Rethinking the War on Terror
Institute researchers have developed an innovative approach to thinking about and responding to the threat of Islamist terrorism
April/May 2006
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, brought home the extent and character of the new security challenges facing the United States in the aftermath of the Cold War. Using improvised weapons of mass destruction—passenger aircraft—religiously inspired terrorists announced in spectacular and deadly fashion the arrival of a new threat that will likely be with Americans for at least a generation.
But just as it took well over a decade to understand the nature of the threat facing the United States in the aftermath of World War II and to develop the capacities, institutions, and political consensus to deal with that threat, so today experts are still in the process of formulating a clear and coherent understanding of the nature of Islamist extremism and how to counter it. As Institute president Richard Solomon has observed, Americans are only in the beginning phases of developing an effective set of policies for confronting this unprecedented challenge.
One of the Institute's goals is to help develop the intellectual apparatus to comprehend the nature of the threat of Islamist terrorism, with the goal of learning how to contain, disrupt, marginalize, and otherwise reduce or eliminate it.
Paul Stares, vice president of the Institute's Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, and Mona Yacoubian, special advisor to the Institute's Muslim World Initiative, have developed an approach to thinking about Islamist extremism that draws on the principles and practices of epidemiology as well as a growing body of social scientific research on "social contagion" phenomena such as fads, fashions, and rumors.
The conceptual leap required of this approach is not as great as it would seem, Stares and Yacoubian argue, since disease metaphors are routinely employed to describe the threat. Thus terrorism is
often equated with an infectious virus, while al Qaeda is often described as "mutating" or "metastasizing" and madrassahs and mosques are sometimes referred to as "incubators" of extremism.
Stares and Yacoubian draw on the standard model epidemiologists use to study epidemics, which focuses on four components: the agent, the host, the environment, and the vectors. The agent is the infectious pathogen or bacterium—in this case, the jihadist narrative or ideology that animates the terrorists and their supporters. The host is the group or person who becomes "infected" by militant Islamist ideology. The environment refers to the conditions that facilitate the spread of the disease—aspects of the Muslim world that render its inhabitants susceptible to this ideology, such as political repression, economic stagnation, and social alienation. And the vectors—the propagating pathways that spread disease—are in this case such conduits as mosques, madrassahs, prisons, the Internet, and satellite TV.
The primary virtue of this model is that it provides a coherent way to think about the nature of the threat facing us and thus enables us to develop a convincing strategy for confronting it. That
strategy rests on three prongs:
- To contain the most threatening outbreaks through such measures as quarantines, treatments, and rehabilitation;
- To protect those susceptible to the disease by "immunizing" them—developing an ideological antidote to the attractions of Islamist extremism;
- To remedy the environmental factors that foster the spread of extremism by helping to resolve the ongoing conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim countries, and by dealing with the social alienation of many Muslims living in European countries.
One key lesson from this model is that there is no magic bullet, no panacea with which to eliminate extremism. Just as epidemics can be rolled back only with a systematically planned, multipronged international effort, so success in the war on terror will depend on sustained commitment over years by a broad coalition of states acting in partnership with a multitude of nongovernmental actors. A counterterrorism campaign inspired by classic counterepidemic measures would simultaneously seek to contain the spread of extremism, protect those who are most susceptible, and remedy the key environmental factors that foster it.
