As the calendar approaches January 21st and President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, the Cipher Brief sat down with Patrick Skinner of the Soufan Group to discuss the successes and failures of the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism policy and how the next administration might approach the same issues. According to Skinner “There might be slightly different rhetoric or messaging, but I don’t think we are going to see a fundamental shift [in policy].” Skinner also emphasized a need to more effectively counter ISIS’ message, saying, “every government on the planet has a problem countering the extremist narrative. No one’s figured that out.”
The Cipher Brief: How has U.S. counterterrorism policy developed in the eight years under President Obama?
Patrick Skinner: It’s really difficult to say because the issues now are so far beyond counterterrorism. Some of the problem is that we are taking a counterterrorism approach to what is far greater than any counterterrorism challenges or any tactics that you can use.
There have been a lot of successes – certainly the Osama bin Laden raid - if you look at it in the traditional counterterrorism manner. But again, I can only stress that what we’re seeing now is far beyond counterterrorism - at least the way we used to think about it from post-9/11 until 2014.
We’ve done well in the traditional way – decapitation strikes and eliminating the eternal al Qaeda “number three.” It used to be a joke - from 2002-2008 that was the most dangerous job – and it is still dangerous to be a senior leader of any of these groups. Certainly ISIS now.
In many ways, the counterterrorism effort has been successful– we haven’t had a significant, multi-phased planned attack in the U.S. since 9/11 and that’s because of a lot of good intelligence. It’s always been harder to hit America than anywhere else, but the success also comes from the FBI’s approach – which is the opposite of that of Europe. Europe detects and then they monitor. We don’t do that. We detect and immediately disrupt. They place informants with terrorist groups, and once they cross the threshold of material support, the FBI arrests and moves on. We’ve done that hundreds of times per year for a long time. It’s been very effective.
But the problem is that the things that are driving terrorism are persistent threats. It’s impossible to overstate how large these problems are. The counterterrorism approach was never designed for these kinds of problems.
TCB: What are some of the main issues U.S. counterterrorism policy has failed to address?
PS: It’s obvious - and this is not just the Obama Administration - that every government on the planet has a problem countering the extremist narrative. No one’s figured that out.
There are a lot of reasons why. It’s complicated. [We’re dealing with] individuals, and the messages are appealing. It’s not just that ISIS is the best at messaging; the U.S. has Hollywood - we can do messaging. But governments are not nimble and they are not good at nuance.
As we’ve seen, media in the U.S. has gone from propaganda to what they now call “fake news” and misleading narratives or outright lies. We can’t even combat that in our own politics and our own societies. The same thing that’s happening with terrorist extremism is the same kind of social media phenomenon we see with everything else. It’s really difficult to counter that when everybody can write whatever they want and it’s done at the speed of light.
I wish that the Obama Administration had done at a better job, but, to be honest, I don’t know what that is. I don’t think anyone does yet. There are a lot of people trying to figure that out right now.
The mistake was actually just hoping that the counterterrorism strategy that we put in place, which was effective at a certain level, would continue to be effective once it was clear that the sheer level of bad trend lines made it impossible. We’re sticking only with a counterterrorism strategy rather than adapting.
Now, again, I’m not calling for a military intervention. The thing is: there are no easy answers. We’ve run out of those. We’ve had a lot of those answers from 2001-2006 where we tried new things such as drones and surges. Those were part of a golden age, but there were also a lot of mistakes; the Iraq war was just a travesty and a tragedy.
We have, in a way, run out of innovation in counterterrorism. We are stuck with human intelligence and ISR with drone support. But basically – and I remember this from Afghanistan and Iraq – it’s really difficult to do human intelligence and counterterrorism in a war zone, and we have war zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and other places. It’s just too big for counterterrorism.
TCB: When you say counterterrorism strategy, does that refer to a combination of drone strikes and U.S. Special Forces conducting operations and training foreign militaries?
PS: Exactly. Basically the Obama counterterrorism doctrine is airstrikes combined with foreign liaisons where we train, equip and partner with host nations. We empower them, and that works really well. The Obama Administration has been consistent with that endeavor.
