A Critical Assessment of the US National Strategy for Counterterrorism: A Missed Opportunity?

The National Strategy for Counterterrorism is a wide-ranging review of the challenges that currently face the US in its decade-long campaign against al-Qaeda. It is upbeat in tone after the death of Osama Bin Laden. However, the detailed descriptions of the nine theatres of counterterrorist operations across the world in which America is engaged are less optimistic. Critically, for the first time in a National Counterterrorism Strategy document, one of those theatres considered is the US Homeland itself. Faced with this new threat, America urgently requires a national domestic counterterrorism doctrine which can effectively unite the global reach of its counterterrorist intelligence community with the detailed domain awareness of its law-enforcement agencies. In addition, the White House also recently published a counter-radicalisation strategy, titled ‘Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States’. However, this fails to offer much practical advice to the government’s State and local partners. Consequently, America still needs a comprehensive inter-agency counter-radicalisation policy to address al-Qaeda’s effective efforts ‘on line’ to recruit American Muslim youths to their cause.