How US Counterterrorism Thwarts Al-Qaida’s Grand Strategy

• In Event: Forms of Foreign Intervention and its Consequences

Abstract

Many scholars and practitioners have long argued that the modern counterterrorism model – drones, surveillance, special operations forces, and local partner help – works to the advantage of America’s Islamist adversaries like Al-Qaida. These skeptics routinely note that the counterterrorism strategy enables Al-Qaida and its affiliates in spreading their ideology and to proliferate in size.

This article challenges such perspectives in two ways. First, I argue that not only is the premise of such claims contestable but they also fail to recognize the grand strategy of America's main Islamist adversary, Al-Qaida, sees limited value of spreading ideology and expansion in the mere size of jihadi affiliates. Instead, Al-Qaida’s long-held grand strategy seeks American downfall by luring and entangling it in costly small wars and conflicts. The strategy of entanglement has three sub-goals: bleed, exhaust, and embarrass the United States. I find evidence of these goals from testimonies, oral histories, and newly obtained internal documents on Al-Qaida’s strategic planning from the pre- and post-9/11 period.

Second, I show that among the main strategies the US government has pursued against Al-Qaida, the modern counterterrorism strategy has been most effective at denying Al-Qaida goals key to its grand strategy. Post 9/11, the US government enabled Al-Qaida’s grand strategy by invading Afghanistan and Iraq. In the next phase, America's adoption of manpower-intensive counterinsurgency doctrine allowed Al-Qaida to bleed, exhaust, and embarrass the US. But following 2008, the embrace of the modern counterterrorism model in general and drone warfare in particular reversed this trend. The US substantially degraded Al-Qaida while incurring limited causalities, at a relatively low economic cost, and fewer embarrassing visuals of the US militarily pinned down by Al-Qaida and its affiliates. All of these gains directly undermined Al-Qaida’s grand strategy, and continue to do so to this day.

This article informs debates on US strategies in the post 9/11 period. It shows that contrary to popular skepticism of drones and related counterterrorism instruments as mere tactical tools, the modern counterterrorism model allows the US government to thwart Al-Qaida’s grand strategy.

Author

• Asfandyar Ali Mir, Stanford University