Understanding the linkage between leadership, strategy, and counterterrorism is important if the United States is to win the war on terrorism. This post explores the four variables that are central to understanding what constitutes an effective counterterrorism strategy. At issue, a central point of this post is how do we measure the leadership of American president’s in formulating and implementing counterterrorism strategies?

The Connection: Leadership, Strategy, and Counterterrorism

Lieutenant Commander Craig Haynes, United States Navy, argues, “An effective strategy must have specific direction from the President in consultation with all of his senior advisors who have responsibility for related federal efforts.”[1] In essence, an effective strategy “must have strong [and] directed leadership….”[2] More to the point, Haynes asserts there are four interconnected variables that assist in understanding the linkage between leadership and counterterrorism. Those variables include (1) Commitment, (2) Diplomacy, (3) Action, and (4) Vision.[3]

Commitment is a reference to presidential resolve. Commitment represents a political variable. No matter the situation at home or abroad, security remains the principal focus of a national leader. Thus, the American President must be willing to “pursue [security interests] without any hesitation, unilaterally, if necessary.”[4]

Diplomacy is another critical aspect of leadership. To achieve the objective of ending a terrorist threat requires an important component of counterterrorism—the use of diplomacy. Diplomacy requires the participation of regional states to end a “local threat” and the creation of a global coalition to deal with a threat like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State both of which impact international security.

Action is a reference to the use of military or kinetic force. In response to terrorism the use of force must be “abrupt, irreversible and deliberate. The US must live up to its reputation as a superpower and … [employ] … its influence worldwide”[5] in any confrontation against transnational terrorism.

On the use of vision, “US leaders in counterterrorism must” develop a sense of the conclusion or outcome of the war on terror. That is, an American president, in concert with his senior advisors, must create an “end-state” to “guide the strategy, instead of reacting from event to event, without a final goal.”[6]

Taken collectively, the synergy between commitment, diplomacy, action, and vision are critical if one is to comprehend the linkage between leadership and effective counterterrorism strategy. A question begs, given the variables outlined herein, can they be used to assess or evaluate an American President and how he confronts the threat of terrorism?   

The Variables And Assessment Of Presidential Response to Terrorism

Ronald Reagan made extensive use of the presidential campaign to discuss the threat of terrorism. President Reagan did have an extensive set of approaches to deal with the threat of terrorism. That said, viewed individual or collectively Reagan’s approaches cannot be said to be comprehensive. That is, Reagan did little to eradicate or confront state sponsored terrorism.[7]

In the wake of Reagan’s decision to launch Operation Eldorado Canyon in response to Muammar Gaddafi’s state-sponsored attack on the Labelle Night Club in West Germany in 1986 which killed two American Servicemen and injured 230 others people, including 50 Americans.[8] In addition, Reagan launched a host of attacks, both air strikes and the use of U.S. Naval battleships against Iranian sponsored terrorist groups in Lebanon, then a s major sanctuary for terrorism.

Few would question Reagan’s leadership and resolve. However, the president’s tenure in office occurred during the height of international terrorism. Though Reagan made several great speeches on the threat posed by terrorism, the president did not implement a comprehensive strategy during his time in office. Thus, state sponsored terrorism and individual organizational terrorism were by no means checked during the Reagan era.

President Bill Clinton was present at the expansion of transnational terrorism. Following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, President Clinton had an opportunity to confront the nascent threat posed by Al Qaeda. Instead, the president demurred and offered no response to comprehensive plan to confront the threat.  

In the wake of the 1998 East African U.S. Embassy bombings, Clinton implemented a series of counterterrorism responses—most notably he signed presidential findings that called for the targeting of senior Al Qaeda leaders—but he refused to provide an effective counterterrorism response.

