Fighting Ideologies: Lessons Learned From The War On Terror And Their Application To Strategic Competition – Analysis

Introduction

The United States along with its allies and partners devoted critical time and energy to countering the ideology of al Qaeda (AQ) and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) as part of a comprehensive strategy to defeat these groups in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). These ideologies, which were part of a larger interpretation of Islam called Jihadi Salafism, formed a critical warfighting capability for these terrorist groups that explained what was wrong with the world and who was to blame for it, an ideal state for how the world ought to be, and how to get there.

Today, the United States and its allies face threats posed by strategic state competitors, especially Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. While considerable focus has been placed on these countries’ military capabilities, including their nuclear ambitions, considerably less attention has been paid to understanding and fighting their ideologies. As with AQ, ISIS, and other Salafi Jihadis, ideology plays a critical role in the warfighting capabilities of our strategic competitors, and we should be actively taking measures to undermine their ideology.

Some (but not all) of the lessons learned from countering Jihadi Salafism have application to today’s fight against our strategic adversaries. Most importantly, we need to understand ideology as a warfighting capability and consider how our actions uphold or undermine these ideologies. Additionally, we need to fight both the military capacity and the ideology of our adversaries in a synergistic way where both are undermined simultaneously. And, while doing this, we need to be careful of increased apocalypticism in our adversaries’ ideologies, which could signal a willingness to use weapons of mass destruction.

Ideology as a Warfighting Capability

It is important to first understand the critical role that ideology plays in conflict of any shape and size. Ideologies are an important warfighting capability because they offer an overarching narrative that explains the current state of the world we live in, who is to blame for the suffering and injustice people face, and why violence is needed to right these wrongs. Ideologies perform several important functions in times of prolonged conflict. First, they encourage recruitment and retention of those supporting the fight; in fact, one could argue that since the birth of the levée en masse, ideologies have been necessary for encouraging recruitment of mass armies and sustaining their numbers. This is also true of creating and sustaining a fighting force for nonstate actors. Second, ideologies provide leaders and followers with a “cause” that they can point back to during military setbacks and provide hope that the fight is not in vain. Powerful ideologies also situate setbacks within a wider context of victory, which may not happen in this lifetime, but will occur. The most powerful ideologies explain failures and setbacks as actual successes in the grand scenario and a better world for which individuals and groups are fighting.

When considering ideology as a warfighting capability, one useful definition includes three subparts: a critique for how the world currently is, a set of beliefs for how the world ought to be, and a course of action for realizing that world. Each of these subcomponents provides opportunities to both understand the messaging of the adversary and create possible countermeasures to their worldview.

Critique of the current world

Critiquing the current state of the world is arguably the most important component of an ideology because it identifies the problem, explains how things came to be this way, and assigns blame for the situation people find themselves in. Critically, assigning blame also offers a target to channel one’s outrage and to begin to address the problem. The critique, in other words, draws the battle lines between “us” and “them” and explains who needs to be targeted and why.

This part of an ideology, if constructed well, should be able to sustain minor setbacks to the war and be broad enough to absorb specific inconsistencies in facts and circumstances. It should be able to draw the widest number of supporters within the population it seeks to mobilize. As counterinsurgency expert David Galula famously noted in Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, it is easier to get people to agree to be against something than to be for something. Most powerful ideologies, therefore, provide details on the problem but are more abstract on the solution (see below).

Finally, powerful ideologies do a good job explaining the problem with history, culture, identity, religion, and other tools that personalize and emotionalize the struggle. The threat is not some distant, abstract problem, but it is here and now, and deeply personal. It requires both an individual and a collective response to defeat the threat.

How the world ought to be

As stated above, powerful ideologies provide more detail on their critique of the world, including especially who is to blame, than on the solution. Typically, a description of how the world ought to be is aspirational; it is light on details because specifics can divide people and therefore undermine active and passive support. The Islamic State, the Caliphate, the Worker’s Utopia, the Empire of the Sun, the Reich: these are all examples of ideal states that, while thin on details of the end state they were seeking, drew broad support from their target populations.

