Two Views on Al-Qa'ida: Reidel and Tankel

In the wake of the recent global terror alert and subsequent closure of U.S. embassies, there has been an understandable flood of pieces analyzing the "state of al-Qa'ida."

Alas, I've been too busy on other projects to link to all of them, but two pieces that merit particular consideration are Bruce Reidel's "The Coming of Al Qaeda 3.0" in the Daily Beast and Stephen Tankel's "Not Another al-Qaeda Article" at War On the Rocks. Both are intelligent and thoughtful, but offer slightly contrasting outlooks on the nature and severity of the challenge al-Qa'ida's various affiliates pose.

Both authors agree that al-Qa'ida (in one form or another) is not going to be defeated anytime soon. Tankel writes: "Jihadist violence will be a feature of the security landscape for the foreseeable future," and Reidel similarly laments: "After 15 years, there is no end in sight to al Qaeda. And the new generation -- AQ 3.0 -- may be with us for years to come."

Where they differ, however, is how significant a threat this new reality poses to U.S. national security. Whereas Tankel notes that "there are rising threats to regional stability [and] U.S. interests" due to the diffusion/decentralization of power to al-Qa'ida's regional affiliates, their rise "does not pose an existential threat to the U.S." Reidel is more circumspect, cautioning: "The new generation of al Qaeda . . . is more focused on the nearby enemy close to home than the faraway enemy in America and Europe. For now at least." [Emphasis added].

I think Tankel is correct to note that making foreign policy wholly subordinate to CT policy is foolish as it risks reinforcing the local conditions that spawn extremism. But to say "We need to realign resources away from targeting al-Qaeda to focus more on broader political and security phenomena" oversimplifies the deep structural problems that many of these countries face (as if we could wave a magic wand and make Yemen economically viable, much less prosperous) as well as the fact that even many middle-to-upper class Muslims truly, deeply believe in the Salafist ideology that is both attractively utopian in its ends (i.e. doing Allah's will by creating a strictly Islamist Caliphate) and desperately nihilistic in its means (i.e. murdering anybody who is perceived as preventing this vision, including the rationalization for killing innocent bystanders).

Unfortunately, I'm afraid Reidel is more realistic in predicting that "The coup in Egypt and the chaotic aftermath of the Arab awakening is only going to add more militants to this army of radicals" by "fueling more anger and frustration in the Islamic world." Yes, these jihadists will concentrate on local conflicts in the near-term that will not directly threaten the U.S. homeland or merit large-scale intervention. But I fear that minimizing the potential of these regional conflicts to serve as incubators for a more direct threat will lead to a repeat of America's counterterrorism miasma in the 1990s, where we mistakenly had a "Vegas strategy" for jihadism: What happens in Afghanistan stays in Afghanistan. That, obviously, turned out to be tragically wrong.

The challenge for the next generation of policymakers will be how to support a wide variety of allies in judiciously conducting these local fights against what Tankel correctly calls "the variegated nature of the jihadist movement," before the threat becomes global.