--- title: America’s Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing description: Our tactics produce more dangerous, more committed extremists. canonical: https://time.com/3676321/americas-counter-terrorism-policy-is-failing/ author: David Sedney article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-21T17:16:39.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:02.747Z article:section: Ideas og:title: America’s Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing og:description: Our tactics produce more dangerous, more committed extremists og:url: https://time.com/3676321/americas-counter-terrorism-policy-is-failing/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: America’s Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing twitter:description: Our tactics produce more dangerous, more committed extremists twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # America's Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=2c411bd7-0ba0-4245-8ff0-6e5769a73010&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Global Risks You Should Care About Right Now [Watch (HLS stream): Global Risks You Should Care About Right Now](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/PqXWqYtA.m3u8) (4:20)  _Published 2015-01-13. A yearly look ahead about what you should—and shouldn’t—worry about in the geopolitical and economic landscape for 2015_ by [David Sedney](https://time.com/author/david-sedney/) ## David Sedney Jan 21, 2015 5:16 PM UTC by [David Sedney](https://time.com/author/david-sedney/) ## David Sedney Jan 21, 2015 5:16 PM UTC The U.S. approach to countering violent extremism is failing badly. Our current “light footprint,” counter-terrorism approach, posits that a combination of precisely targeted drone strikes, U.S. special forces raids, and training small, elite units of local forces can kill enough of the extremists’ “core” leadership to render those groups incapable. But, there has never been a strategy behind this hope, never an articulated theory of the case to explain where we were headed. These methods have, for limited periods, degraded extremists’ capabilities. But, today it is clear they are fundamentally flawed and severely counter-productive. Rather than reducing threats, our tactics produce more dangerous, more committed extremists. The crucible of the pressures we have created has not destroyed the extremists, instead it has evolved them into more virulent forms. Our singular focus on killing, without any serious attempt to ameliorate basic societal problems — and the absence of a moral core for our actions — have led huge swathes of the world to see us as the evil doers. Extremists today seek revenge for those we have killed, to punish us for abuses they suffer, and to end our support for abusive, corrupt rulers. The shape of the new world we are creating can be seen in the _Charlie Hebdo_ attack, the growing Islamic State, the rampaging Boko Haram, the fractured, chaotic Yemen that features two radical groups that both hate the U.S., and the Taliban who massacre school children. Rather than a safer international environment with decreasing terrorism, terror attacks are at an all-time high and increasing. Two organizations — Al Qaeda and the Islamic State — are competing for adherents through escalating public brutality. And it is working: New believers are flocking to their banners; they control serious chunks of territory in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya, and Yemen; they aim for a caliphate that rules from Myanmar to the Mediterranean; and they are quite clear that they will use violence to control us and our societies. The attacks in France, plots in Belgium, and threats to Japan of the past two weeks are only a harbinger of what is coming. How did we get here? Weren’t the wars supposed to be over? Didn’t we “degrade and destroy” core Al Qaeda? Aren’t we chasing the Islamic State to the “gates of hell”? Sadly, but understandably, for the the last 12 years, U.S. administrations have been unwilling and unable to acknowledge that we face larger problems than any individual terror attack or group. The causes of violent Islamic extremism run deeper and the way forward requires more than killing, more than bombing and invading counties as the Bush administration did, more than the drones and special ops the Obama administration favors. The causes for the multiple state and societal failures in the greater Middle East are complex, ranging from the absence of economic opportunity, to rigid social structures, and to authoritarian rule that cloaks itself in Islam, but at its core is a simple lust for power. Our instincts have been to try and ignore and isolate these problems, hoping that some sort of internal evolution will occur before these problems become ours. Unfortunately, the evidence is that these hopes are not realistic and the future is headed for worse. One little remarked upon commonality of Presidents Bush and Obama is their hostility to what they called nation building — a long-term commitment to fixing countries not by remaking them in our image but by helping them along paths that emerge from their own realities. This is hard, expensive, and takes a very long time. Can it work? We can point with pride to our help to post-WWII Germany and Japan, to Europe in the Marshall plan, to Korea and Taiwan as examples that prove such endeavors can succeed. We can also point to failures such as Haiti, where we have applied fewer resources, with less skill and less adaptability to indigenous factors, as examples that prove we can get it wrong. There is no good news here. We have tried the “easy” answers. They haven’t worked. Instead, they have costs tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Our surges and partial counter insurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan never had our full commitment. We were only partly at war. Similarly, today our counter-terrorism approach and the killings it requires are understood by few Americans. The public sees it all as some sort of action movie. The reality is that a light footprint only produces light, transitory results — but that reality is ignored. Where does that leave us? Faced with horrific attacks by extremists bent on creating a new reality with no place for our model of a liberal, secular world based on mutual respect for differences, what do we need? Leadership. Leaders who will explain just how tough the choices are and how high the stakes. Leaders who have the breadth of vision to understand that there are no quick, easy fixes. We need leaders ready to admit that we can’t kill our way out of the extremist problem. The