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The National Strategy for Combating Terrorism
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To support this defense-in-depth framework, the "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism," a 30-page interagency document, was released by the White House on February 14, 2003. The National Strategy for Combating Terrorism is designed to complement other elements of the National Security Strategy, including sub-strategies for homeland security, weapons of mass destruction, cyberspace, critical infrastructure protection, and drug control. While the National Strategy for Homeland Security focuses on preventing terrorist attacks within the United States, the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism focuses on identifying and defusing threats before they reach U.S. borders. President Bush, in his comments accompanying release of the strategy, has stressed that all instruments of U.S. national power are being called upon to take the fight to the terrorists themselves.
While preemption and military force remain important components, the strategy recognizes that the war on terror will not be won on the military battlefield and gives strong policy emphasis to strategic long-term policy components such as law enforcement, public information campaigns, and economic development. Earlier draft versions of the strategy had placed even heavier emphasis on international law enforcement cooperation as a policy pillar.
The strategy details a desired end-state where the scope and capabilities of global terrorist organizations are downscaled to the extent that they become localized, unorganized, unsponsored, and rare enough that they can be almost exclusively dealt with by criminal law enforcement. To accomplish this mission, emphasis is placed on international action by working with the willing, enabling the weak, persuading the reluctant, and compelling the unwilling. One outcome of the strategy is that economic development is formally enumerated as an important factor in reducing conditions that terrorists exploit. Arguably, the strategy also raises the priority of using information programs to delegitimize terrorism.
Strategy Elements
The intent of the strategy is to stop terrorist attacks against the United States, its citizens, its interests, and U.S. friends and allies around the world. Creation of an international environment inhospitable to terrorists and their supporters is sought. The administration's National Strategy for Combating Terrorism is founded on four pillars - defeating, denying, diminishing and defending to be simultaneously on four fronts, i.e.:
· Defeating terrorists together with U.S. allies by attacking their
sanctuaries; leadership; command, control, and communications; material support; and finances. Components include: (1) identifying and locating terrorists by making optimal use of all intelligence sources, foreign and U.S., and (2) destroying terrorists and their organizations by capture and detention, use of military power, and through employment of specialized intelligence resources, as well as international cooperation to curb terrorist funding;
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· Denying terrorists sponsorship, support, and sanctuary/safe havens. A central strategy objective is to ensure that other states take action against such elements within their sovereign territory. Elements include:
(1) tailoring strategies to induce individual state sponsors of terrorism to change policies;
(2) promoting international standards for combating terrorism;
(3) eliminating sanctuaries; and
(4) interdicting ten-orist ground, air, maritime, and cyber traffic, in order to deny terrorists access to arms, financing, information, WMD materials, sensitive technology, recruits, and funding from illicit drug activities;
· Diminishing underlying conditions that terrorists exploit, by fostering economic, social, and political development, market-based economies, good governance, and the rule of law. Emphasis includes: (1) partnering with the international community to alleviate conditions leading to failed states that breed terrorism; and (2) using public information initiatives to delegitimize terrorism; and
· Defending U.S. citizens and interests at home and abroad to include protection of physical and cyber infrastructures.
Inherent in these Four Pillars are the Following Components:
Intelligence component. A policy of preemption requires sound intelligence. The United States is currently involved in implementing measures designed to better merge domestic with foreign intelligence; law enforcement intelligence with national security intelligence.
Increasingly, U.S. counter-terrorism strategy incorporates a law enforcement component, subject however to restrictions found in the Posse Comitatus Act and reaffirmed in the Homeland Security Act which prohibit involvement of the military in domestic law enforcement. Central to the new National Strategy for Combating Terrorism is law enforcement cooperation. For example, since September 11, 2001, the FBI has initiated cooperative programs with Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia aimed at apprehending suspected terrorists and has shared expertise and technology with the law enforcement agencies of these nations.
U.S. counterterrorism policy also has a strong economic component with both defensive and pre-emptive characteristics. On the defensive side of this economic component, much attention is being given to minimize disruption of the American economy by terrorists by protecting economic infrastructures. A major function of the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] is to assess the vulnerability of critical infrastructures. Supporting such efforts is a growing use of risk analysis and threat matrixes.
