what foreign policy tools does the president have to deal with terrorism

U.S. President Barack Obama came into office determined to end a seemingly endless war on terrorism. Obama pledged to brand his counterterrorism policies more than nimble, more than transparent, and more ethical than the ones pursued past the George West. Bush administration. Obama wanted to become away from the overreliance on strength that characterized the Bush-league era, which led to the disastrous U.S. invasion of Republic of iraq in 2003. That war, in plough, compromised the U.S. campaign confronting al Qaeda. During the past six-plus years, Obama has overseen an approach that relies on a combination of targeted killing, security assistance to military and intelligence forces in partner and allied countries, and intensive electronic surveillance. He has also initiated, although in a tentative way, a crucial effort to identify and address the underlying causes of terrorism. Overall, these steps amount to an improvement over the Bush years. Simply in many of import ways, the relationship between Bush-league'southward and Obama's counterterrorism programs is marked by continuity every bit much as 
by change.

One important difference, all the same, is that whereas Bush-league's approach was sometimes marred past an overly aggressive posture, Obama has sometimes erred too far in the other direction, seeming prone to idealism and wishful thinking. This has hampered his administration's efforts to combat the terrorist threat: despite Obama's laudable attempts to calibrate Washington'southward response, the American people find themselves living in a world plagued with more terrorism than before Obama took office, not less. Civil war, sectarian tensions, and land failure in the Middle East and Africa ensure that Islamist terrorism will continue its spread in those regions—and most likely in the rest of the world also. Almost worrisome is the emergence in Iraq and Syria of the self-proclaimed Islamic Land (likewise known as ISIS), a protean Salafi jihadist system whose barbarous violence, ability to capture and hold territory, significant fiscal resources, and impressive strategic acumen make information technology a threat different any other the The states has faced in the gimmicky era. The rise of ISIS represents not only the failure of Bush-era counterterrorism policies but also a consequence of Obama'southward determination to withdraw from Iraq with lilliputian regard for the potential consequences. Obama was correct to see the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a distraction from the war on Salafi jihadists. But his premature political disengagement from Iraq eight years later just made things worse.

The Obama years have put in stark relief the inescapable dilemma faced by any U.S. president trying to protect the United States and its allies from terrorism. Military responses, although ofttimes necessary in the immediate term, can end upwardly serving terrorists' agendas; blowback is all but inevitable. Obama has talked up the potential of preventive strategies, such as civic appointment with communities where extremists recruit and the promotion of inclusive and constructive governance. Such approaches are less risky than the use of forcefulness, simply their effects take fourth dimension to manifest and are difficult to measure. They also enjoy little support in Congress or among the American public.

Meanwhile, debates well-nigh U.Southward. counterterrorism policy remain mired in counterproductive partisan bickering and recriminations, with different Washington factions blaming one some other for what went wrong. Whoever succeeds Obama as president volition have to sort out the costs and benefits of his approach in a far more than nuanced manner. In counterterrorism—as in foreign policy more generally—it'south easier to assess the limitations of the last president's approach than to develop a more effective new 1, and it'south easier to talk most trans-
formative change than to carry it out.

PLUS ÇA CHANGE

Some of the changes Obama has made have been mostly rhetorical or have reflected a shift in emphasis rather than a truly substantive motion. Ironically, the aspects of U.S. counterterrorism to which he has made the least significant changes are the very ones that he was initially most adamant to change. The Bush assistants'south "global war on terrorism" has been replaced past a campaign known as "countering vehement extremism" to serve as the overarching U.S. strategy to combat transnational Salafi jihadist groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS. But the new phraseology masks many similarities. The "kinetic" fight—the use of deadly strength by the U.Due south. military and intelligence agencies—has continued unabated, mostly in the form of drone strikes, since Obama took office. According to estimates collected past The Long State of war Journal, the United States has launched approximately 450 such attacks in Islamic republic of pakistan and Yemen during Obama's tenure, killing some two,800 suspected terrorists and around 200 civilians.

In many of import ways, the human relationship betwixt Bush'due south and Obama's counterterrorism programs is marked past continuity as much as by change.

