The Guardian view on Nato's choices in Ukraine and the Middle East

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/03/guardian-view-nato-choices-ukraine-middle-east

Version 0 of 1.

Pity poor Nato, faced with challenges which the great military and political apparatus it created during the cold war is so ill suited to counter. In the Middle East, the rise of a new jihadist movement burst upon the western nations who had once aspired to democratically reshape the region like a thunder storm. We barely know how to cope with the resulting torrent of change or the brutalities which accompany it. In Ukraine, Nato countries see a former partner becoming an adversary, and a country the United States and the European Union had wished to protect slipping away towards a fate we cannot fully control or predict. Our collective will is an uncertain quantity, while the military means we possess seem less than appropriate. Yet we cannot remain inert as the world is turned upside down around us.

But just feeling the need to act, as President Barack Obama has pointed out in a way which is both wise and unpopular, is a poor guide to policy. When one of your own, for example, is murdered in some distant place by people who think themselves immune to retaliation, it is a very human reaction to want to show them immediately that they are mistaken. That retaliation will follow as night follows day, that it will be harsh, that it will be complete, and that it will be final.

Something stirs in the breast when the life of a defenceless man is taken, his death accompanied by taunts and threats. It whispers "you will pay", as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who killed Nicholas Berg, paid, or as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the killer of Daniel Pearl, paid. And the desire for revenge naturally goes beyond the immediate perpetrator to the organisation or the state ultimately responsible for the act, to al-Qaida and, these days, to Islamic State (formerly Isis).

Revenge for the mistreatment of one's own citizens was in the past a cause, or at least a pretext, for war. Palmerston said in such a situation that those who mistreated or threatened subjects of the Queen should know that "the watchful eye and the strong arm of England" would reach out to protect or, if need be, to avenge them. The threat to a British hostage after the murder of Steven Sotloff at the hands of IS recalls those days of gunboat diplomacy. Yet in almost every way this is different.

Deeply angered though we are at the deaths of young men who went out to Syria not as combatants but as well-intentioned observers, our central concern should be the plight of local people. This is not about an affront to our power, but about how we should use that power, if we can, to help them. What we do not want to do is to use it in such a way as to help IS, as would be the case if American or British air strikes killed ordinary Sunni civilians in Iraq in any numbers, or if a possible western recalibration of relations with President Bashar al-Assad alienated Sunnis in Syria, rallying them to the jihadist cause. It is a matter of picking out the precise bit of military power, or the precise bit of political manoeuvring, that will help IS's opponents without any counter-productive effects. Not easy. That is why President Obama does "not have a strategy yet". That is why Britain, and other American allies, should be as careful as he wishes to be. And even if we get it right, it is clear that what we do will not be conclusive.

In Ukraine, we face a not entirely dissimilar problem. We either can't or we won't use the power we have in any radical way. Deploying modest Nato forces to eastern Europe on a rotating basis may reassure some worried members of the alliance, but it will not affect the situation in Ukraine. Arming up the Ukrainians is possible and perhaps should be done, but would feed the conflict. President Vladimir Putin might well then up the military ante on his side. He says he wants peace by Friday. We have heard such lines before, but the best hope is that he also has a sense of risk, not just of a wider war but of a long period of Russian isolation. The cold war was dangerous but relatively simple. The new world is, unfortunately, getting more difficult by the day.