September 30, 2016

Here's a real, (and sustainable) model for eliminating terrorist safe havens

Featuring: Ilan Goldenberg, and Paul Scharre

Source: Fox News

As we head towards this year’s elections, one of the main questions that the next President will face is how to eliminate terrorist safe havens without getting bogged down in costly quagmires.

The good news is that after 15 years of struggling with this challenge, in the fight against ISIS we are seeing the beginnings of what can be a sustainable long-term strategy that the United States and its partners can apply across the globe for years to come in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and other potential hotspots.

In the early years after 9/11, the Bush Administration adopted a large-footprint approach of occupying ungoverned spaces in Afghanistan and Iraq. U.S. troops directly took over security for these areas while building local forces. It proved too costly in lives and dollars and politically unsustainable with the American public.

Read the full article at Fox News.

Authors

  • Ilan Goldenberg

    Former Senior Fellow and Director, Middle East Security Program

    Ilan Goldenberg is the former Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. He is a foreign policy and defense expe...

  • Paul Scharre

    Executive Vice President and Director of Studies

    Paul Scharre is the Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at CNAS. He is the award-winning author of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence...