State fighters attack an Israeli military patrol along the Syrian border. They try unsuccessfully to kidnap an Israeli soldier, and they kill four others. A Jordanian border post is hit, too, and the Islamic State proclaims it has control of Daraa province in southern Syria.

As the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino show, Islamic State has achieved a global reach. No longer satisfied with terrorising large swaths of the Middle East, it is inspiring, recruiting, training and supplying terrorists to carry out murderous acts around the world.

IT’S NEARLY unfathomable that two San Bernardino parents could nonchalantly drop off their six-month-old baby and embark on a shooting spree, murdering 14 people in the name of a terrorist organization. Yet theirs is hardly an isolated impulse. According to FBI Director James Comey, there are currently 300 American-based sympathizers online. The FBI is pursuing 900 active cases in all 50 states, and 71 individuals have been arrested on terrorism-related charges this year alone. As facts like these make clear, American youth are not immune to extremist ideology, and we should be doing far more to protect them.

"If the United States were truly serious about terrorism, you'd see a more hardnosed approach to the various American 'allies' who are part of the problem rather than being part of the solution."

Galvanised by the attacks on Paris, politicians across the west are focused on how to tackle Isis with bombs and boots on the ground.

The recent attacks in Paris have spurred a flood of demands to escalate the fight against ISIS. Now that the initial shock is over, it is time to explore in greater detail what such efforts should look like if their results are not to prove worse than the threat that ISIS currently poses. The following is an attempt to sketch a number of questions that should be pondered before a decision to further escalate the war is taken.