It is not often that one hears Saudi Arabia’s king, Britain’s prime minister and a right-wing American senator — known for advocating military action in the Middle East — saying more-or-less the same thing, but that is where America, Europe and the Middle East all found themselves last week.

In remarks over the weekend, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz warned foreign diplomats that without concerted international action, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) would extend its reach into Europe within a month and then into the US the month after that.

This came after British Prime Minister David Cameron went on television to announce that his country’s terror threat level was being raised to “severe”. He described Isil as “a greater threat to our security than we have seen before”.

The remarks by Cameron and the Abdul Aziz echoed in sentiment, if not specificity, the views of Lindsay Graham, a Republican US senator and persistent critic of US President Barack Obama, who told Fox News in mid-August that “every major intelligence leader” says “the (US) homeland is threatened by the presence of Isil in Iraq and Syria”.

“To change that threat,” he continued, “we have to have a sustained air campaign in Syria and Iraq. We need to go on the offensive ... If [President Obama] does not go on the offensive against Isil, these guys they are coming here”.

Lest this be seen as simply partisan, it is worth noting that criticism of Obama at home is not coming only from Republicans. Over the weekend, Senator Diane Feinstein, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a TV interview that Obama was “maybe in this instance too cautious”.

Noteworthy for its tone

The main person who appears to be taking a more measured approach to the Isil is Obama himself. Cameron’s statement came a day after the American president held a news conference of his own, one noteworthy for its tone: Grave, but markedly less alarming. Acknowledging that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for dealing with Isil, Obama seemed noticeably less concerned than many others by the idea that the organisation may broaden its reach. He said he was mainly concerned about Isil taking over Iraq. Later last week, Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, pointedly refused to follow Cameron’s lead and raise the country’s terror warning level.

So is Obama under-reacting or are other leaders making too much of Isil and the threat it poses?

To say that Obama’s first concern is to avoid any action that may pull America into another war is not the same thing as saying he does not care about what happens in the Middle East or what may happen in (or to) America because of events in the region. This, however, is exactly the charge that many critics are currently levelling against him.

The real question — the one no one in Washington, London or Riyadh can answer, at least right now — is whether Isil, were it actually to become a state, would turn into the kind of free zone for jihadists that Afghanistan became under the Taliban. Obama’s critics believe the answer to that question is obvious and that the only chance to prevent it lies in swift action now. This approach assumes that if Isil gains real, lasting control of territory and resources, it will become effectively unstoppable.

For Obama, Cameron and the other leaders, it is a question of balancing the risk of chaos against the risk of war — bearing in mind that America’s last war in Iraq did much to create what we now call Isil in the first place.

Not a comfortable policy

For the moment, the bottom line is that the Obama administration appears to be working hard to have it both ways. Media reports from the region leave little doubt that America is more militarily active in Iraq than it is willing to acknowledge.

Meanwhile, the president works to assure Americans that he is very concerned about Isil, but reluctant to do anything that may commit the US to the Middle East’s conflicts in new, and potentially lasting, ways.

In the short term, this will not be a comfortable policy to maintain, exposing Obama, as it does, to political attacks from friends and enemies alike (with an election barely two months away), but it may — may — work.

In the long run, it simply is not a viable policy. Ultimately, Washington is going to have to decide what engagement with the Middle East really means and what sacrifices it is willing to make to support engagement, in whatever way that term is defined.

Gordon Robison, a longtime Middle East journalist and US political analyst, teaches political science at the University of Vermont.