Reinforcing Failure: The Revised Executive Order Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States
Reinforcing Failure: The Revised Executive Order Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States by Anthony H. Cordesman, Center for Strategic & International Studies
The United States and its allies—including virtually every Muslim state in the world—face a very real threat from a small fraction of violent Islamist extremists. This is a threat, however, that must be fought in partnership with our allies, and in the Muslim world, particularly the Middle East. We cannot win it at our borders, or by needlessly alienating most of the world's Muslims.
There are good reasons for fighting extremism with host country partners in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen. There are still more good reasons for cooperating in this fight with largely Muslim allies like Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the UAE. These same reasons make it wise to cooperate in counterterrorism efforts with the governments of African and Asian states with large Muslim populations. This struggle, or "war," will be won or lost at a global level. It is a fight for the hearts and minds of some 1.6 billion Muslims throughout the world—some 23% of the world's population.
This is why U.S. strategy has focused on bringing the world's great religions together, and on partnerships with Muslim governments whose people show—in poll after poll—that the vast majority of Muslims reject extremism and violence. At the same time, it is a global struggle and one that goes far beyond ISIS and Al Qaida. Small Islamist extremist movements exist in virtually every country with large Muslim populations, and much of the Muslim world is in a state of political and economic turmoil and massive social change…