The course of action

The course of action in an ideology, like the solution, is usually broad and philosophical. It is more abstract than a specific strategy for what to do. Three approaches are particularly important for the types of political ideologies we face today: violent (including but not limited to the use of terrorism), nonviolent, and apocalyptic, which calls for the figurative destruction of the world as we know it with the hope of ushering in a new, better world in its place (the solution).

Examples of each of these courses of action abound. Karl Marx’s articulation of the communist revolutionargued that the capitalist system could only be changed through violence; the system and the people that upheld it had to be destroyed by force rather than reformed. Mahatma Gandhi stated the only way to end colonialization in India was through non-violent activism against the British; this was the philosophical underpinning of the “Quit India” movement. One strain of White supremacism aims to foment a racial holy war “RAHOWA” with the goal of ridding the world of people of color, who bear the stain of the sins of Cain, and to usher in a new, better, racially pure world in its place.

It is important to note that broad ideologies can support different courses of action to arrive at how the world ought to be. Salafism, as an ideological interpretation of Islam, supports a peaceful movement and a political approach, as well as a violent incarnation. These different approaches to realizing their ideal state provide opportunities for countermeasures that can exploit these ideological disagreements.

Salafi Jihadi Ideology of AQ and ISIS

Salafism is not a new ideology. Most scholars trace this interpretation of Islam back to the 19th century and include ideologues such as the Saudi ‘Abd al-Wahhāb and Egyptian scholar Sayyid Qutb. Salafism as an ideology offers a compelling critique of the current state of the world, claiming that society is in rapid decline, which is evident by the number of wars, social unrest, moral decay, and overall suffering in the world. One strain of Salafism purports that the world is in the end of times and draws on apocalyptic expectations outlined in the Qur’an, the Sunna, Hadith, and other sources as evidence that the end is near, including natural and manmade disasters.

Salafism identifies two broad causes of the world’s rapid decline. The first and most important culprit is failed Muslim leadership, including the Ulama, or Muslim scholars, who have relied on past interpretations and rulings in Islam, instead of the words of the Qur’an and the example of the Prophet Muhammed to guide the community. This approach has led not only the Ulama off the true path of Islam but also society and has led to confusion and disunity in the umma, which is the worldwide Muslim community. Muslim rulers have contributed to the umma’s downfall by supporting and upholding these false teachings.

The second cause of decline is the presence and influence of the West, which includes its actual colonization of much of the Muslim world, its support of the state of Israel, and its introduction of Western secularism and democracy, ideas that have led Muslims away from God’s rule. Western social influences in the Muslim world, including Western education, feminism, and homosexuality, have further led to its downfall. The Muslim world has fallen into a state of Jahiliya, ignorance, from the examples set by the West and by Muslims leaders who blindly follow these bankrupt and corrupt ideas.

The solution to these problems is a return to the right path of Islam as articulated in the Qur’an and the example of the Prophet Muhammed, and to turn away from bid’ah, or any religious innovation, as well as Western ideas. Salafis further emphasize the need to recognize the indivisibility of God, or tawhid, in all aspects of life. Returning to the pure path of Islam will end divisions among Muslims, including Shia and Sunnis, and unify the umma. Ultimately, returning to what they believe is the pure path of Islam as articulated by the Qur’an and exemplified by the Prophet Muhammed’s life and the purification of the dar al Islam, the land and people connected to the faith, from foreign influence will create the conditions for the end of times, with a new world of justice and peace emerging in its place.

Importantly, Salafism as an ideology is not de facto violent. According to Quintan Wictorowicz, Salafis fall into three categories of actors to realize their ideal state: what he calls nonviolent purists, politicos (those that aim to work through the state to realize Salafi goals), and jihadists, or those who see violence as the necessary path to realizing their utopic goals.

