In the mid-1990s, as bombs exploded in Paris and senior extremists began arriving in the UK, the only people who predicted that this was the beginning of successive cycles of Islamic militant violence were the militants themselves. Twenty years on, the violence is intensifying rather than fading away.
What can be done about the new threat posed by Islamic State? The answer is, of course, almost as complicated as the phenomenon of contemporary Islamic militancy itself. There is no magic bullet. Instead, there are dozens of different measures that could each potentially have a minor impact, and collectively a major one. Many, such as diplomacy, the resolution of conflicts across the region, and humanitarian aid to Syrians inside and outside the country, have been discussed at great length in recent days. So, too, have the advantages and disadvantages of various types of military action. And though it is right and proper that the details of David Cameron’s plan to launch British airpower against Isis in Syria are obsessively picked over, other ideas have received less, or indeed no, attention in the debate. Here are eight of them.
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