Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
Americans are still having a difficult time distinguishing between a strategy and a tactic. This because they fail to understand the meaning of them both; in spite of the fact that so much attention has been drawn in criticism within security services.
Americans continue to call a technique a strategy and a tactic is treated as a repeatable strategy. Strategy may refer to a certain tier of geographical focus or as a process for action: the strategic, the operational and the tactical.
The major difference is:
Strategy: a process of constructive planning around a desired result.
Tactic: the [intended] method of execution to accomplish a strategy.
More simply, strategy is often called the ‘what we want to accomplish’ while tactics is referred to as the ‘how we are going to accomplish it.’
Strategy encompasses the whole of what you want while tactic regards the method to pursue a particular goal. This is important because the US design of a national security/counterterrorism strategy is operations and tactics dominant and not strategically dominant. In other words, it is not addressing the strategic problem of the source of anti-American violence.
To counter terrorism is a noble national objective and a strategy at the operational levels but a weak national and foreign strategy. This is especially true at the planning and directing levels of the executive decision makers. A tactical operations heavy management structure should be replaced with a strategy heavy top. The process of change is word and not deed, so long as the misunderstanding continues.
A state can attempt to counter or prevent asymmetric attacks; it can minimize the damage post-incident; rapidly respond to an attack with first responders and it can even neutralize the members of an organization that sponsors mass violence from overseas. But none of that will alter or neutralize the causal political ideology which perpetuates and sustains terrorists and their supporters. This happens at the political, psychological, sociological and communicative levels.
There must be a strategy-on-strategy approach to defeating any true anti-American threat origin. Tactics will only deal with the numerous methods and objectives involved of the enemy’s most active and already deployed. They remain one step ahead of an absent strategic foe. They were previously strategy heavy and tactics weak. Now international violent extremists are becoming tactically strong as well through a more diversified operations set.
The US had assumed that the human element was the largest factor of terrorism. They initially focused on the network. Networks were very popular in the 1990s. The tactics of taking out cells and links were seen as the way to disrupt or destroy the growing anti-US jihadism through the 1990s. This type of planning counterterrorism followed into the 21st century and reached a climax, seeping into wars that were justified as large-scale counterterrorism operations.
The next phase of US planning in the war against terrorism became focused with ideology but in an entirely short-sided and incomplete way. Iraq was to be the “exemplar” of diplomacy which other nations were to follow. This was an official US political objective for Iraq and the region. The ‘exemplar’ model was an unfeasible short-term strategy through the anointed national means that were utilized.
US counterterrorism policy weaved its way into counterinsurgency planning as it did everywhere else. The political incentive was to defend the democratic transition process as much as it was to justify large military spending on even indirect or non-US threats. This happened majorly in Iraq but the Afghanistan was politically melded together with it in an attempted political reasoning that ‘fighting over there will secure the US homeland.’ The counterterrorism strategy was based on a military led offensive in the form of operations resulting in a tactical approach to all counterterrorism.
So the strategy of the US after 9/11 was largely three-pronged: 1) democratizing the world and the region will be swift- using institutional reform of extreme states that demonstrate it is possible and compatible with all states, regions and cultures; 2) opening the world and the region up to globalization will reduce violence and incorporate a greater level of contentment; and 3) that taking the fight to the homes of the enemy globally would reduce terrorism in the world and aimed at the USA.
All of these strategies and their assumptions were underdeveloped and the tactics used to achieve them were carried out with a predominant military and financial dimension of national power. The US retains all three strategies but is using a different “tactic” and set of tactics to carry them out.
The sustained offensive military campaigns actually played very well in the short-term, initially. They sent a bold psychological message to the enemy that the US was strong and indeed willing to destroy them [or “bring them to justice”] through the wrath of a superpower.
But the US hardly could employ the Mongolian warfare tactics of obliterating its enemy totally and annihilating its entire social structure. So much of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan was supported by uneducated households of men, women and children in war they do not understand with only a villager’s hearing of biased religious interpretations.
Today, al Qaeda has been strengthened into a much more sophisticated informal and international “movement” of resistance that uses indiscriminant mass killings in the name of Allah. Importantly, the nature of the enemy fundamentally changed the nature of the war. America is still largely fighting the old al Qaeda in strategy. The strike tactics like special operations raids and drone killing has replaced the previous operations and tactic focus of conventional war. Still the US remains in a perilous transitional phase of strategic development and uncertainty as to what they realistically hope to achieve.
The new al Qaeda consists of anyone that finds their way into anti-Westernism as an extremist Muslim convert. They are not just suicide bombers anymore. Al Qaeda is potentially any Islamic fundamentalist cybercriminal, lobbyist, political activist, separatist, charity organizer and youthful mass killer. Their tactics have changed but their strategy is still the same as it was on 9/11: countering globalism and Westernism with Islamic extremism. Their objectives have changed both out of necessity and success.