application of force without a commitment to justice is neither effective nor worthy of the America we want to be. ## Transcript [00:00] [ MUSIC ] [00:05] The global economy has four engines, US Europe, Japan, [00:10] China / Emerging Markets. Of these four engines, the only [00:12] one that was really humming along fine. Is probably US [00:16] slash United Kingdom, Canada. Euro zone is stalling. [00:19] They're one step away from deflation and other recession. [00:23] China is slowing down. Other emerging markets are [00:26] slowing down. So the, one of the [ UNKNOWN ] question is [00:29] will the US be able to decouple from the rest of the world. In [00:32] a world in which actually other country are slowing down, [00:34] the dollar is becoming stronger and so on. So far looks like [00:37] yes. But if the shocks from the rest of the world would [00:40] become worse. Then when have to ask the question [00:42] whether that's gonna have an impact on the United States. [00:46] [ MUSIC ] The US is absolutely becoming much more [00:49] unilateral. In 2015 I think is the first year. Where we really [00:54] are starting to see the United States employ really so [00:58] much more of the 21st century tools [01:03] of national security to get what America wants. It's not [01:06] boots on the ground. That sounds almost quaint. And [01:09] everybody opposes these days, it's drones, it's [01:13] surveillance, and access to US markets as both a carrot [01:16] and a stick, what I call the weaponization of finance. The [01:20] United States is saying a lot more, hey, Afghanistan, [01:24] Iraq. Speaker: [ MUSIC ] Syria. We know you have serious [01:27] problems. But those problems are gonna be resolved, first [01:29] and foremost, by you, on the ground. Not by the United [01:32] States. [ MUSIC ] Speaker: I wanna [01:37] ask you about your thoughts in the Middle East, and [01:40] sectarian conflict. And where are we in this curve? I mean, [01:43] are we at the apex of ISIS? Are we, are things going to get [01:47] better, are they gonna get worse? Speaker: I think we are [01:49] at the apex. Of the Islamic state and its [01:53] capacities in Iraq and even Syria. I think the [01:57] amount of international effort militarily being deployed [02:00] against them supported by, military on the ground from [02:05] the Syrian government, Syrian Army as well as from the [02:07] Kurds and from the Iraqi government absolutely is turning [02:11] the tide. Won't wipe them out. Taking them out of Mosul I [02:15] don't see happening for maybe years. But generally [02:18] speaking I don't think that they're they're not going they're [02:20] not gonna have something that really looks like an [02:23] effective state anytime [02:27] soon. The downside in Russia might be the biggest [02:31] surprise. US policy towards Russia is really oriented [02:35] towards not punishing the Russian people but punishing [02:37] Putin. It's going after the oligarchs that are around him. It's [02:40] trying to change his behavior by undermining his support. [02:42] He understands that. He calls it regime change. He will hit [02:45] back. The United States historically has not had to pay [02:48] attention to people that we didn't like, because if we [02:50] punished them and they didn't like it, they couldn't do much [02:52] to damage us. That's changing. And I absolutely worry [02:56] about a major Russian cyber attack against let's say an [02:59] American financial institution. I absolutely worry about an [03:02] accident or a European commercial airliner over European [03:05] air space. And a Russian military jet. Those kinds of things [03:08] I think in 2015 are becoming a very live concern. [03:14] Xi Jinping leader of China is consolidating power and [03:18] there's a couple of story lines about what this means. One [03:22] is that he's the new Deng and this is all part of this sort of [03:25] greater strategy to. Take China through the next wave of [03:28] reforms that it needs to make the jump to a middle income [03:31] country. The other story line is that he's Mao. And [03:35] it's interesting. [ LAUGH ] That you know, the, there is [03:37] Maoist rhetoric emerging in China right now. Which is he, [03:41] and what does it mean for the Chinese economy, [03:44] [ INAUDIBLE ]? well, my view as a combination of both I, I [03:47] think on China, there's two extreme views. Either there's [03:50] gonna be a soft landing, 7 % plus growth, or 3 % growth [03:53] and hard landing. I think it's gonna be something between [03:56] because he's gonna have to do reforms. But because of [03:58] the political constraints, the reform are gonna be more [04:01] slowly. Than is desirable and optimal, and eventually there [04:04] will be a slow down of growth in China. Consequences of [04:06] now the second largest, or maybe the first largest, [04:09] economy in the world slowing down to 5 1 / 2 % is gonna [04:12] be significant, for China, for Asia, for commodity exporters, [04:16] for the global economy. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3676321/americas-counter-terrorism-policy-is-failing/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3676321/americas-counter-terrorism-policy-is-failing/"},"headline":"America's Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing","datePublished":"2015-01-21T17:16:39.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:00:02.747Z","description":"Our tactics produce more dangerous, more committed extremists","url":"https://time.com/3676321/americas-counter-terrorism-policy-is-failing/","keywords":["foreign affairs"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"David Sedney","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/david-sedney/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/tag/foreign-affairs/","name":"foreign affairs"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3676321/americas-counter-terrorism-policy-is-failing/","name":"America's Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Global Risks You Should Care About Right Now","description":"A yearly look ahead about what you should—and shouldn’t—worry about in the geopolitical and economic landscape for 2015","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/PqXWqYtA/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-01-13T22:16:32.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/PqXWqYtA.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3676321/americas-counter-terrorism-policy-is-failing/","duration":"PT4M20S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3676321/americas-counter-terrorism-policy-is-failing/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```