And although Obama explicitly outlawed Bush-league's "enhanced interrogation techniques"—rightly classifying them every bit torture—and airtight the then-called black sites where the CIA carried out the abuse, those changes were not as meaning as they might announced. According to Jack Goldsmith, who headed the Function of Legal Counsel from October 2003 until June 2004, the Bush administration had halted the practice of waterboarding (without specifically declaring it illegal) by 2003, and the black sites had been largely emptied by 2007. And although Obama denounced abusive interrogations and extralegal detentions, he did so presumably knowing full well that a number of Washington's Centre Eastern allies in the struggle confronting Salafi jihadists would nonetheless continue to appoint in such activities, and therefore, if those techniques happened to produce useful intelligence, the United States could still benefit from it.

Peradventure the most surprising continuity between Bush'due south and Obama's counterterrorism records is the fact that the U.S. detention centre in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, remains open. One of Obama's start acts equally president was to sign an executive order requiring that the Pentagon shut down the facility within a twelvemonth. But in March 2011, after facing years of intense bipartisan congressional opposition to that plan, Obama ordered the resumption of military commissions at Guantánamo and officially sanctioned the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists held there without accuse—2 of the policies he had vowed to alter. In this case, the president's idealistic goals became difficult to sustain once the duty to protect American lives became his primary responsibility.

Activists dressed as prisoners need the closure of the U.Due south. armed forces's detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba while taking office in a protest in Times Square, New York, April 2013.

Eduardo Munoz / Reuters

Another irony is that the most successful reversal of Bush's counterterrorism agenda that Obama managed to achieve is arguably the 1 that has brought him the well-nigh grief: the end of the U.South. state of war in Iraq. The Bush administration made many different arguments—often based on flawed or misleading intelligence—for why the United States had to invade Iraq. Just all of them were rooted in an increased feeling of vulnerability produced by the nine/eleven attacks; in that sense, although many factors contributed to the invasion, it must exist considered a centerpiece of Bush'due south "war on terror"—and it was the element of Bush'southward counterterrorism policy to which Obama nearly strongly objected.

Obama was right to see the invasion of Republic of iraq as a distraction from the war on Salafi jihadists—but premature disengagement simply made things worse.

Obama was elected with a mandate to end the war in Republic of iraq and bring the troops habitation. During his campaign for the White House in 2008, Obama described Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's request for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from his country as "an enormous opportunity" that would enhance the prospects for "long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the U.s.." In 2010, when he appear the end of U.S. combat operations in Republic of iraq, Obama declared that "ending this war is non only in Iraq's interest—information technology's in our own."

But four years later, as Iraqi cities fell to ISIS, the administration and its defenders argued that the removal of U.S. troops had non really been Obama's conclusion to brand. Maliki, they insisted, had refused to provide immunity for any U.S. troops who stayed in Iraq after the expiration of the status-of-forces understanding that Bush and Maliki had agreed to years earlier. In that location was some truth to that claim, but it was also truthful that Obama hadn't pressed Maliki very hard on the outcome. And nigh dissentious of all, Obama had abruptly reduced the level of diplomatic appointment betwixt Republic of iraq and the United States, leaving Sunnis feeling isolated and vulnerable to Maliki's overtly anti-Sunni sectarian regime.

DRONES, LOANS, AND PHONES

Although many of Obama's counterterrorism choices were framed as corrective responses to Bush-league'southward missteps, the administration also had its own vision of how to combat the threat, and information technology'southward worth because the 3 main tools it has relied on.

First and foremost among these are armed drones. Unmanned aeriform vehicles, equally they are technically known, are significantly more discriminating than any other weapon fired from distant. That accuracy is one reason Obama has come to rely so heavily on them. But they are however imperfect. Their targeting is entirely dependent on the quality of the intelligence bachelor to the pilots, and information technology is not possible to completely avoid noncombatant casualties. Withal, according to figures nerveless from open sources and published past the think tank New America, among others, the accuracy of U.Southward. drones has improved over time; the amount of collateral harm they cause has decreased.

