Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama offered a forceful repudiation of jihadism.

"The ideology of ISIL [sic] or al Qaeda or Boko Haram will wilt and die if it is consistently exposed, confronted, and refuted in the light of day,” said Obama in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly. He went on to say "If young people live in places where the only option is between the dictates of a state, or the lure of an extremist underground -- no counter-terrorism strategy can succeed."

Powerful words from the president--but a quick glance at the alliance organized to fight the jihadist group know as Islamic State, or ISIS, should serve as a reminder that no matter how much lip service American presidents pay to the aspirations of Arabs and Muslims across the greater Middle East, the United States is -- and will likely remain -- heavily invested in an autocratic status quo in the region.

In recent months ISIS has made gains throughout much of Iraq and Syria, leaving behind tales of violence, terror and savagery. The executions of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff helped to rapidly turn public opinion on the matter, compelling an otherwise insouciant administration to act.

For Obama, the composition of the regional alliance against ISIS was key. The president rightly believed it important to foster regional buy-in and include Arab allies in the campaign. As Slate foreign policy writer Fred Kaplan put it, “To have Muslim nations, especially Sunni nations, battling against ISIS helps discredit its rationale for existence.”

Kaplan’s observation isn’t wrong, but it is a demonstration of just how limited the U.S.’s options remain.

While a bloc including Sunni Arab regimes certainly provides the U.S. with a kind of PR cover -- in addition to essential tactical support in its bombing campaign -- it also means more military aid and hardware for monarchs, sheiks and strongmen in the Mideast and North Africa. It means additional arms for monarchies in Jordan and Bahrain, as well as Apache helicopters and fighter jets for the military junta in Egypt. Ostensibly intended to help the U.S. fend off terrorism in the Mideast, this aid will also undoubtedly be used by these regimes to suppress their own restive populations.

Consider, for example, the audacity of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Perhaps the finest example of everything that has gone awry with the U.S.-Arab client state relationship, Sisi minces few words while extending his hand out for the American dole.

In a recent interview on CBS This Morning, the Egyptian president made it clear to co-anchor Charlie Rose precisely what Egypt would require from the United States in exchange for its involvement in the fight against ISIS. When pressed by Rose on Washington’s desire for Egyptian air support, Sisi replied “Give us the Apaches and F-16s you have been suspending for over a year and a half now.” He went on to stress the “symbolic” importance of Egypt’s role in the coalition against ISIS, but rebuffed Rose’s queries on any direct role for Egypt in airstrikes.

Sisi’s ambiguity on the matter was deliberate. While Egypt would no doubt put helicopters and fighter jets to good use against Islamist insurgents in the Sinai Peninsula, such hardware also makes for excellent tools of intimidation against any would-be protesters.

Then there’s the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. With few natural resources and little industry to speak of, the one commodity Jordan’s hereditary monarchy can offer the U.S. is its pledge to serve as a (mostly) secular bulwark against the tide of Islamic radicalism in the region.

Indeed, Jordan’s King Abdullah II recently reaffirmed the kingdom’s commitment to the war on terrorism -- but with an added caveat. “[The rise of the Islamic State] could have been prevented if the international community worked harder together to make sure funding and support to the original groups in Syria were not allowed to get to the extent that they were,” said Abdullah during an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

His majesty’s chiding of the international community comes with an extra dose of chutzpah, especially since his nation is probably the largest contributor of foreign fighters to the civil war in Syria. Many of these radicalized and war-weary jihadis have naturally trickled back to Jordan, only to be jailed upon return. The kingdom turned a mostly blind eye to the flow of its own citizens into Syria, content to let them go and get the jihad out of their systems elsewhere. But their return to Jordan poses an unsettling problem for a regime that has historically shown little tolerance for even the most basic forms of political dissent.

As one young Jordanian protester told it to Middle East Eye, “Our problems are poverty and unemployment. Unemployed young men have to have problems. If there were jobs, there wouldn’t be any problems.”

This same sentiment can be found across most of the Middle East and North Africa. According to data released by Gallup, the greater Middle East has the lowest sense of purpose out of all other regions surveyed in its annual wellbeing analysis. But unlike other parts of the dispirited globe that suffer from limited access to education and essential skills training, the Mideast and North Africa register the highest combination of ennui and educational attainment.

Couple this with arguably the largest youth unemployment crisis in the world, and the result is an educated and listless population looking for outlets and answers.

For the U.S., Arab social ills are considered an essential casualty of American security and economic interests in the region. Moreover, turmoil in several of these countries -- Syria, Iraq and Yemen, to name a few -- has left Washington with few available options in the fight against ISIS.

The problem, said Brookings Institution fellow Shadi Hamid, is a lack of long-term thinking in Washington. “With the exception of a brief period after the Arab uprisings, [the United States] quickly returned to the pre-Arab Spring business as usual, failing to put much pressure (or money) behind incentivizing democratic reforms.” This, argues Hamid, puts the U.S. in the no-win situation of having to grant legitimacy to otherwise undesirable, undemocratic regimes.

“It's especially problematic when countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt seem to act as if the Muslim Brotherhood were a greater regional threat than ISIS,” said Hamid.

It’s this broad stroke rejection of dissent in the Arab world, and the frustration it engenders, that jihadists in al-Qaeda and ISIS have eagerly attempted to tap into through aggressive social media campaigns, glossy magazines and other recruiting efforts. ISIS, in particular, needs not only militants and would-be martyrs, but engineers, technicians and other radicals with specialized skills to help boost its frail utopia.

The realities of the ISIS caliphate are, of course, terrible. Far from being the idyllic paradise, or #FiveStarJihad, described by its apostles, most reports on the regime established by Islamic State detail an oppressive society fueled by fear and violence. As a report released by the Institute for the Study of War put it, “Behind ISIS messaging about its just court system and impartial officers of the law lies a brutal organization that can leave no room for political, religious or civil dissent.”

ISIS, nevertheless, continues to pull in recruits from across -- and even beyond -- the Arab world, offering radicals of every shade an opportunity to fight and kill autocrats and apostates alike. So what then is to be done about the purpose driven jihadi?

One option, said Hamid, is to do a better job of incentivizing true reform and democracy among America’s regional clients. In a 2013 essay in The Washington Quarterly, Hamid proposed a $20 billion endowment to help ease the autocrats’ pain for having to enable and enfranchise the masses.

Some countries, so the argument goes, would take the money, while others -- such as resource-rich regimes like Saudi Arabia and Qatar – would not. But the objective remains the same: to better align American interests and values in a strategically crucial region, while also widening the pool of democratic partners in the fight against radicalism and terror.

When one considers that the war against ISIS is costing American taxpayers $7-10 million a day -- coupled with billions of dollars in aid and deals doled out to Arab rulers throughout the years -- $20 billion sounds rather reasonable.

Whatever the answer, the status quo isn’t it. If the U.S. insists on treating the Middle East as a region of strategic importance, then it must develop a better, more long-term solution to ensure that it isn’t cleaning up the autocrats’ messes for years and decades to come.

Kevin B. Sullivan is a foreign policy writer based in New York. He is the former managing editor of Real Clear World. His work has appeared in The Week, Real Clear Politics and the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter: @kevinbsullivan.

Image: U.S. State Department Flickr.