It can be said that among the six presidents that had to deal with terrorism as a security threat, President Clinton is must criticized for the failure to offer an effective counterterrorism response to the meet the threat. That is, despite Al Qaeda’s horrific timeline of terrorist attacks against the United States during the Clinton era, the president never implemented a coherent and comprehensive strategy. Put another way, there was a leadership void, no consistent and purposeful military strategy, and certainly no vision. In the absence of effective leadership and a clearly defined counterterrorism strategy, Al Qaeda quickly evolved into a global threat.

Prior to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush did not pay much attention to the threat of transnational terrorism. The 9/11 attack transformed a president, a country, and ultimately forced the international community to finally come to grips with the reality that Al Qaeda had to be confronted.

President Bush rallied the international community and created global coalition against Al Qaeda. Most impressive, of the U.S. presidents that were forced to come to terms with terrorism, Bush implemented a detailed approach that made it clear to the world the American leader is serious about counterterrorism.

Not only did Bush have a global coalition in place, the American leader was gifted with another quality no previous president possessed: domestic and international consensus in opposition to terrorism. In the opening year of the war on terrorism, President Bush not only assembled a coalition but implemented a four-pronged strategy that met three-fourths of Craig’s paradigm for leadership and counterterrorism.

Bush saliently demonstrated a commitment in the opening year of the war on terrorism. This translated to a salient resolve, the ability to employ diplomacy, and he certainly unleashed action in the form of American force all over the world in effort to target Al Qaeda.

 

The president made a critical mistake, unleashing the Iraq War, which undermined the war on terrorism, created unnecessary tension within the NATO alliance, shifted vital military and intelligence resources from Afghanistan to Iraq which created a power vacuum that ultimately assisted in the resurrection of the Taliban. What had become clear in the face of postwar problems in Iraq and internal strife within NATO, and the coalition against Al Qaeda, is the Bush administration lost the moral compass to effective prosecute the war on terrorism.

 

There are other issues that were repeatedly overlooked during the tense opposition to Iraq War: numerous victories over Al Qaeda were overshadowed, the vast and unprecedented creation of what the author refers to as “Bush’s counterterrorism infrastructure,” and a series of remarkable speeches that provided an extensive perspective on the administration’s strategy to confront the Al Qaeda threat.

In the intense and polarizing post-9/11 and post-Iraq War debates in the United States, another issue came to the fore: Bush failed to articulate the fourth variable—vision. Specifically, President Bush did not present an argument as to how to the war on terrorism or how define victory. Critics charged that a legacy of Bush’s stewardship of the war unleashed an endless and costly war.

President Barack H. Obama initially appeared to transform Bush’s counterterrorism infrastructure and many of the former president’s policies. However, it did not take long before President Obama appeared to have a change of heart and subsequently accelerated multiple aspects of Bush’s counterterrorism infrastructure. Specifically, Obama made extensive use of U.S. Special Operation Forces, unleashed domestic surveillance that critics charged threatened the liberties of American citizens, and he accelerated the Drone program which targeted mid-level and high value targets in the Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Shabab and other terrorism groups.

There are several dilemmas associated with President Obama’s counterterrorism approach—it was incoherent. Though the president made extensive use of drones and SOFs, critics questioned his resolve. That is, the deploy of drones and SOFs identified a major flaw—what many viewed as Obama’s aversion to use American ground forces.

The failure to confront the Islamic State during their infancy proved costly. Equally problematic, during meetings to create an anti-Islamic State counterterrorism strategy, President Obama and the Obamians collectively worked to prevent the deployment of major combat forces from confronting the Al Qaeda off-shoot. In time, critics charged President Obama’s anti-Islamic State counterterrorism strategy showed little signs of success and thus is viewed was ineffectual and lacking force components that could have quickly overwhelmed the forces of darkness and destroyed their fledgling caliphate.      

After internal and external pressure, President Obama agreed to a host of incremental changes that when collectively all but nullified his original counterterrorism strategy that was announced on September 14, 2014. Because of the incremental changes to the president’s counterterrorism strategy, beginning in late 2015 a host of coalition victories were won against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In 2016 a host of additional victories, further identified the counterterrorism strategy was working, but in the end, the changes were viewed as still insufficient to defeat the Islamic State.