But it doesn’t work in places where the government is basically a shell or it’s collapsing. With unlimited money and unlimited time, we haven’t done very well in Afghanistan. Training, equipping and liaising doesn’t really work because the problems are so much bigger.
TCB: Under President Obama, we’ve seen the supposed decline of al Qaeda, the rise of ISIS, the decline of ISIS, and more recently the rise of al Qaeda. What should we expect moving forward in the next year?
PS: Next year is going to be a challenge. Even if the war in Syria ends somehow on paper, the fighting is not going to stop. Al Nusra is very powerful and they can change their name all they want, but it’s still al Qaeda. So al Qaeda is one of the strongest elements in the opposition, and they are not going away.
Al Qaeda as a group, they took their licks but they’re doing really well. The thing is, even when we hurt them right now, like in Yemen when we beat them back a little bit, they are still more powerful in Yemen then they ever have been. And they are still more powerful in Syria than they ever were.
ISIS, as much as we’re crushing them, and make no mistake, they are getting crushed, is still one of the strongest terrorist groups in the history of the planet. It might not be a proto-insurgency anymore, but these problems still persist.
The most optimistic option is that we beat them down back to where a counterterrorism strategy works. Right now we are basically conducting a pseudo-war to get ISIS back to where human intelligence, joint raids, and drone strikes can keep them off balance. We’re not there yet. There are so many people involved – foreign fighters especially - some will get through the cracks.
We’re as good as we’ve ever been, but we don’t know if that’s good enough.
TCB: As ISIS is pushed out of its stronghold in Mosul and possibly its headquarters in Raqqa, will the group concentrate more of its efforts on conducting attacks abroad?
PS: That’s the big question: what is going to happen now? Social media wasn’t around to the same extent when they were getting hammered in 2008-2009.
Everyone is wondering, once ISIS is kicked out of Raqqa and Mosul, where will they go? They’re not going to go anywhere; they just won’t have control of the city. They’ll lose thousands of people but they will still be a menace in Iraq.
The real question is if ISIS will maintain its external operations capabilities or intent. If you just play the numbers, it’s certain that ISIS has people in Europe. I don’t subscribe to the idea that they are waiting for some mythical date - that they are ready but are just waiting. Plots are easy to unravel, people can get arrested. So if they have the capability they tend to do it; the longer you are operational, the more you can get disrupted and detected.
TCB: Aside from ISIS and al Qaeda, do you see other terrorist threats emerging next year?
PS: Both those groups still have bandwagon appeal even though ISIS is a damaged brand. They are still the Coca-Cola and Pepsi in international jihadist terrorism.
I don’t know of a change that you can just point to and say, “Ok if we do this it will cut down the risk dramatically.” For example, if you just put people on a registry or if we just close things off - none of those are actual, feasible counterterrorism approaches in a democracy and they wouldn’t even work if you could pull them off.
What we’re doing, especially domestically – fostering community relationships, a very busy FBI, a lot of liaisons – that’s a sustainable, even though it’s an exhausting approach.
TCB: How might the Trump Administration approach counterterrorism differently than the Obama Administration?
PS: When it comes to strictly counterterrorism efforts, President Obama might have criticized President George W. Bush’s Administration during his campaign, but once the Obama Administration started, they realized there is a limited tool set and took a similar approach, with dramatically more drone strikes.
Once the Trump Administration gets into office the rhetoric will fade into reality and they will realize that there are limited options. There is no magic plan. That doesn’t exist.
It will be more of the same. There might be slightly different rhetoric or messaging, but I don’t think we are going to see a fundamental shift. We support these countries as much as we can. That’s going to continue. The airstrikes will continue in the places that we are allowed to. There might be more Special Operations raids, but the problems in Syria and Iraq are too large. It’s like fighting a wildfire with a fire extinguisher. We need to get it down to a smaller fire, and then we can use our tools. Right now we are fighting a forest fire with a very exhausted fire extinguisher.
I don’t see big changes because there aren’t magic options. You can do slightly more or slightly less of a certain thing, but there are finite resources - more airstrikes here, mean less somewhere else.
Overall, the big change may be in attitude - but in the day-to-day dealings, we are in a pattern that’s not going to break.
