Biden needs a new counterterrorism approach in the era of great power competition

The U.S. military recently conducted a significant counterterrorism operation against a senior ISIS member named Bilal al-Sudani in a remote location in northwest Somalia.  That al-Sudani was targeted outside Iraq and Syria was notable, since that has been the area of relentless U.S. counterterrorism pressure with almost 700 ISIS members killed or captured in 2022 alone under President Biden, including former leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi in February 2022. Similar counterterrorism pressure resulted in the successful strike last August against former al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Despite these and other U.S. operations, counterterrorism seems to be receding further from national headlines and attention. There has already been a major thinning out of the U.S. military for counterterrorism in the aftermath of the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan in August 2021, with now only small troop footprints in locations like Syria, Iraq and Somalia. 

In large part due to the U.S. military’s shift to great power competition and other national priorities (encapsulated first with the Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy and further reinforced by Biden’s strategy last October), counterterrorism will face further pressure to get leaner, more flexible and less reliant on the budgeting largesse of the post-9/11 era.

Counterterrorism going forward will involve small U.S. military teams backstopped by intelligence, surveillance and airstrike capabilities, and cultivated partnerships with local units (like Danab in Somalia or the Counterterrorism Service in Iraq) that will likely conduct the large majority of counterterrorism operations. 

A catchphrase from previous years was a ”by, with and through model” of counterterrorism, of which the campaign against ISIS during the mid-2010s seemed to encapsulate with significant effect, contrasted with the large concentrations of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan the previous decade. The Biden counterterrorism approach seems to have taken this “counterterrorism light” model even further given the number of unilateral operations the past two years. 

A significant feature of recent operations, whether in Iraq and Syria or now Somalia, is the use of ground raids instead of airstrikes. They have most likely been approved to minimize civilian casualties, capture targets if possible and gather valuable intelligence and information that can help further deepen understanding of jihadist financial and logistical networks and possible attack plots under development. The Pentagon’s new emphasis on civilian casualties will be another key factor that shapes the future trajectory of U.S. counterterrorism.

One thing absent from the policy discussion is the Biden administration’s lack of a counterterrorism strategy. Even the 2022 National Security Strategy was light on details outlining the administration’s approach. The last published counterterrorism strategy was from the Trump administration in 2018, of which I helped conceptualize in earlier iterations with colleagues during my year at the National Security Council. 

Since that time, the national security landscape has shifted, as evidenced by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, rising tensions with China, the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenges. 

A new strategy on counterterrorism must describe in broad strokes the ways in which the U.S. will design and implement an enduring framework against international terrorist threats like ISIS and al Qaeda in 2023 and beyond. By doing so, a new strategy should help Congress in its budgeting and resourcing decisions — and the military and national security enterprise in making the hard choices about shifting resources and capabilities. 

Javed Ali is an associate professor of practice at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. He has over 20 years professional experience on national security issues, including senior roles at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and National Security Council.