America鈥檚 ability to put together a coalition to help take on IS will be key to making the operations more palatable to the American public, and to Mr. Obama himself, who has vowed to never again go it alone when it comes to confronting a threat that is equally palpable to our close allies.
The question is Obama鈥檚 capacity for 鈥渓eading from behind,鈥� as with US engagements in Libya, or whether the US will once again nominate itself for the chief role in military operations.
Eight nations have stepped up so far to provide aid and arms to Kurdish peshmerga forces fighting IS in Iraq, including Albania, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, and the UK.
But how willing these nations will be to enter into operations in Syria, given their own political constraints on the home front, remains to be seen 鈥� along with whether neighbors such as Turkey and Jordan will step up, too.