Clearly, AQ and ISIS are proponents of the jihadi course of action for realizing Salafi ideology. Both movements see violence and shedding blood as necessary for realizing a unified umma, free of internal corruption and external influence, adhering to the oneness of God. Both groups also see the return of the Caliphate, the one right ruler, to the dar al Islam as a necessary state for returning Islam to the right path.

Despite these similarities, ISIS and AQ also have some important differences. ISIS is deeply apocalyptic in its vision of the world and its salvation. Its messaging is steeped with symbols and references to Muslim expectations of the apocalypse, including discussions about a great battle in “Dabiq” with “Rome” (the West), which is an apocalyptic expectation, as are twelve righteous rulers in Islam, the eighth of which was believed to be ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (who was killed in 2019), to name a few. ISIS, in fact, justifies its mass atrocities and shedding blood as a necessary pathway to realizing the apocalypse and ushing in a new and better world. Graeme Wood’s 2015 Atlantic article “What ISIS Really Wants”summarizes, “In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse.”

Countering Salafi Jihadi Ideology

Throughout the GWOT, the United States and its allies implemented several initiatives aimed at countering the ideologies of AQ and ISIS. Three broad efforts are particularly important: countering the message, stopping the spread of the message, and creating a new message altogether. When done together and synchronized with other efforts, including military action, these efforts began to counter the ideology.

Countering the Message

The United States and its allies and partners took the ideology of AQ and ISIS seriously from the earliest days of the GWOT. There was an understanding that the ideology was important—that their interpretation of Islam mattered and needed to be addressed to curb recruitment and sympathy for these groups. For example, in the first one hundred days following September 11, the White House issued a statementoutlining how the United States had responded to the attacks. Within the details of forming an international coalition to counter al Qaeda and its use of military action, it included “respecting Islam” as one of the actions taken. The statement quoted President George W. Bush, who asserted: “The Islam that we know is a faith devoted to the worship of one God, as revealed through the Holy Qu’ran. It teaches the value and importance of charity, mercy, and peace.” The statement included discussions about protecting Muslims in the United States and celebrating Iftar at the White House.

To specifically address claims that the West does not care about Islam or Muslims, the United States took several measures aimed at countering al Qaeda’s message. In 2003, the U.S. Department of State created the YES (Youth Exchange and Study) program, which gave students from Muslim-majority countries the opportunity to study in the United States. It also wrote a booklet called Muslim Life in America, which aimed to counter the specific message that the United States was hostile to Islam. The State Department also helped to fund the P2P (Peer to Peer): Challenging Extremism project, which aimed to amplify local voices speaking out against extremism. The United States has continued to emphasize its commitment to religious tolerance throughout the GWOT.

However, efforts aimed at emphasizing Western countries’ tolerance toward Muslims and support of Muslim countries have most likely fallen on deaf ears for several reasons. First, these words and programs were overshadowed by U.S. and allied military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond, which provided key data points for AQ, ISIS, and others of Western aggression toward the Muslim world. Second, the United States specifically lacks credibility over its support of Israel and, by extension, Israel’s actions toward Palestinians and neighboring countries. Third, key European powers, including France, Belgium, and Great Britian, lack credibility in some parts of the world due to the legacy of colonialism. In other words, the messenger has corrupted the message. Taken together, these actions by themselves were unlikely to have successfully countered the anti-Western message of AQ and ISIS.

Another major effort at countering the ideology of Salafi Jihadi was deradicalization programs, which aimed to turn individuals that embraced Salafi Jihadism back into healthy members of society. Some deradicalization efforts were government-sponsored, such as Saudi Arabia’s program to rehabilitate low-level jihadis they had apprehended. Other programs were initiated by nonprofits, such as the now shuttered Quillium Foundation in Britain. While this approach to countering the message was less strategic, it was still a major effort in countering Salafi Jihadi ideology.

