There is now no question, if there ever was, what the Nato summit in Newport must be about. The representatives of the civilised democracies who gather there to talk now confront an implacable threat to all those liberties they hold dear.
On the eve of the summit, deliberately and provocatively, Islamic State released a video that purports to show the beheading of Steven Sotloff, an American journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2013 and who was last seen at the end of the gruesome video exhibiting the slaughter of his fellow journalist James Foley. The masked man who stands on the video with Mr Sotloff describes the unspeakable act he is about to commit as a direct retaliation for the US air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq. The video ends with a threat to behead a British aid worker who is being held captive. It is shocking beyond belief, beyond any vestige of civilisation.
This raises again the troublesome question of how far to go when attempting to get a hostage out of a conflict zone. The immediate human reaction is to do whatever it takes. This country, however, does have a policy of not paying for release. There is no straightforward and obvious truth in such a tragic choice but, on balance, it is better to desist from payment for fear of creating a gruesome market in hostages. It is also tempting, and understandable, to yield to such terror, to give way to exactly what Islamic State wants. When we confront people so implacable in their beliefs, so sure about their own divinely sanctioned cause, there is every reason to be fearful.
The sheer horror of events, however, must give pause. It is now forgotten that when Britain first joined the American interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, public opinion was broadly in favour. As those conflicts first escalated and then went awry, opinion moved. Barack Obama ran for the presidency on an implicit pledge that he would end American entanglements around the world and be more cautious in future. A less charitable way of describing the same process is that the United States ceased to be a world leader.
The same turning away happened slowly in Britain. By the time the Cameron government sought parliamentary permission to join action against the Assad regime in Syria, the fear of hostile constituents led MPs to refuse. The leader of the opposition even bragged that he had prevented a rush to war. A consensus has emerged in Britain that is a return to an old school of foreign policy realism: only respond when British interests are directly and immediately engaged.
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Islamic State shows how naive and self-harming that view now is. Well-produced videos are now circulating that set the demand for holy war to a jaunty tune, designed for potential murderers and martyrs to hum. Impassioned British Muslims are taking up the invitation and travelling to join in an assault on the freedoms they have enjoyed all their lives.
There should be no mistake, either, that this is the objective. For all their differences, the Islamic militants around the world share an enemy. They believe that the lifestyle that in the West we describe as freedom is a corruption of divine will. There can be no compromise with such a fundamental view, which is, it should be added, a rendering of Islam that the vast majority of Muslims would abhor. This conflict is reaching a point where an emphatic decision is required. Even if Britain wants to shut out the world, the world, in the form of militant terrorists, will find its way in. This is not, as Samuel Huntington once framed it, a clash of civilisations. This is a clash of civilisation and its opposite. It cannot now be doubted that Islamic State does not value the lives of British and American men and women. But we do, and the question now is how far we are prepared to go in their defence.