One legitimate business concern raised by critics is that news coverage of drone attacks might assist terrorists observe new recruits. The use of drones to target suspected al Qaeda operatives in Republic of yemen has been correlated with a rapid growth in membership in the grouping's Yemen-based affiliate. Some take argued that the drone attacks themselves have caused this rise; others, such equally the political scientist Christopher Swift, suggest that the group has attracted "idle teenagers" not by stoking anger over drones but by offer relatively generous salaries, besides as cars, khat, and rifles.

Information technology is certainly possible that drone strikes could inspire terrorist strikes on U.S. soil. Faisal Shahzad, who tried and failed to detonate a bomb in New York City's Times Foursquare in 2010, reportedly claimed he acted to avenge a 2009 drone strike that killed Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. Only I have interviewed terrorists for some fifteen years, and I've found that rather than a single source of motivation, there are invariably a combination of factors—emotional, social, fiscal, ideological—that push people to engage in terrorist violence.

Supporters of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa Islamic organization agree placards and party flags as they shout slogans during a protest against U.South. drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal region, Peshawar, Nov 2013.

Fayaz Aziz / Reuters

Drones are a terrifying musical instrument of war. They sometimes cause the deaths of innocents. There is something that feels not quite right well-nigh a weapon whose use entails no direct physical risk to the user. And although nearly Americans approve of the utilize of drones in counterterrorism operations, if drones were to someday target U.S. government officials or American citizens themselves, such opinions would apace shift. But for at present, drones are the to the lowest degree bad of a number of bad options for targeting high-level terrorists.

Obama has also relied extensively on other governments to supply ground forces to fight terrorist groups away; this represents a second major colonnade in his strategy. The policy has obvious entreatment: if the United States cares more nigh the threat than local authorities do, U.S. interventions are unlikely to succeed in the long run. Just this policy, likewise, is fraught with risk and can lead to significant blowback. Critics argue that it is hard to identify potential enemies among the forces Washington trains: consider the many "green on blue" attacks that have taken place in Afghanistan in the past dozen years, in which Afghan soldiers or police officers accept killed members of the coalition forces tasked with grooming them. In Syrian arab republic, where the Obama administration is not partnering with the government in Damascus but instead hopes to train rebel forces to fight ISIS, U.South. officials have identified only 60 volunteers who have the "right mindset and ideology," according to U.Southward. Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter. Similar efforts in Iraq have also been slowed by a lack of adequate recruits. Whatsoever the virtues of this policy, it volition not work if Washington cannot identify suitable candidates.

The tertiary and terminal main chemical element of Obama's counterterrorism approach is a reliance on intensive electronic surveillance. Digital communication is far more widespread, and far more vulnerable to exploitation, than information technology was when Obama was elected, and government surveillance of communications has expanded dramatically nether his watch, as the former National Security Bureau contractor Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 past leaking enormous amounts of classified data about the NSA's operations. Opposition to these activities—particularly the NSA'south drove of metadata on all Americans' telephone calls—from the public, major Silicon Valley firms, and U.South. allies has resulted in the cutback of some of the NSA's almost aggressive techniques. But surveillance is an essential counterterrorism tool. It is less likely to result in the loss of innocent lives than well-nigh other counterterrorism tactics; indeed, it limits collateral damage by improving intelligence. And considering it doesn't target Muslims in particular, it doesn't play into the jihadist narrative that the United States is engaged in a war against Islam. Looking forward, cyberterrorism and cyberwar will likely pose a more than serious threat to Americans' well-being than conventional terrorist violence, and government surveillance is and will remain an essential weapon against cyberattacks.

The onetime monitoring base of operations of the National Security Agency (NSA) in Bad Aibling, south of Munich, June 2013.

Michaela Rehle / Reuters

THE CONTAINMENT STORE

The Obama administration'southward combination of drone strikes, security aid to U.Southward. partners and allies, and aggressive surveillance has undoubtedly helped protect Americans. The cadre al Qaeda arrangement has been greatly degraded, and there accept been no major attacks on U.S. soil. Obama also deserves credit for launching the risky 2011 raid in Pakistan that eliminated Osama bin Laden. Just in that location is likewise no question that on Obama'southward watch, the global threat of jihadist terrorism has grown more acute, owing mostly to the rise of ISIS, a hybrid organization that combines elements of a proto-state, a millenarian cult, an organized crime ring, and an insurgent regular army led by highly skilled erstwhile Baathist armed services and intelligence personnel.