These programs also have faced considerable criticism since their implementation. One critique is their inability to measure overall effectiveness in countering Salafi Jihadi ideology, particularly when the target of these programs was individuals. Another is that these programs unjustly targeted conservative Muslims and aimed to paint all Salafis in a negative light. Finally, in Great Britain and elsewhere, several “rehabilitated” jihadis were released from prison and went on to perpetrate terrorist acts, including the 2019 London attack by Usman Khan that killed two and the 2020 knife attack by Sudesh Amman. These acts have raised considerable doubt on the efficacy of deradicalization programs in Great Britain.

Preventing the Spread of Ideology

The United States and allied powers also engaged in several efforts aimed at preventing the spread of AQ and ISIS ideology. Although controversial, one approach was to take ideologues off the battlefield. The 2011 killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, a U.S. citizen, is one example of this effort. The death of ISIS media personnel is another example of this approach. Yet another approach was to disable the ability of AQ and ISIS to spread their ideology through the Internet. Task Force Ares is credited with disabling a range of Internet activities of ISIS.

As with efforts to counter Salafi Jihadi ideology, measuring the effectiveness of preventing the spread of ideology is nearly impossible to do; it amounts to trying to measure something in the future that may, or may not, happen. Similarly, attributing measurable changes in behavior, like a downtick in recruitment, to one activity is difficult to do when a multitude of variables are occurring at once, what is known in academia as “overdetermined.” Furthermore, as with most education programs, in addition to being overdetermined, changes in behavior may only be visible over time, making measuring these effects in the present difficult.

Creating a New Message

A third approach to countering the ideology of Salafi Jihadism has been to provide an entirely new message, as opposed to countering the ideology or trying to prevent its spread. One program, the Australian Beyond Bali Project, created a publicly available curriculum aimed at introducing peace and tolerance education in public schools. In Indonesia, the Muhammadiya School system, which was created in response to Dutch and British schools systems during colonialism, aims to reinforce the tolerant strain of Islam indigenous to Indonesia, which is distinct from Salafi Jihadism.

As with the other countermeasures aimed at blunting the ideology of Salafi Jihadism, measuring precise effects of these programs is unlikely given the vast number of variables that influence why individuals and groups support a set of beliefs over another, and if those beliefs solely influence behavior.

Finally, in addition to looking at various actions taken to deliberately try to undermine Salafi Jihadi ideology and change violent behavior, it is important to also address actions taken that reinforced the ideology, whether intentional or not.

The full-scale military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, while undertaken for specific reasons and with broad political and military objectives, were actions that reinforced Salafi Jihadi narratives that the United States and the West more broadly were out to destroy the Muslim world. The fact that neither of these wars went according to plan and left both countries fragile and unstable has provided evidence that supports the Salafi Jihadi narrative that the West is out to destroy Islam.

One could also point to the prolonged drone campaign in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan as another example that has reinforced the messaging of Salafi Jihadis of Western intentions toward Muslims and the Muslim world. Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen wrote in a 2009 New York Times op-ed about the negative consequences of U.S. led drone strikes in Pakistan. He summarized that “while violent extremists may be unpopular, for a frightened population they seem less ominous than a faceless enemy that wages war from afar and often kills more civilians than militants.”

Clearly, some of these military actions were necessary to fight transnational jihadis; however, it is critical to keep in mind how military actions might become examples that jihadis will use to reinforce their ideology.

Applying Lessons Learned in GWOT to Countering State Ideologies

While there are many important distinctions between AQ, ISIS, and state adversaries today, we can still draw important lessons from the twenty-one years fighting Salafi Jihadi ideology in the GWOT. Four salient lessons are proposed here with their application to our current state adversaries in an era of strategic competition.

Ideology matters as a warfighting capability.

The United States and its allies and partners took the ideology of AQ and ISIS seriously and understood it as something that contributed to the warfighting capability of the adversary.

Today, the ideologies of our current strategic competitors, including Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, matter just as much. In fact, these adversaries are using some of the same themes as AQ and ISIS in their own ideologies. Take, for example, this quote from Vladimir Putin in a speech on February 24, 2022, the day of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine: “[The West] sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within, the attitudes they have been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature. This is not going to happen. No one has ever succeeded in doing this, nor will they succeed now.” This quote easily could have come from Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Awlaki, or Baghdadi. These are not new themes, and we have experience addressing them.