On the preemptive side of the economic component, the Bush Administration has proposed a Millennium Challenge Account which would increase foreign economic assistance starting in fiscal year 2004 to a level which would be five billion dollars [$5,000 million] higher by fiscal year 2006. Currently, U.S. economic aid worldwide totals $12.87 billion [$12,870 million]. Aid would go to countries that have demonstrated sound development practices and over time the new aid would be limited to countries with a per capita annual income of less than $2,975.
Also evident is a growing counter-drug component. In the wake of the events of September 11th, the international community has placed emphasis on curbing financing of terrorists groups, and has dramatically enhanced efforts to limit and seize sources of terrorist funding. This has spawned renewed focus on the narcotics trade as a source of funding for such groups. Even in instances where groups do not actively work together, the synergy of their separate operations and shared efforts at destabilization pose an increasing threat.
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And of course, there is a military component. This military component is reflected in the war in Iraq; U.S. operations in Afghanistan; deployment of U.S. forces around the Horn of Africa, to Djibouti, and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia; and ongoing military exercises in Colombia. President Bush has expressed a willingness to provide military aid to "governments everywhere" in the figh against terrorism. The U.S. is also undergoing a shift in overseas base locations to tactically support a more flexible strategy allowing for extended global military reach.
On the home front, U.S. policy increasingly has a homeland security focus. The newly created Department of Homeland Security is the biggest reorganization of the federal government in America's history, incorporating 22 government agencies and some 179,000 people into a single organization charged with coordinating the nation's domestic response to terrorism. The budget of the new department is roughly equal in amount to ten percent of the nation's defense budget. For fiscal year 2003, 44 percent of federal law enforcement positions and 48 percent of federal law enforcement funding have been transferred to DHS.
Central to the U.S. government approach to combating terrorism is the issue of counter-proliferation with a strong emphasis on proactive counter-missile technology proliferation. In the words of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in his June 11, 2003, address to the Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany:
"If we are to deal with these new dangers, we need new tools of international cooperation, including new authorities to prevent - and, if necessary, interdict - the import, the export and the transshipment of weapons of mass destruction, ballistic missiles, and WMD-related materials from and between and to terrorist states. We also need to strengthen existing mechanisms for international security cooperation.
"We are working to transform our Department of Defense in the United States. And we are also working with our allies to help transform NATO from a 20th-century defensive alliance, into a 21st-century alliance capable of projecting power out of area, with leaner command structures, and a rapid response force that can deploy in days instead of months."
In a speech in Krakow, Poland, on May 31, 2003, President Bush proposed a Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) aimed at keeping WMD materials out of the hands of terrorists and rogue nations. Germany was one of eleven nations participating in a June 12, 2003, follow-up meeting in Madrid interested in changing international law to stop the spread such weapons.
Legislation is also currently pending in the U.S. Congress - the Missile Threat Reduction Act of 2003 [HR 1950], which calls for a U.S.-led effort to seek a binding international instrument to restrict the trade of offensive ballistic missiles. Also called for is United States' sponsorship of a U.N. Security Council Resolution prohibiting U.N. members from "purchasing, receiving, assisting or allowing transfer of missile or missile-related equipment and technology from North Korea, and which would permit interdiction, seizure, or impoundment of North Korean missiles or related technology and equipment.
Conclusion
The administration's National Strategy for Combating Terrorism continues to emphasize President Bush's counterterrorism doctrine of preemptive deterrence. In what some interpret as an important policy declaration, the strategy links the goals of promoting economic development to those of reducing conditions that terrorists exploit. The degree to which funding will be committed to support this policy is yet to be determined, but if implemented, a policy adopting economic development linkages could have far-reaching implications on the structure and implementation of U.S. foreign aid programs, and possibly U.S. partnership support for multilateral assistance initiatives. Moreover, a law enforcement-focused approach, as envisioned by the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, could be seen as less controversial by potential coalition members, and may lead to increased support for the administration's counter-terror policy.
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