Al Qaeda did not bring down the US with any of its attacks. And as this apparent fact become realized by leadership elements within the jihadist circles of Northern Pakistan, they went from the Media to the internet with modified objectives. While in hiding, others tookover that had never even been to a training camp in Afghanistan or Sudan.
It is not just the propaganda by violent deed anymore; now al Qaeda is a hub of anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism that seeks the appeal to Muslims and encourages they fight. Thus, they have turned from a genuine terrorist movement to a hatred inspired holy war against liberal secularism. One correct example of Huntington’s predicted “Clash of Civilizations.” Al Qaeda is the catalyst!
The war against al Qaeda (the movement of Islamic jihad vs. the West) is no longer the war against a simple intentional terrorist group or terrorism. Therefore a counterterrorism strategy is not the right strategy to defeat it.
In fact, how often does al Qaeda or any of its so-called affiliates demand anything from governments or threaten to coerce them in any of the most recent operations? When does it use terrorism in its present day tactics? Prison breaks are hardly terrorism. Suicide bombings with no demands are just acts of extremist violence and jihadist hatred for the infidel. The Boston bombers are hardly terrorists. Their stated goal was violent revenge and they carried out mass murder for American operations overseas. It was more personal and emotional than political. These outrage events happened throughout the military and civilian criminal events.
Instead of changing the definition of terrorism, the US must change its strategic thinking and planning and develop new tactics to achieve the new national security strategy. We can be more agile and adaptive in fighting the real war against violent Islamic extremism. While not a war against Islam, the US must recognize the clear war against [violent] Islamic extremism. There are ways to do this without targeting non-extremist majority Muslims but they will require the use of more diplomats, intelligence officers and strategic information personnel. More diplomatic, more intelligence and more information operations will be required to replace the counter-terrorism policy vacuum.
Counterterrorism will remain one way to tactical neutralize terrorism but it will continue to do nothing against the anti-American ideology or the spreading violent Islamic extremism internationally as well as nationally.
The failure of the US government to fight a total war of perception and ideology is a matter of confusing strategy and tactics. This has presented the US with a growing vulnerability that is self-inflicted. The new strategy must prioritize ‘perception management’ at its core.
Al Qaeda has become a symbolic identity of hope for global jihadists everywhere against the US and the Western world. It has no official membership. Anyone can join, anytime with the simple allegiance to the cause.
On the tactical side, the US might create a revolutionary movement of its own to counter it. Virtual citizens could be made abroad in a long-term push that influences, manipulates, counters, and neutralizes enemy information and communications at the strategic level. This would require a full and total commitment.
Unfortunately, the infiltration into the open Western world has already begun but an exfiltration of Western civilization from Muslim dominant nations where these violent extremists thrive is also underway. As the West pulls out of Central Asia and remains a bystanders to conflict states in Africa and other parts, these new jihadists extremists are moving in, receiving real-world training, holding territory and converting their locals. There are presently three major fault-lines: Africa hot states, Syria, and Northern Pakistan. These three centers of jihadist influence display an alarming red line for a long-term spawning of international jihadists. They are quakes to a new global recruitment campaign.
The enemy propaganda machine is working more efficiently now than the US State Department, the CIA and the whole of DoD combined. They are able to communicate, move, fight, acquire skills and most disappointing of all, unit together- from all over the world.
A costly “tactical” approach to counterterrorism/counter-al Qaeda on a military budget led the USA out of the region by: popular public demand, political-to-military blunders, unsustainable overreach and weakening budgets from global economic perturbations. The conventional military was out a long time ago- before the budget and the Great Recession. It’s a war of perception and al Qaeda has once again beaten the US to exploit this strategic field.
The US has no effective way to counter enemy Islamist propaganda that incites a jihadist’s call to action. Specifically, they have not put a strategy that utilizes its full power and resources into defeating and reversing the success of this alarming trend. The US continues to lose to a global recruitment campaign in both the developing and developed world because of this core deficiency.
The White House, State Department, CIA and the Pentagon are not ignorant of these problems. The transitioning tactic is one of “lead-from-behind” which involves a greater partnering to enhance the US national interest, including countering terrorism. Presently, Washington awaits the outcome of a sectarian war and regional polarization without a set offensive strategy.
A finalized strategy should however establish US strategic information superiority. Operations carried out worldwide through diplomacy outreach and education, as well as partnerships and new alliances; greater political intelligence and information operations; multi-agency, multilateral coordination of total US and Western strategic pro-values and influence dominance.
Further recommendations might include the increase US political power through: a massive diplomatic revolution, massive information programs and large scale strategic political intelligence operations with minimal military support; continued open economic and financial power supporting roles of shifting partners that fit the American vision.
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