A number of trends now seem to be accepted truths after nearly 16 years of fighting against jihadi terrorism. We have achieved concrete victories in the last two decades – killing Osama bin Laden, downgrading core al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and beating back the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, however, we face an ongoing conundrum in that while we may have weakened some of our principal jihadi threats, such as core al Qaeda, we have enabled others to metastasize and shape-shift in what ultimately culminated in the rise of ISIS.
We seem to be ever distant from declaring victory against jihadi terrorism because both our objectives remain vague and our problem sets continue to evolve. In terms of our objectives, are we setting out to eliminate all jihadi terrorists and organizations or just to downgrade them so they don’t pose a threat to the homeland or our interests overseas? As we debated these objectives, the jihadi problem set transformed from al Qaeda core, a centralized global jihadist organization principally focused on directing terrorist attacks against Western targets, to a dizzying array of jihadist threats. The collapse of local governments in the Middle East over the last several years enabled ISIS and other jihadist groups to exploit instability to create statelets. Beyond physical territory, ISIS pioneered a new frontier of messaging with its slick and prolific propaganda in about a dozen languages, which has led to devastating events manifested through lone-wolf or inspired attacks.
Part of the issue is that the war against jihadi terrorism is a war against something bigger than just tactics; it is a “war of ideas” between those who contribute to a free society and the nation-state system, and those who oppose it. The “War on Terror” optic introduced by the George W. Bush Administration meant that we only fight those who oppose our free society when they represent imminent threats to U.S. security. When the Obama Administration sought to broach this “war of ideas,” it introduced the vague term “violent extremism,” which resulted in further confusion since it expanded the scope of the threat from jihadism to all forms of extremism.
What can the Trump Administration do differently? For starters, it could take a huge step towards defeating ISIS and other jihadist groups by clarifying not only that the problem is radical Islamist terrorism, but more specifically, a) what makes jihadism unique and b) how jihadist groups balance their ideology with their own strategic planning.
Appreciating the ways in which jihadism resonates among its followers and how terrorist organizations use it will ensure that our policy in fighting jihadism is nimble and effective. Jihadism today, especially as pioneered by ISIS, is more than just carrying out terrorist attacks. ISIS exploits the perfect storm of political vacuums, local grievances, and violent conflict to create a purposeful way of living for its recruits. Its propagandists craft tailored messages to potential audiences in places like Russia, Malaysia, and the United States and indoctrinates not only through hard-hitting violent messages but also through “softer” channels, like overseeing health services, the administration of law and order, and education, as I have previously written.
Beyond an expanding ideological battle, ISIS’ experience building its caliphate-state reflects another important dimension of how the terrorist threat has metastasized – that it is willing to adapt its message in anticipation of what local audiences and its followers would want to hear. There is no better proof of this than ISIS’ loss of the Syrian town of Dabiq – the purported site of the prophesized end-of-days apocalyptic showdown at the heart of the group’s propaganda. After ISIS fighters fled the city and ceded control to the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces, ISIS issued a lengthy article in its weekly newsletter explaining why that was not the actual end-of-days battle and why events on the ground do not contradict its core dogma. This responsiveness indicates that the leaders of jihadist groups realize that to be successful as organizations they need to be practical, which therefore means that ideology sometimes needs to take a back seat to responding to developments.
There is a lesson here for U.S. policymakers: these groups are driven by radical Islamist ideology just as much as they are driven by basic human priorities, such as survival, power, and success. Understanding the human strategic vulnerabilities of jihadist groups, therefore, ensures that we are not blind-sighted by too narrow a focus on ideology.
Where the U.S. and its partners have a strategic edge is not discrediting the ideology but rather in manipulating the environment in a way that makes joining jihadist groups either impossible or undesirable (and preferably both). This applies to both the evolution of jihadist groups as well as to the threats of individual radicalization or “lone wolf” attacks.
How can the U.S. bureaucracy operationalize this new approach? A policy of “strategic stress” would, as its name implies, add stress to these two dimensions of jihadist evolution. In addition to using traditional military and intelligence operations and partnerships to short-circuit the messaging and mobility of jihadist organizations, a policy of strategic stress means controlling the environments in which jihadist groups thrive. For example, working towards stabilization in Syria with multi-confessional and multi-state partners, would create an environment in which Sunni jihadi groups could not plant roots or organize, and where local populations feel that they no longer need these groups.
Overall, strategic stress is a tool that would inject agility into U.S. national security bureaucracy at a time when jihadi groups metastasize beyond their own planning and expectations. As a complement to traditional counterterrorism operations and policy, strategic stress allows for other components of the government to support the degradation of jihadi groups with most effective results and the lowest cost. Ironically, while a policy of strategic stress avoids addressing the narrative and ideology of jihadism directly, it succeeds in defeating both precisely because it channels the most time-proven traditions of U.S. military, law enforcement, justice, and intelligence to limit opportunities for jihadism.
In short, the most effective way to defeat the most challenging and elusive aspect of today’s decentralized jihadi threat is not to face it head-on but rather to vigorously attack the environment in which it thrives. It is about treating the soil in which weeds grow, not about cutting the weeds one by one.
The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the U.S. government.
