Editor’s note: This essay was drawn from the recent study Rethinking U.S. Efforts on Counterterrorism: Toward a Sustainable Plan Two Decades After 9/11

The defining characteristic of America’s post-9/11 counterterrorism approach has been an aggressive, forward defense global posture. As former defense secretary Robert Gates put it, “better to fight them on their 10-yard line than on our 10-yard line.” This counterterrorism enterprise has been remarkably successful from a tactical perspective, foiling attacks and disrupting terrorist networks. Protecting against future attacks demands continued vigilance, but nearly twenty years after 9/11 there is growing consensus that America’s forward defense counterterrorism posture is neither financially sustainable nor strategically balanced against the resource needs of other national security threats. The past two administrations concurred that the United States should reduce its military presence around the world, invert the longstanding model of a U.S.-led and partner-enabled global counterterrorism model, and focus U.S. efforts on those groups most capable of targeting the homeland. As the 2018 National Defense Strategy makes clear, “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.” But as the Biden administration begins to implement its decision to pull all U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, putting such ideas into practice has proved an elusive goal.

“Tell Me Where We Should Spend Our Resources”

Terrorist attacks grab the public’s attention, skewing the inherently political process of developing and resourcing the national response to terrorism, especially over time. But the United States faces a wide array of national security threats—nuclear programs, cyber security, environmental challenges, foreign espionage, transnational organized crime, election security, failed states, to name a few—and the reality is that decades of investment to address one acute threat can, over time, come at the expense of investing in other equally pressing threats. “We will never eliminate terrorism,” then-Acting Director of National Counterterrorism Center Russell E. Travers noted in November 2019, “but a tremendous amount of good work has been done, which facilitates a conversation about comparative risk.”

In 2013, the Obama administration instructed the Pentagon to pivot to Asia, but the Benghazi attack disrupted these plans. Instead of moving soldiers from Africa to Asia, Barack Obama ultimately sent more resources to Africa than had been there before the pivot. The result was not a pivot to Asia but to Africa, described by some officials as the “360 degree pivot to Asia.” In 2016, President Obama made the case for taking a “long view of the terrorist threat,” which would necessarily have to be “a smart strategy that can be sustained.” The key to developing a sustainable counterterrorism strategy, he added, “depends on keeping the threat in perspective” and avoiding overreach. President Donald Trump’s National Strategy for Counterterrorism asserted that “Whenever possible, the United States must develop more efficient approaches to achieve our security objectives, relying on our allies to degrade and maintain persistent pressure against terrorists. This means collaborating so that foreign governments take the lead wherever possible and working with others so that they can assume responsibility in the fight against terrorists.

Recognizing that events overtook the Obama administration’s efforts to put such a framework in place, the Trump administration issued a series of national security strategic documents in an attempt to provide a framework for such an approach. But when it came to counterterrorism, the strategies provided conflicting strategic direction. Speaking in February 2017, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph E. Dunford laid out a “4+1” framework guiding Defense Department prioritization of international threats and the capabilities needed to address them. The four top priorities related to strategic competition with China and Russia, followed by regional threats Iran and North Korea. Countering terrorism and violent extremism represented the “plus one” in the “4+1” framework.

In the years that followed, confusion dominated discussion about how to operationalize this declared shift in terms of resource allocation or mission prioritization. The production of three largely unaligned national security strategies under the Trump administration only exacerbated the problem. In the words of one former senior U.S. counterterrorism official, “I would challenge anyone to read the National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and the National Counterterrorism Strategy and tell me where we should spend our resources.” Within weeks of taking office, the Biden administration released an interim national security strategy guidance paper which notes the need to “meet the challenges not only from great powers and regional adversaries, but also violent and criminal non-state actors and extremists,” among other threats from climate change to infectious disease and more. But like Trump administration strategies, this interim guidance lacks direction on how to budget limited resources across these threats.

Counterterrorism as Currency in Great Power Competition

In the eyes of some, the United States can either prepare for great power competition or fight “peripheral wars” in places like Syria or Yemen that are remnants of an outdated war on terrorism, not both. In fact, for all the talk of a shift away from counterterrorism and toward great power competition, the reality is that with a modicum of strategic planning the two are mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive, efforts. The few military deployments necessary to maintain an effective counterterrorism posture are the polar opposite of “endless wars” in terms of size, cost, and risk, and should be pursued in support of international coalitions and local allies. Beyond their counterterrorism value, such alliances will prove critical to pushing back on great- and near-power competitors.

