War by Other Means -- Building Complete and Balanced Capabilities for Counterinsurgency

Abstract

The difficulties and staggering costs that the United States has faced in trying to secure Iraq and Afghanistan raise a question this study seeks to answer: What capabilities does the United States need to counter such insurgencies, of which today's are unlikely to be the last? The search for the answer must with defining the danger to U.S. and world security that is violent Islam. As leaders of jihad-holy war against Islam's supposed enemies-would have it, American and its allies are engaged in aggression against Islam and must be opposed by desperate and daring measures, including suicide terror and counterattacks in the West. Beyond defending Muslims, jihadists air to demolish the nation-state order in the Muslim world, which they claim the West devised and uses to subjugate Islam. Believing that the West cannot control the Muslim world without its regional proxies, jihadists aim to destroy them. To these ends, their strategy is to aid and exploit local insurgencies, making each one more dangerous, intractable, and consequential.

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