Trump’s new counterterrorism strategy expects US allies to do more

The US president Donald Trump with House speaker Paul Ryan in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 4, 2017. Evan Vucci / AP Photo

WASHINGTON // The US will expect its allies to shoulder more of the burden in combating extremist militants, according to a draft of president Donald Trump’s new counterterrorism strategy.

The United States should also avoid costly, “open-ended” military commitments, according to the 11-page document, which is expected be released in coming months.

“We need to intensify operations against global jihadist groups while also reducing the costs of American ‘blood and treasure’ in pursuit of our counterterrorism goals,” it says.

“We will seek to avoid costly, large-scale US military interventions to achieve counterterrorism objectives and will increasingly look to partners to share the responsibility for countering terrorist groups,” it says.

However, it acknowledges that terrorism “cannot be defeated with any sort of finality”.

Michael Anton, spokesman for the White House national security council, said, “As part of its overall approach, the administration is taking a fresh look at the entire US national security strategy, to include the counterterrorism mission – which is especially important since no such strategy has been produced publicly since 2011.”

The process is aimed at ensuring “the new strategy is directed against the pre-eminent terrorist threats to our nation, our citizens, our interests overseas and allies,” Mr Anton said. “Moreover, this new strategy will highlight achievable and realistic goals, and guiding principles.”

Combating extremism was a major issue for Mr Trump during his presidential campaign last year. The draft strategy paper, which officials said was still being fine-tuned at the White House, describes the threat from Islamist militant groups in stark tones.

It remains to be seen how Mr Trump can square his goal of avoiding military interventions with continuing conflicts involving US troops in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere.

Rather than scale back US commitments, he has so far largely adhered to former Obama administration plans to intensify military operations against militant groups and granted the Pentagon greater authority to strike them in places like Yemen and Somalia.

Mr Trump’s draft strategy notes that since former president Barack Obama released the last US counterterrorism strategy in 2011, before the emergence of ISIL, the threat has “diversified in size, scope and complexity from what we faced just a few years ago”.

In addition to ISIL, the US and its allies are endangered by a reconstituted Al Qaeda, groups such as the Haqqani network and Hizbollah, as well as from home-grown extremists radicalised online, it said.

A senior administration official said the document’s overarching counterterrorism approach was separate from a detailed strategy to defeat ISIL that Mr Trump also has ordered.

* Reuters