No Salafi jihadist organization, not even ISIS, poses an existential threat to the United states of america. Nor, in contempo years, have Salafi jihadists posed the nearly direct terrorist threat to private American citizens. Indeed, white supremacists and far-right extremists take committed nearly twice as many terrorist murders in the United states of america as take jihadists in the years since the 9/xi attacks. Merely that narrow measure of the threat fails to capture the unique danger posed by Salafi jihadism: information technology is the just extremist credo able to attract large numbers of committed fighters around the world, and information technology motivates ISIS, the only extremist organization able to threaten the stability of states and the regional order in the Middle East. In addition to the territory the group now controls in Iraq and Syrian arab republic, its affiliates have established "provinces" in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, among other places. ISIS is threatening many U.S. allies and inspiring or directing an unknown number of followers to human action beyond the territory information technology controls. Its ultimate goal—a pipe dream, ane hopes—is to destabilize and eventually take over Kingdom of saudi arabia, which would accept profound consequences non only for the region but as well for the globe.

There is no question that on Obama'due south watch, the global threat of jihadist terrorism has grown more astute, attributable by and large to the rise of ISIS.

Until recently, Obama consistently underestimated the force and international appeal of ISIS, which in early 2014 he infamously likened to a inferior varsity basketball game team in comparison to al Qaeda'southward professional squad. Even subsequently ISIS had marched beyond Iraq and Syria and seized territory equal to the land expanse of the United Kingdom, Obama referred to it as "a terrorist system, pure and simple" and promised to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the grouping—an impossible goal, especially given his claim that no ground forces would be required.

Given that Obama'southward preferred approach failed to prevent the rise of ISIS, information technology's fair to ask whether the updated strategy he put in identify in reaction to the grouping's breathtaking advance volition fare any meliorate. ISIS is a totalitarian regime, and Washington's goal should be to comprise information technology in much the same fashion the United States has other totalitarian regimes. And despite the White Business firm's talk of degrading, defeating, and destroying ISIS, Obama'southward strategy is actually i of containment: air strikes, grooming and equipping some of ISIS' adversaries in Republic of iraq and Syria, and bolstering efforts to stop the flow of fighters into and commodities out of the territory ISIS controls.

Merely even this more limited anti-ISIS strategy has been hard to execute. Money, goods, and personnel are however getting into and out of ISIS-controlled territory. A 2015 UN Security Council written report concluded that 22,000 foreign fighters have made their way to Iraq and Syria to join jihadist groups. Co-ordinate to U.Southward. intelligence officials, approximately 3,400 of them take come from Europe and the Usa.

And mayhap most troubling, ISIS' ideology continues to spread, largely due to the group's impressive employ of social media. Indeed, the most straight threat ISIS poses to the U.s., at least for now, appears to come from people already in the U.s.a. who might become radicalized through their online contact with ISIS supporters or recruiters based throughout the earth. Combating the spread of extremist ideologies and preventing recruitment at abode and abroad have thus emerged as the well-nigh important elements of U.South. counterterrorism.

WINNING THE WAR OF IDEAS

Obama's effort to do but that represents perhaps the single biggest change the president has effected in U.Due south. counterterrorism—although it is still more an aspirational ideal than a fully implemented policy. The Bush-league administration framed the promotion of electoral democracy as the best style to defeat extremism. Simply that policy was destined to fail in the short term: nascent democracies often drift toward majoritarian rule, disenfranchising minority groups and creating fertile footing for extremist movements. In place of Bush-league'southward aggressive democracy promotion, the Obama administration has focused on addressing the underlying atmospheric condition that brand certain individuals and communities ripe for recruitment. In February, the president convened what he called the White Firm Summit on Countering Violent Extremism and laid out what amounted to a three-office program: discredit terrorist ideologies, address the political and economical grievances that terrorists exploit, and improve governance in the regions where groups such equally ISIS recruit. The aim, he said, was to cease merely reacting to extremism and instead endeavor to forestall it from spreading, by creating jobs for young people who might otherwise exist susceptible to recruitment, fighting the corruption that impedes development, and promoting didactics, especially for girls.

