Despite the rush right now to declare important milestones or turning points in the fight against terrorism, the best handle we can get on the situation seems to be that al-Qaida is near dead, but its franchises have quite a bit of life in them. The implied situational uncertainty is to be expected following Osama Bin Laden's assassination, as he was our familiar "handle" on the issue for more than a decade. But although it is normal that we now seek a new, widely accepted paradigm, it is also misguided: In global terms we are, for lack of a better term, in a good place right now on terrorism, meaning we don't need to unduly demote or elevate it in our collective threat priorities. Instead, we need to recognize the "sine wave" we're riding right now and seek no profound rebalancing in our security capabilities -- other than to continue protecting the "small wars" assets that we spent the last decade redeveloping.
Read the entire column at World Politics Review.
Monday, August 1, 2011 at 10:33AM 
Reader Comments (1)
The massacre in Norway should cause a paradigm shift.The new threats are not Al-Kaida, the Una-or Oklohoma bombers or all those sectarian terrorist groups nor is it an anarchistic faschist like Andreas Brevik.They can kill some people, but not destroy any state. What´s more dangerous are those rightextreme and Islamsit groups with mass support which can seize state power. I mean right-wing political parties in Europe like the Front National, Gert Wilders, the Freedom Party of Austria, Jobbik in Hungary, The True Fins in Finnland, the Flamish Bloc in Belgia,etc. and on the other side in the Muslim world the Muslimbrotherhoods, Khameine/Ahmadinedschad in Iran, Muktadar-el Sadr in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan,Hamas and Hisbollah.They want to cause the real clash of civilization and some of them are also thinking about anti-Western colaitions.It´s too early to say if the Arab spring will have success--it also could be the next phase to further Islamization of the Arab states as the Muslim brotherhoods could seize power.And in Europe antiamerican forces are on the rise, most notably in France. The Front National thinks about retreating from NATO and to build a French (European)-Russian-Chinese alliance against the USA.
Huntington spoke of an Confucianist-Islam axis against the West. He forget that the "Christian Europe" could split into an democratic and an fascist-neoauthoritarian/anti-western bloc. An anitamerican French-Russian-Chinese alliance instead of a "CIA -trio". Think about this new possibilities before you forget about Europe´s role in world history.Al Kaida isn´t a real important player in this scenarios.