Global competition with the likes of Russia and China will demand that the United States take into consideration not only its own set of interests but the needs and threat perceptions of its local partners. Focusing solely on great power competition in our relationship with other countries risks ignoring those countries’ counterterrorism (and other) concerns, which are often among their top priorities. As Brian Michael Jenkins notes, “Counterterrorism assistance is a currency.” That currency buys goodwill and partnership on a wide array of other interests, including great power competition. The flipside is also true: if the United States declines to help other countries address their counterterrorism needs, it creates a vacuum that states like Russia and China, or Iran and Turkey, will fill. These states will not intervene in helpful ways, but they will use limited power to outsized effect. The key to dealing with China, Secretary of State Tony Blinken explains, “comes first and foremost from working in close coordination with allies and partners who may be similarly aggrieved by some of China’s practices. When we’re in the business of picking fights with our allies instead of working with them, that takes away from our strength in dealing with China.” Counterterrorism relationships with countries for whom that is the primary security concern can also be leveraged for other purposes, including great power competition.

Consider, for example, U.S. counterterrorism activities in Africa, which account for about 0.3 percent of Defense Department personnel and budgetary resources and involve primarily training and advising roles. In December 2019, as part of his review of global deployments, Defense Secretary Mark Esper tabled “proposals for a major reduction—or even a complete pullout—of American forces from West Africa” with an eye toward “a push to reduce post-9/11 missions battling terrorist groups, and instead to refocus Pentagon priorities on confronting so-called Great Powers like Russia and China.” Just a few months earlier, in March 2019, General Thomas Waldhauser, commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) testified before Congress that “the threats we are working against aren’t necessarily a threat to the homeland and may not be a threat to the region overall.” Despite being chronically understaffed, AFRICOM saw cuts of up to 10 percent of its continental forces to address security challenges elsewhere. Fast forward to December 2020, when the Department of Justice indicted a Kenyan national for conspiring to hijack an aircraft to carry out a 9/11-style terrorist plot on behalf of the Somalia-based terrorist group Al Shabaab. These threats develop quickly when terrorists operate in relative safe havens, undermining the efficacy of the homeland threat litmus test.

Whether or not Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, or other terrorist groups in Africa pose an immediate threat to the U.S. homeland today, Africa has become a fast-growing terrorist hotbed with violent extremist incidents in the Sahel doubling every year since 2015. It would be folly to wait until that threat metastasizes and suddenly does present a threat to the homeland before deciding to put some skin in the game to help counterterrorism in Africa. Such efforts could be partner-led and U.S.-enabled with a focus on leveraging the United States’ unique intelligence capabilities, and they need not involve the deployment of large numbers of soldiers. To be sure, they should focus not only (or even primarily) on military support but rather civilian counterterrorism capacity building. Premising a redeployment from Africa, which is small, affordable, and effective, on the need to shift to great power competition rings hollow given that the continent is a hotbed of Russian and Chinese activities.

Not All Deployments Are “Endless Wars”

Looking back at 2020, CENTCOM commander Gen. McKenzie noted, “Russia and China exploited the ongoing and regional crises, financial and infrastructure needs, perception of declining U.S. engagement, and opportunities created by Covid-19 to advance their objectives across the Middle East.” Syria, in particular, provides another clear example of a small, inexpensive, low-risk military deployment that yielded high counterterrorism dividends and prevented the spread of a dangerous regional conflict. In contrast, “The Kremlin’s primary motivation in Syria was limiting American influence in world affairs and projecting its own great power status, not fighting terrorism.”

The U.S.-led mission in eastern Syria, which involves significant international and local partner participation, is a cornerstone of the Counter-ISIL Coalition’s ongoing effort to fight remaining Islamic State elements and prevent the group’s resurgence in the wake of its territorial defeat in March 2019. By late 2019, some 2,000 U.S. Special Forces in Syria anchored a local force of some 60,000 Syrian fighters to combat ISIS. The U.S. force in Syria also supports ongoing efforts to target Al Qaeda elements in Syria, including those intent on carrying out attacks targeting U.S. interests such as Hurras al-Din. In September 2020, a U.S. drone attack near Idlib killed a senior Al Qaeda leader whose network was reportedly planning attacks against Western targets, including the United States. U.S. forces at the al-Tanf military base also serve as a bulwark against Russian, Iranian, and Iranian proxy forces. Withdrawing the small deployment of U.S. forces from Syria—which President Trump announced he planned to do several times—would create a power vacuum that Russia would fill. For example, shortly after U.S. troops abandoned a military base near Aleppo, Russian forces took over the U.S.-built facility. By any measure, Syria policy lies at the intersection of U.S. counterterrorism and interstate competition challenges. “In short,” former Counter-ISIL Coalition Coordinator Brett McGurk argues, “the U.S. campaign against ISIS is not—and never was—an “endless war” of the sort that Trump decried in his February 2019 State of the Union address.”