Candidate Donald Trump targeted President Obama’s anti-ISIS counterterrorism strategy. Trump viewed the strategy as weak and demonstrated the failure of American leadership under Obama. Once in office, President Trump ordered the Pentagon to provide a new strategy to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

As mentioned in another blog post,[9] there are multiple variables that undergird Trump’s counterterrorism strategy.  The president intends to challenge the Islamic States ideology, challenge Al Qaeda and their affiliates, increase international counterterrorism cooperation (particularly from states in the Middle East and North Africa), rely on Bush’s counterterrorism infrastructure, introduce changes to immigration policy to protect the homeland from terrorism threats, and the creation and subsequent implementation of U.S. strategy to confront the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.[10]

There are critical aspects of President Trump’s counterterrorism strategy often overlooked. Those corollary strategies include secrecy, eliminating the Obama era restrictive rules of engagement (those that impacted airstrikes and use of SOFs) that handcuffed the ability of the military to confront the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Al Shabab [11], and AQAP, and a greater role for the military in decision making (the role that was dramatically reduced under Obama). 

Thus far, the Trump administration celebrated the collapse of the two central pillars (Iraq and Syria) of the Islamic States’ now global network of sanctuaries. In addition, among the positives, the administration is erasing the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan, increasing the pressure on AQAP, Al Shabab, and the Islamic States’ affiliate in Libya. 

Leadership through commitment is at level close to or succeeding that which existed under the Bush era. Similarly, the military is solidly behind the transformation of the war on terrorism thus far. Trump’s efforts have been significantly impacted through his selection of a former respected general officer James Mattis to lead the Pentagon’s revival.  

This early assessment indicates that Trump has succeeded in three of the four categories outlined earlier. The fourth component is problematic (one that haunted the Bush administration) is the failure to provide a sense of when the war on terrorism concludes.

Analysis 

Leadership at the level of the American President often emerges in the aftermath of a terrorist attack or terrorist incident that threatens U.S. security. That leadership however is too often reactionary and therefore rarely results in a comprehensive strategy. Instead, the strategies, which were created during periods of understandable emotion, never fully rose to the level of the threat. It is for this reason and others that covering the last six U.S. presidents, the terrorist threat continues to evolve. This is the most conspicuous evidence of ongoing failure of American leadership in confronting the terrorist threat.

In terms of leadership and its importance to counterterrorism, consider that there is little in the way of continuity between the strategies covering last four U.S. presidents. Is it any wonder why Islamic radicalism continues to expand around the world? There is another issue of equal important: hyperpartisanship invaded and undermined American foreign policy.

One need only examine the past global conflagration to understand the importance of bipartisanship and the struggle that ultimately produced the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissipation of the Cold War. Often forgotten there was one essential strategy that was commonplace among Democrats and Republicans in the long and often-difficult struggle against the Soviet’s: containment.

On the significance of containment, Tim Connors, writes, “Throughout most of the Cold War, Americans were united in our opposition to communism. The containment policy we adopted against the Soviet Union succeeded because presidents from Truman and Kennedy to Nixon and Reagan embraced it. Our current political and intellectual posture toward the issue of counterterrorism, however, indicates that the next terrorist attack may well do more to divide America than to unite it. That is not only disheartening, it is also dangerous.”[12] 

This post demonstrates that leadership, strategy, and counterterrorism are interrelated concepts that are critical if victory is to be achieved over transnational terrorism. On this point, Haynes articulates, “A lack of strong US leadership and counterterrorism strategy contributed to the successes of the new terrorism against US targets. It is through strong leadership and a solid counterterrorist strategy—using military response, preemption and disruption, rule of law, diplomacy and sanctions—that will restore fear, isolate, shape perceptions and use innovation against the new terrorism, allowing the US to prevail.”[13]