STRATEGIC

xxii
Strategic Choices for a Turbulent World: In Pursuit of Security and Opportunity
efforts are understandably limited when it comes to investigating and
preventing low-probability, high-consequence developments for which
immediate solutions are deemed unlikely. These emerging and existing
problems often do not receive the attention they deserve from senior
officials because they are often seen as problems whose solutions—if
there are any—lie too far in the future to be worth spending much
time thinking about now. In a world of constant technological change,
this is a cognitive bias that should be challenged.
Terrorism has become sadly familiar, yet in scale, scope, and
ferocity, it is the problem that seems most intractable and largely
beyond U.S. ability to control without intolerable sacrifice of the civil
liberties on which the “American experiment” is premised. Fear that
the government will not be able to protect its citizens against terrorist
attacks, including from within, prompts some U.S. voters to favor
more-defensive, even isolationist, international policies. Yet it is worth
remembering that the problem is not actually new. In the last century,
anarchist terrorists conducted numerous bombings in the United States
and Europe and successfully assassinated President William McKinley
and several crowned heads of Europe, including Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
whose death triggered World War I. The United States and
Europe have faced major terrorism challenges since the 1970s, but U.S.
attempts to understand and counter violent extremism are in their
infancy, as are rehabilitation programs being piloted in such countries
as Saudi Arabia. Moreover, we would caution against equating the
goal of taking back territory seized by ISIS, at which the Russians, the
Kurds, the Assad regime, and/or other hard-line Islamist groups may
succeed, with “defeating” radical Islam or ending the violence in Syria
and Iraq. Containing the threat may be the most sustainable strategy.
Some fear that strife among the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds may
continue in the areas that ISIS controlled and beyond, as Iran tries to
create a buffer zone in Shiite-dominated territory in Iraq, the Kurds
push for statehood, and radical Sunni fighters from non-ISIS groups
fight Shiite domination. Moreover, the assumption that, without territory,
ISIS will no longer be able to recruit, inspire, or assist attackers
inside Western countries is unproven.