Unlike his predecessors, President Donald Trump’s war on terror is not a subject of the mainstream media. What accounts for the absence of serious coverage? Why is America’s longest war no longer the subject of the media’s fascination? This blog post endeavors to address these questions with an eye towards making sense of the president’s war on terror.In the opening year of President Trump’s implementation of his version of the war on terrorism, the media coverage was two-fold. It represented one of anticipation and fear. The anticipation is represented in a host of stories that examined Trump’s campaign against the Islamic State. Pundits incessantly sought an answer to a basic query: can Trump quickly destroy the Islamic State?
At the other end of the spectrum, multiple stories were written that questioned Trump’s secrecy and the lack of transparency. This induced a period of fear. The medias anxiety manifested itself this way: what is behind the secrecy? What are the details associated with the administration’s ISIS strategy? That not being enough, the media and scholars questioned if the administration had strategy.
The war on terrorism goes on. The absence of coverage is not a sign of the administration’s failure, but rater media focus shifted to several headline grabbing issues that dominated the airwaves. That is, several major foreign policy events (and the controversial fallout surrounding each) such as Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore, Trump’s meeting with NATO leaders, followed by the Trump-Putin meeting collectively relegated the war on terrorism to the back pages.
At issue, what is the status of the Trump administration’s war on terrorism? In addition, what explains the “so-called pivot” and in did this shift signal a change in how the administration conducts the war on terrorism?
Trump’s War On Terrorism: In Search Of Direction?
Some four months into the administration, inside the Pentagon several senior civilian and uniformed military officers quietly made it known that it may be time to shift priorities. The internal scuttlebutt argued that a new defense strategy is required to meet twin revisionist challenges to American primacy and its interests.
This did not mean the war on terrorism is over. To the contrary, the war continues apace, but the conflict no longer represents the dominant security priority among senior defense planners within the Trump administration.
Pentagon planners have pushed for a pivot. Defense officials have called for greater focus on the twin threats posed by Russia and China. The pivot is now well under way. Given the president’s focus on destroying the Islamic State and defeating what Trump referred to as “radical Islamic terrorism” the war on terror shifted to yet another phase.
The administration argued in the Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge that in this new threat environment, “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.” [1]
On this point, noted scholar Seth Jones articulated that the Trump administration is engaged in a bit of a “counterterrorism gamble.”[2] Jones asserts, “U.S. strategy documents have outlined a shift from counterterrorism against non-state actors like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State to competition with states like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.”[3]
Despite the shift in national security priorities, the Trump administration is quietly waging the war on terrorism in the shadows. To implement its shadowy war, the Trump administration moved rapidly to terminate central features of the Obama-era playbook behind the former president’s war on terrorism.[4]
Second, the Trump era strategy ended the restrictive rules of engagement, the administration publicly asserted that it is unafraid to place American Special Operation Forces (SOFs) near the front lines (as was the case in Syria on multiple occasions), “proposed drone strikes and counterterrorism raids no longer undergo the same high-level vetting they did under Obama,” and the president has “removed the standard that a terrorist target has to pose a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons to be individually targeted outside traditional war zones.”[5]
Third, President Trump removed another bureaucratic headache from the Obama years. For example, the “Proposed drone strikes and counterterrorism raids no longer undergo the same high-level vetting they did under Obama. Instead, Trump permitted the delegation of decision-making to lower levels of seniority.”[6] This significant bureaucratic change quickened decisions and permitted military planners to accelerate the war against the Islamic State and Al Qaeda and many of their affiliates around the world.
Taken collectively, the U.S. military under the Trump administration is prepared to meet the ongoing terror threat environment with a counterterrorism toolbox that is no longer restrictive or controlled by an Obama era White House that shackled the armed forces. Thus, in the absence of the restrictions, senior U.S. military officials argue they are now far more engaged to meet the ultimate objective: confront and defeat the enemy whether it be the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, AQAP, Al Shabab, or Boko Haram.
Analysis
At issue, how to make sense of the state of the president’s war on terrorism? During the campaign Trump boasted he would defeat ISIS quickly. In retrospect, the president’s strategy and tactics destroyed the twin pillars of ISIS’s prostate, Raqqa and Mosul. In addition, the administration’s subsequent tactics ensured that enemy fighters were surrounded in often remote safe havens which prevented ISIS fighters from fleeing and establishing new nodes upon which to create havoc elsewhere around the world.
The Trump administration’s strategy shifted to another iteration. The president and senior DoD officials are now prepared to engage a morphing terror threat—the ISIS insurgency. That not being enough, the administration is still targeting the Islamic States’ strongholds in twenty-plus countries around the world.
The U.S. military under President Trump launched several air strikes that killed several senior leaders within Al Qaeda in Syria. Since these strikes the terror group is in disarray and operates with two additional dilemmas, a leadership void and detachment from Al Qaeda Central.
The war on terrorism in Syria cannot conclude until the Trump administration defeats the ISIS insurgency and Al Qaeda in Syria. Then and only then can the president claim victory in the failed state that is Syria.
In the interim, the administration is hitting targets of opportunity (through air strikes and SOF raids) within ISIS safe havens around the world. Similar attacks have targeted Al Shabab, AQAP, the Taliban and other lesser known networks.
One thing is clear, President Trump is currently operating with comprehensive knowledge of the terror environment (something candidate Trump lacked). With this perspective in mind, the president is fully aware that his iteration of the war on terror is still in its infancy.
Endnotes
[1] Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, January 2018), p. 2.
[2] Seth Jones, “America’s Counterterrorism Gamble,” CSIS Brief, July 16, 2018. https://www.csis.org/analysis/americas-counterterrorism-gamble.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Donna Starr-Deelen, Counterterrorism from the Obama Administration to President Trump: Caught in the Fait Accompli War (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018).
[5] Edward Isaac Dovere, “Donald Trump’s Shadow War,” Politico, May 8, 2018. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/09/donald-trumps-shadow-war-218327.
[6] Ibid.
