“Shock and Flaw”

Not a week goes by without our work at HJS turning out to be ever more prescient and ever more disconcertingly necessary. Sometimes it is our work on Russia and other autocratic states. Sometimes – and never more so than in recent months – it is our work on Islamic extremism, its causes, proponents and the possible answers to it.

The murder of an American citizen by a British subject would always be a cause of shame and horror. But never could it have been more shameful or horrific than in the murder of the American journalist James Foley this week. Everyone is shocked – David Cameron is shocked, the leaders of the opposition are shocked. But shock is not enough, and nor is horror or outrage. We are all capable of feeling that and all do. The question for political leaders is what they are going to do about it.

To date, the political reaction in Britain has been woeful. The normally hawkish former Security Minister Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones was reduced to advocating more ‘tweeting’ to extremists from Britain in Syria. The shadow Home Secretary was reduced to complaining about the coalition government’s watering-down of Control Orders into ‘TPIMs’. Nothing could have been more grossly partisan or inept. Even if the very slightly watered-down ‘TPIMs’ were turned back into Control Orders immediately it could have had no impact on the life or death of James Foley.

So the paucity of debate is striking. Our political leaders remain strangely fearful of trying to answer the problem that we are all now aware of and increasingly concerned by. But that gap of political leadership will at some point have to be filled. And that is one of the areas where The Henry Jackson Society is able to tread. Because we have been ahead of the curve in identifying this problem, we are also in a good position to be ahead of the curve in providing the answers to it.