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By DAVID SCHENKER

The Obama administration has responded to the beheadings of two American journalists by launching an air campaign to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ISIS, as it is also known, is kidnapping and decapitating Lebanese citizens too, and in recent weeks two Lebanese soldiers were killed. But Beirut is in a state of paralysis, fearing that an assault on ISIS in Syria would result in the execution of about two-dozen other Lebanese troops and police currently held hostage by the group.

Lebanon already hosts nearly 1.5 million Syrian refugees, has a prolonged vacancy in the president’s office, and is experiencing increasing civil strife. So the kidnapping ordeal makes a precarious situation worse as Lebanon emerges as the next front line in the Islamist militia’s offensive. A state comprised largely of Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Christians, Lebanon is divided about the war in Syria. Members of Lebanon’s Sunni sect sympathize with the Syrian rebels against the government of Bashar Assad, and some are crossing the border to join the militant Islamist groups in the revolt. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah has deployed thousands of troops in support of the nominally Shiite Assad in Damascus.

Arbitrating between these hostile sectarian groups is the Lebanese Armed Forces, or LAF, a historically nonaligned institution with broad popular support. Recently, however, this former bastion of sectarian neutrality has been cooperating with Hezbollah to target Sunni militants in Lebanon like ISIS. This tack has eroded the military’s stature and placed it squarely in the cross-hairs of Sunni terrorist groups.