It was designed from the beginning to keep the United States out of the kind of expensive entanglements that Trump rightly condemns. Iraqis and Syrians, not Americans, are doing most of the fighting. The coalition, not just Washington, is footing the bill. And unlike the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq, this campaign enjoys widespread domestic and international support.

Speaking in August 2020, CENTCOM commander General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. anticipated that American and NATO forces would maintain “a long-term presence” in Iraq, not only to fight ISIS but as a check against the activities of Iran and its proxies in Iraq. Such deployments are critical to contain threats and check the activities of state actors, while building up local partner capability to do so on their own. By February 2021, Gen. McKenzie made this point clear: “Our goal moving forward is to continue to develop and enable the ability of our local partners to maintain the fight against ISIS in their respective areas without external assistance.”

An increasingly common manifestation of interstate strategic power competition is the use of militant and terrorist proxies. Consider the extensive role of Shia militias in Syria acting as proxies of Iran and Russia, Shia militias operating as Iranian proxies in Iraq, Russian mercenaries fighting in Libya with Russian government logistical support, or Russia offering bounties to Afghan militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Separatist rebels in Ukraine used advanced weaponry they received from Russia, while Iran enabled Houthis in Yemen to deploy surface-to-surface missiles, precision-guided anti-ship missiles, and weaponized drone swarm attacks. Iran’s attack on Saudi oil installations at Abqaiq involved drones launched by Shia militant groups in Iraq, while drone attacks targeting Saudi Arabia in 2021 underscored the increasingly integrated operational activities of Iran’s proxies in Iraq and Yemen. Groups like Hezbollah already point to America’s interest in shifting to great power competition with Russia and China as evidence that the United States might consider approaching militant groups differently. But any effort to deal with Iran will have to contend with Tehran’s asymmetric warfare in the gray zone between war and peace. Pushing back on Russian and Chinese adventurism around the world will include areas of operation where counterterrorism tools and partnerships can play critical roles in a broader interstate competition.

Conclusion

As the Biden administration reviews current counterterrorism policies, it should make every effort to view both counterterrorism and great power competition not in binary terms of victory or defeat, but rather as ongoing efforts—short of both war and peace—in which both lethal and non-lethal tools are employed to compete with adversaries and disrupt acts of terrorism. Under any reorganization, the U.S. military will still play critical counterterrorism roles, both taking the lead in cases where terrorism threatens the homeland or U.S. interests abroad and supporting partner-led efforts elsewhere around the world. Such decisions, however, should be made strategically and based on a list circumstances under which U.S. military assets could be deployed abroad, in small but open-ended rotations or quick reaction forces acting in lead or support roles. Examples could include threats to the homeland, low-cost big-dividend counterterrorism opportunities, or the risk that declining to participate in a counterterrorism effort could incur great power competition costs.

Small counterterrorism missions in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, or Africa may be necessary to prevent terrorist groups from controlling territory or plotting foreign attacks from terrorist safe havens. Such deployments need not entail U.S.-led missions; they could be in support of partner-led initiatives such as the French-led Operation Barkhane in the Sahel region. In Iraq, where 2,500 U.S. troops are deployed, NATO announced plans to increase its military deployment from 500 to 4,000 troops and to expand its training mission beyond Baghdad. Even in Afghanistan, the Kabul government is likely to seek U.S funding to keep on Western contractors to help with a variety of critical needs, including security. Such hotspots typically also play important roles in great power competition. As the Biden team builds off its newly released Interim National Security Strategic Guidance report, it would do well to recognize that the Venn diagram overlap between counterterrorism and great power competition presents more opportunities than challenges.

Dr. Matthew Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler fellow and director of the Reinhard program on counterterrorism and intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Levitt is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies program and is the author of Rethinking U.S. Efforts on Counterterrorism: Toward a Sustainable Plan Two Decades After 9/11, part of The Washington Institute’s Transition 2021 series.

Image: Reuters.