As with AQ and ISIS, countering ideology is important because of its effects in luring potential recruits to the fight, both domestic and foreign, and sustaining support for the war in the long term. State actors are no different in these pursuits. Russia and China, for example, have used polarizing language about the West, including about colonialism, in efforts to draw more countries to the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) alliance and to argue that BRICS is the best way to counter Western power through alternative economic, financial, and security alliances. As with the GWOT, we need to understand which themes are resonating with whom, why, and to what effect.

We need to fight the ideology and the military capacity of our adversaries synergistically.

In Russia, Putin’s ideology is playing a critical role in explaining and sustaining his aggression. He has devised an ideology of nationalist imperialism, what he calls “scientific Putinism,” which goes far beyond financial profits and includes the restoration of the Russian Empire to its former territorial, political, economic, religious, and civilizational glory, free from Western influence. This government is using education at all levels to indoctrinate the population to this vision, and it is believed to have considerable support within the Russian Federation. We should not ignore this warfighting capability and should take measures to undermine and discredit his ideology. The same goes for the ideologies of our other strategic competitors.

In the GWOT, academics spent considerable time and energy trying to understand the ideology of AQ and ISIS, how it was resonating with target populations, and why. Organizations like the Pew Foundationconducted repeated surveys on a variety of topics in Muslim-majority countries to get a sense of attitudes and level of support for Salafi Jihadism. Additionally, these same efforts also considered how U.S. and allied foreign policy affected populations, their attitudes toward the West, and their views toward Salafi Jihadism.

We need to consider how our actions feed our adversaries’ ideologies and, wherever possible, work to undermine the message, not reinforce it. Successfully doing this requires understanding the message, those who create and propagate it, those who believe the ideology and those who do not, and how our actions affect the message.

As with the GWOT, the messenger is as important as the message itself. If Western countries are the adversary’s target of the ideology, standing up and saying how great we are, or what we are (or are not) doing, is unlikely to be effective. This is a lesson learned from the GWOT, and it applies to our current era of strategic competition as well.

Additionally, if we have a good messenger, partnering closely with that individual or organization may do more harm than good, especially if we are the adversary’s target. Rather than overtly embracing these individuals and groups, it is better to partner with them silently or not at all.

We need to be careful of increased apocalypticism.

As with the highly apocalyptic images and language of ISIS, we need to take increased apocalyptic rhetoric from our state adversaries seriously because this message could be the harbinger of mass death and destruction. Unlike ISIS or AQ, Russia, China, and North Korea all have weapons of mass destruction, and Iran has aggressive nuclear ambitions. In other words, these states have access to weapons that could make their dreams of the apocalypse come true. We therefore should pay attention to increased messaging and symbols that have an apocalyptic tone because this rhetoric could signal efforts to prepare populations for mass atrocities, including the use of nuclear weapons or attacking nuclear facilities with the promise of cosmic victory and ushering in a new era. Dimitry Adamsky’s fascinating book, Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy, warns of such a possibility.

Measuring effectiveness is difficult.

Within all of this, measuring effects in efforts to counter ideologies will be plagued with challenges of overdetermination. This does not mean we should abandon these efforts. Rather, at the strategic level, it is important to keep in mind that it is the totality of efforts across multiple domains and instruments of statecraft that have an overall effect on success or failure of objectives in modern war. Focusing on things that can be easily measured, such as spent ammunition, deaths, sorties, or territory lost or claimed, in most cases will not provide a comprehensive picture of the war’s trajectory. Synchronizing these efforts toward a clear goal should be the pursuit, with macro-level indicators that help identify success or failure in meeting the war’s goal.

Ultimately, as with other warfighting capabilities, including materiel, money, industrial capacity, and manpower, the veracity of an ideology will contribute to the intensity and duration of our adversaries’ warfighting capabilities. We ignore the ideology of our adversaries at our own peril.