A draft of
President Donald Trump's new counterterrorism strategy demands that U.S. allies
shoulder more of the burden in combating Islamist militants, while
acknowledging that the threat of terrorism will never be totally eliminated.
The 11-page
draft, seen on Friday by Reuters, said the United States should avoid costly,
"open-ended" military commitments.
"We
need to intensify operations against global jihadist groups while also reducing
the costs of American 'blood and treasure' in pursuit of our counterterrorism
goals," states the document, which is expected to be released in coming
months.
"We
will seek to avoid costly, large-scale U.S. military interventions to achieve
counterterrorism objectives and will increasingly look to partners to share the
responsibility for countering terrorist groups," it says.
However, it
acknowledges that terrorism "cannot be defeated with any sort of
finality."
Michael
Anton, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said, "As
part of its overall approach, the administration is taking a fresh look at the
entire U.S. national security strategy, to include the counterterrorism mission
- which is especially important since no such strategy has been produced
publicly since 2011."
The process
is aimed at ensuring "the new strategy is directed against the pre-eminent
terrorist threats to our nation, our citizens, our interests overseas and
allies," Anton said. "Moreover, this new strategy will highlight
achievable and realistic goals, and guiding principles."
Combating
Islamic extremism was a major issue for Trump during the 2016 presidential
campaign. The draft strategy paper, which officials said was still being
fine-tuned at the White House, describes the threat from Islamic militant
groups in stark tones.
It remains
to be seen how Trump can square his goal of avoiding military interventions
with ongoing conflicts involving U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen
and elsewhere.
Rather than
scale back U.S. commitments, he has so far largely adhered to former Obama
administration plans to intensify military operations against militant groups
and granted the Pentagon greater authority to strike them in places like Yemen
and Somalia.
Trump may
soon reverse years of Obama-ordered drawdowns in Afghanistan. His
administration is now considering boosting by 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers the
8,400-strong U.S. contingent helping Afghan forces fight a resurgent Taliban,
current and former U.S. officials say.
A senior
administration official noted that only a small number of troops have been
added to U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria under Trump, at the discretion of his
military commanders.
"If you
do see additions elsewhere, they will be in keeping with this (draft)
strategy," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The
increased pace of U.S. military operations has seen a recent spate of American
casualties. The latest came in Somalia, where a Navy SEAL died and two others
were wounded in an attack by al Shabaab militants, U.S. officials said on
Friday.
Since
President Barack Obama released the last U.S. counterterrorism strategy in 2011
before the emergence of Islamic State, the threat has "diversified in
size, scope and complexity from what we faced just a few years ago," the
draft strategy said.
In addition
to Islamic State, the United States and its allies are endangered by a
reconstituted al Qaeda, groups such as the Haqqani network and Hezbollah, as
well as from homegrown extremists radicalized online, it said.
Bruce
Hoffman, director of Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies and
who reviewed the document at Reuters' request, said the draft strategy
"paints - and I think accurately - a more dire picture" of the threat
than the Obama document, which sounded a "triumphalist" tone
following al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's death in a 2011 U.S. raid in
Pakistan.
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PHRASE
The senior
administration official said the document describing an overarching
counterterrorism approach is separate from a detailed strategy to defeat
Islamic State that Trump also has ordered.
The draft
strategy seen by Reuters appears to flow from Trump's "America First"
foreign policy calling for foreign aid cuts and more burden-sharing by allies
and alliances such as NATO.
It does not
include a signature phrase from Trump's 2016 campaign, "radical Islamic
terrorism." Instead, it says that jihadist groups "have merged under
a global jihadist ideology that seeks to establish a transnational Islamic
caliphate that fosters conflict on a global scale."
The draft's
first guiding principle is that the United States "will always act to
disrupt, prevent and respond to terrorist attacks against our nation, our
citizens, our interests overseas and our allies. This includes taking direct
and unilateral action, if necessary."
The
administration would boost U.S. homeland security by working with allies and
partners to eliminate terrorist leaders, "ideologues, technical experts,
financiers, external operators and battlefield commanders."
The draft
also calls for denying militants physical and online sanctuaries in which to
plan and launch attacks and "degrade their efforts to develop and
deploy" chemical and biological weapons.
Yet it
provides few details on how the United States, which has led global
counterterrorism efforts since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, can achieve those
goals by passing more of the burden to other countries, many of which lack the
requisite military and intelligence capabilities.
The draft
makes little mention of promoting human rights, development, good governance
and other "soft power" tools that Washington has embraced in the past
to help foreign governments reduce grievances that feed extremism.
In contrast,
the Obama counterterrorism strategy made "respecting human rights,
fostering good governance, respecting privacy and civil liberties, committing
to security and transparency and upholding the rule of law" the foremost
of its guiding principles.
"Soft
power has a role to play, but not to the exclusion of kinetics," or
military action, said Hoffman. He called the draft "a very sober depiction
of the threat and what is needed now and in the immediate future to counter
it."
*REUTERS*
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