US Must Overhaul Approach to Allies in Anti-Terrorism, Turkey - Analyst

The war with terrorism that Washington has been waging in the last decades appears to be ineffective because American elites ignored the real scales of threat from its very inception. Moreover, they have refused to change that failed tactics in the last 20 years, Stephen Walt, an American professor of international affairs wrote for Foreign Policy.

Walt highlighted that the current discourse on terrorism showcasing that US intentions are in fact “unserious.”

"To say this sounds odd, given the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been thrown at the problem, and the tens of thousands of lives (both American and foreign) that have been lost waging the “global war on terror” (or if you prefer, the ‘campaign against violent extremism’), is an understatement."

Walt continued by stating that the basic problem regarding this issue is the reluctance by American authorities to change its losing strategy.

“[O]ur national security establishment is still convinced that the main way to defeat extremist groups is US military intervention, despite the nagging suspicion that it just creates more ungoverned spaces and makes it easier for groups like the Islamic State [Daesh] to recruit new members.”

At the same time, according to the analyst, the US should adequately estimate terrorist threats and to discuss them publicly with the nation.

According to data presented by scholars John Mueller and Mark Stewart in their joint book Chasing Ghosts, the possibility of an average American to get killed in a terror act is relatively low equating to one in four million cases.

“Yet instead of using logic and evidence to reassure the American people, leaders from both parties have encouraged, since 9/11, the irrational fear of terrorism to drive a host of counterproductive policies,” he pointed out.

Walt believes that there is no proper analysis of terror threat in the US because a lot of high-profile politicians and establishments are “hyping the danger tend to dominate public discourse on this topic.”

“Do you really expect the CIA, NSA, FBI, or the vast array of well-paid “counterterrorism” experts to offer reassuring testimony about these risks, when their own budgets, bureaucratic clout, autonomy, and prominence depend on keeping us trembling in our socks?”

Above all, the professor noted, there is a lack of an “open discussion” about the role of the media in the US. News outlets like Fox News and CNN, he stressed, seem to play in the hands of terrorist groups such as al Qaeda or the Islamic State while covering the news.

“Whenever a terrorist incident occurs, TV and radio outlets immediately offer up a frenzy of overheated reportage, most of it intended to keep people scared and their eyeballs glued to the screen or their ears glued to the radio.”

In conclusion the author pointed that Washington needs to work out a more pragmatic approach to its allies. Under this course, Walt said, first of all, is for the US to shrink its contacts with Turkey, which in terms of counter-terrorism pursues objectives that are clearly too far from those of America’s.

“US officials would be calling out Turkey publicly for its actions against the Kurdish forces battling the Islamic State, for the porosity of its border with Islamic State-controlled territory, and for its blind eye toward smuggling and other actions that are keeping the militant group in business,” he concluded.