“ABROAD, American leadership is the one constant in an uncertain world.” Thus spoke President Obama while outlining his IS (Islamic State) strategy.

Basking in its self-image of a ‘benevolent hegemon’ the US assumed the mantle of unchallenged global leader following the Soviet Union’s demise and the ‘unipolar moment’. Global leadership, however, is not only about enjoying the perks of a formidable position: it is primarily about upholding international law while not setting short-sighted precedents to the detriment of global stability. Post-9/11, the US has failed to live up to the standard.

Critics point out the erroneous use of the concept of self-defence to justify retaliation for 9/11 a few weeks after the event. Similarly, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state. Not only did the US not face a direct threat, the entire campaign was initiated on the basis of fabricated intelligence reports of Iraqi WMDs. At home, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Guantanamo military commissions for war crimes, established by the Bush administration, were in violation of US military law and the Geneva Conventions.

The US has failed to live up to the standards of leadership.

Despite his criticism of the Bush approach during the election campaign, Obama is set to perpetuate militarist solutions to complex problems after trying his hand at retrenchment. US intelligence reports show that IS has neither the means nor the intent to threaten the US; its goals are inter-regional. Thus, the US aerial bombardment in Syria falls within the ambit of an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state.

The Obama administration is justifying the president’s unilateral war-making authority against IS on the basis of the Bush-era congressional authorisations of force against those who could be tied to groups responsible for 9/11 and against Iraq.

Interestingly, in June this year Obama called for the repeal of the Iraq authorisation to obviate any re-engagement of its ground troops in Iraq. Similarly, legal experts argue that the 2001 authorisation does not cover IS that was created long after 2001 and has been publicly disowned by Al Qaeda. The point is that a ‘benevolent hegemon’ should be seen to err on the side of lawful caution, not legal ambiguity.

Post-9/11 US open-ended strategies have failed to prudently take unintended consequences into account. Drone attacks in Pakistan without a formal deal, for instance, compromise the status of the Durand Line besides aggravating state-society mistrust. Such trans-border attacks — now expanded to Syria — add a new dimension to international relations by diluting the concept of the nation state. How does this approach make the ‘global leader’ different from non-state militants who do not honour legitimate state boundaries?

In the absence of international laws of unconventional warfare, the US calls the shots. Issues of distinction and proportionality have been supplanted with re-definitions of ‘self-defence’ and ‘co-belligerence’ with civilian deaths dehumanised as ‘collateral damage”.

The US has traditionally predicated its Middle East strategy on the principle of balance of power. What the US applied to nation-states to further its interests in the region is now being applied to non-state combatants. This is a flawed approach because unlike sovereign states empowered trans-national militants cannot be pressured into following international norms. A regional approach to the IS problem cannot work without taking Iran and Syria on board. Failure to do so will only widen the Shia-Sunni gulf and benefit IS.

A major component of US strategy is its dependence on arming and training rebel groups or ‘rebuilding’ pro-US national armies. So far both the Afghan and Iraqi armies have proved inadequate when facing militants. Similarly, the Free Syrian Army — that Obama plans to support overtly — has not been a match for the Assad regime or the jihadists. Small wonder that Gen Dempsey wants to keep his options open despite Obama’s pledge not to deploy US ground forces in Iraq or Syria.

National armies are part of a society’s socio-cultural milieu and cannot be imposed from above. It is not surprising that improvised armies tend to melt away or join rival militant groups following curtailment or termination of foreign aid. Trained and armed men then have the capacity to become a national and international headache as witnessed after the Soviet-Afghan war.

Bush-Obama strategies have failed to destroy Al Qaeda networks or the Taliban: the outcome has been the emergence of a more brutal, organised IS. At the end of the day superior weapons cannot change mindsets; sustained diplomacy and positive engagement can.

To be worthy of ‘constant’ global leadership in ‘an uncertain world’ the US must look inwards and accept its own militarist contribution to the world’s uncertainty.

The writer is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security, Birmingham University.

Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2014