Poverty and lack of didactics, in and of themselves, do not cause terrorism. Just terrorist groups exploit failed governance in places where governments routinely violate man rights; when people don't feel safe, they sometimes conclude that a terrorist group is more likely to protect them than their authorities. "We can't keep on thinking well-nigh counterterrorism and security equally entirely separate from diplomacy, evolution, education, all these things that are considered soft merely in fact are vital to our national security—and we practise not fund those," the president said 
in March.

The point is valid. Merely it's worth noting that, months later, information technology is notwithstanding not clear how these preventive strategies will exist funded or implemented. Nor is it clear simply how such a program would break the vicious wheel in which autocratic rule encourages extremist violence, which in plow produces harsh authorities crackdowns, which leads to more extremism. An even deeper problem, the political scientist and terrorism expert Daniel Byman has pointed out, is that there is no unmarried pathway to violent extremism. "It varies past land, past historical period and past person," Byman has written.

The adjacent U.S. president would practice well to view the combination of targeted killing, security assistance, and intensive surveillance as a relatively constructive, low-risk tool kit.

Obama administration officials are hardly unaware of these complexities and challenges and have engaged in a tug of state of war familiar from many previous administrations. On one side are those who say that the threat from extremists dictates that military machine cooperation with partners and allies take precedence over other policy options, such every bit promoting better governance. On the other side stand up those who want U.S. policy to focus more squarely on addressing what they believe are the underlying causes of extremism's spread. Every bit Tamara Cofman Wittes, who served as deputy banana secretary of state for About Eastern affairs from 2009 until 2012, put it to me: "Our policy rhetoric regularly acknowledges that extremists thrive on grievances and disorder driven past failures of governance, but our policy practice avoids addressing governance for fear of disrupting short-term security goals." And indeed, arguments in favor of more military activity and assist tend to behave the day in the Obama White Business firm. Wittes also pointed out that ever since the deadly jihadist assault on U.Due south. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012—which led the assistants to prioritize the protection of diplomatic personnel—it has go fifty-fifty more difficult for diplomats to engage with local officials, politicians, and activists who are working to foster improved governance and the protection of minority rights.

In trying to erode the appeal of extremist ideology, the administration has sought to amplify the voices of people who tin credibly counter jihadist ideas, including Islamic scholars and Muslim clerics from all over the world and "formers"—individuals who have abandoned jihadist organizations and can provide a more accurate picture of the jihadist way of life, which rarely lives up to the romantic epitome of heroic resistance that groups such as ISIS peddle. But governments—especially the U.S. government—are inherently limited in what they tin can achieve in this regard; they are hardly the virtually credible brokers for letters of this kind. And although leaders in Muslim communities have more standing to push dorsum confronting extremism, boring speeches by learned and respected Islamic scholars are unlikely to change the minds of the immature people attracted by ISIS and similar groups. What is needed is more involvement from the private sector: entertainment, Cyberspace, and media companies know how to entreatment to younger audiences and could play a much larger role in crafting counternarratives to fight ISIS, bringing to bear their considerable expertise in market research and messaging.

THE LIMITS OF Modify

Overall, Obama's approach to counterterrorism has been a step in the correct management. The next U.S. president would practice well to view the combination of targeted killing, security assist, and intensive surveillance equally a relatively effective, low-risk tool kit, and he or she should also proceed to experiment with preventive policies, which potentially represent the all-time way to combat jihadism in the long term. Violent Islamist extremism cannot be defeated through force, simply neither can it exist addressed by soft power alone. The threat is constantly evolving, and information technology requires a constantly evolving response. If nothing else, one lesson the next president should larn from the Obama years is to resist the temptation to change counterterrorism policy solely for the sake of change, or to help differentiate him- or herself from the previous occupant in the White House. In the fight against terrorism, as Obama discovered, Washington's room to maneuver is constrained by the dynamics of terrorist violence, the persistent appeal of extremist ideas, and the limits of state power in confronting the circuitous social and political movements such ideas foster.

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Source: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/obama-and-terrorism

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