Terrorism’s Weak Spot: Hope by Robert H. Scales, Washington Post
The centerpiece of a national security strategy is to isolate and exploit an enemy’s vulnerable “center of gravity.” Carl von Clausewitz, the 19th-century Prussian military philosopher and father of modern military theory, defined center of gravity as “the source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act.”
Conventional wisdom inside the Pentagon and among defense intellectuals is that the vulnerable center of gravity of today’s enemy is its extreme Islamist ideology. Speaking on “Fox News Sunday” after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggested that the rise in the terrorists’ power has been mainly due to the inspiration that comes from an increasingly radical ideology. Thus, most of the Obama administration’s “nine lines of effort” to defeat radical Islam are, in fact, non-military actions meant to counter this ideology, such as disrupting the finances of terror groups and disseminating alternative messaging.
But the numerous attacks we have seen around the world suggest that this ideology is not a vulnerable center of gravity, if it ever was. Dedication to an ideological cause does not appear to be in short supply. Likewise, after the Abu Ghraib scandal and 12 years of perceived atrocities against Islam at the Guantanamo Bay prison, the United States long ago lost its ability to effectively fight an ideological war against Islamic terrorism.
Our political masters need to distinguish between ideology and the enemy’s true vulnerable center of gravity: hope. The differences are subtle. Hope is the belief that ideology will prevail. Hope drives motivation or, in the psychologist’s jargon, a “response initiation.” To the extent that hope is present, a terrorist will translate belief into action. As hope is removed, even the most ideologically attuned enemy will become passive. As Clausewitz advises: Strike the center of gravity and the enemy loses the will to act…