You Don’t Win Hearts and Minds, You Rent Them – Reigniting Sunni Tribes Against ISIS
In 2008, Americans lauded the great success of ‘The Surge’ – implementation of broad new counterinsurgency doctrine that “Won...
A Nation Must Think Before it Acts
You Don’t Win Hearts and Minds, You Rent Them – Reigniting Sunni Tribes Against ISIS
A nation must think before it acts.
Middle East Program
Al Qaeda versus ISIS: In the campaign for jihad’s top slot, Yemen is a swing state.
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) rise began in the summer of 2013 but became fully evident...
“Why Don’t We Go After Assad in Syria First?” – Thoughts on Countering ISIS Part 4
(Editor’s Note: This blog post is derived from Clint Watts’ Ginsburg Lecture delivered at the National Liberty Museum on September 16, 2014.)...
Seven Flaws In the U.S. Strategy to Counter ISIS
(Editor’s Note: This blog post is derived from Clint Watts’ Ginsburg Lecture delivered at the National Liberty Museum on September 16,...
The U.S. Can’t Destroy ISIS, Only ISIS Can Destroy ISIS – The Unfortunate Merits of the “Let Them Rot” Strategy
During the early 1990s the Algerian government fought one of the nastiest civil wars in recent history against a...
Potential Implications of U.S. killing al Shabaab’s Leader In Somalia – Ahmed Godane
Yesterday, after a long pause in overt counterterrorism in Somalia, the U.S. launched a drone strike near Barawe aimed at...
Why would the U.S. want to be ISIS’s ‘Far Enemy’?
For Osama Bin Laden, the calculation to attack the U.S. seemed simple. To topple apostate regimes throughout the Middle...
Arts, Culture, Geopolitics: FX’s Tyrant
It seems like the events of September 11th, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Arab Spring have...
How does the U.S. counter al Qaeda while al Qaeda fights itself?
(This is the fifth and final installment of the “Smarter Counterterrorism” series. See Part 1 here, Part 2 here,...
Would jihad’s new generation kill off al-Qaeda’s global leader Ayman al-Zawahiri?
In November of 1989, a car passed through a street in Peshawar, Pakistan only to be demolished by a...