It was a “meticulously planned and very complex mission.” On May 15, President Donald Trump announced the killing of Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, the second in command for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), in a joint operation with the Nigerian government. The strike shows how terrorism remains a high priority for the US military, even amid the war in Iran and other global priorities. It also comes shortly after the release of the White House’s new Counterterrorism Strategy. We asked members of the Atlantic Council Counterterrorism Project, who have decades of experience in the field, to break down the document and offer their recommendations for improvement.
Click to jump to an expert analysis:
Edward Bogan: Focus on the deeper issues around narcotrafficking
Alex Plitsas: Make Africa a bigger priority
Morgan Tadych: Recognize the changing nature of Islamist terrorism
Danielle Cosgrove: Focus more on the root causes of radicalization
Marc Polymeropoulos: Combine soft power with hard power
Focus on the deeper issues around narcotrafficking
The recently released US counterterrorism strategy reflects a significant shift in both tone and geographic focus from prior post-9/11 frameworks. Unlike earlier strategies centered primarily on jihadist networks operating in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, this document places substantial emphasis on the Western Hemisphere, particularly cartels and transnational criminal organizations linked to narcotics trafficking, migration pressures, and regional instability. While portions of the document contain familiar counterterrorism language centered on groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, the strategy ultimately reads less as a deeply developed operational doctrine and more as a broad political-security statement about the administration’s worldview.
A portion of the document reflects recognizable counterterrorism priorities: disruption of jihadist networks, border security concerns linked to terrorism, online radicalization, and the continued use of intelligence, sanctions, and kinetic capabilities against transnational threats. Yet even here, the document often lacks the depth and implementation detail typically associated with prior instances of mature national security planning. There is relatively little discussion of operational prioritization, partner coordination, or lessons learned from two decades of counterterrorism operations.
Another portion focuses on cartels and transnational criminal organizations, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. This emphasis is unsurprising given the administration’s broader geopolitical and border-security focus. In many ways, the strategy formalizes an effort already underway across parts of the US national security apparatus: importing counterterrorism authorities, methodologies, and operational mindsets into the counter-cartel mission space.
There are legitimate reasons for doing so. Cartels increasingly operate with quasi-sovereign characteristics, exert territorial control, corrupt institutions, destabilize governments, and employ violence at scale. Intelligence integration, financial targeting, and network-based disruption operations, which have been the hallmark of prior successful counterterrorism campaigns, can all provide meaningful advantages against such threats.
At the same time, the strategy would have benefited from examining the problem at all dimensions. The cartel challenge is not simply a terrorism problem transplanted into the Western Hemisphere. It requires a whole-of-government framework encompassing diplomacy, intelligence cooperation, anti-corruption efforts, law enforcement, public health policy, and sustained engagement with regional partners. As one example of what is lacking, the document invokes victim statistics tied to narcotics flows without meaningfully addressing the persistent domestic demand drivers fueling the problem inside the United States itself.
The most controversial portions of the strategy concern domestic political violence and ideological threats. Domestic terrorism is a legitimate national security concern and deserves serious, sustained attention. However, portions of the document shift quickly from strategic analysis into language that reads as politically performative. The focus on perceived threats associated primarily with one side of the political spectrum risks undermining the seriousness and credibility of the strategy itself. A durable counterterrorism framework requires analytical rigor, political neutrality, and broad public legitimacy.
Ultimately, the document may have been stronger as two separate strategies: one focused comprehensively on transnational terrorism, and another addressing the cartel challenge with the depth and sophistication that issue deserves, and without the political performativity.
—Edward Bogan is an adviser to the Atlantic Council’s Counterterrorism Project and a retired CIA operations officer with twenty-four years of experience in national security and intelligence operations and policy.
Make Africa a bigger priority
The 2026 US Counterterrorism Strategy accurately identifies resurgent jihadist threats across Africa, with particular focus on the Sahel region. For the moment, the recent operation that killed al-Minuki has increased attention on terrorism on the continent, but I recommend that the United States elevate it to an even higher priority. A modest, sustained commitment to training, capacity-building, and restoring operational access would strengthen efforts to deny safe havens, disrupt terrorist networks, and prevent the consolidation of large-scale sanctuaries.
Sub-Saharan Africa, especially the Sahel, has become the global epicenter of terrorism. The Global Terrorism Index reports that the region accounted for over half of all terrorism-related deaths worldwide in recent years. Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and neighboring states consistently rank among the most affected countries. Groups such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate) and Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) have expanded operations, controlling territory, encircling key urban centers like areas near Bamako, and pushing toward coastal West African states. JNIM and ISSP exploit ungoverned spaces, porous borders, and governance challenges—conditions that echo those preceding the rise of the original ISIS caliphate. Analysts warn of the real risk that these groups could establish a significant new sanctuary if current trends continue.
Effective counterterrorism in such a vast region requires reliable intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), as well as close partnerships. The US withdrawal from facilities such as Niger’s Air Base 201 has reduced forward presence and limited overflight and basing options in critical areas. Many local governments have shifted alignments, further constraining access. This has created substantial intelligence gaps in a theater where terrorists operate across remote, expansive terrain. Small teams of US trainers and advisors, working alongside African partners, have proven valuable in the past for building local intelligence fusion, border security, and operational capabilities. Without restored access and on-the-ground relationships, remote tools and intermittent information-sharing fall short of what is needed to maintain persistent pressure.
A focused approach, deploying limited numbers of personnel for training and advisory roles, while negotiating reciprocal access agreements, offers a practical path forward. This would enhance partner forces’ ability to lead operations, improve interoperability, and close intelligence shortfalls. Initiatives like Exercise Flintlock demonstrate the effectiveness of multinational training in strengthening African-led responses to shared threats. Such engagement emphasizes capacity-building over direct combat involvement and supports long-term stability without large-scale deployments.
Prioritizing these measures in Africa would help address a rapidly evolving threat environment that could otherwise generate broader regional instability and transnational risks. By investing modestly today in partnerships and access, the United States and its allies can disrupt the trajectory toward larger terrorist safe havens and contribute to more effective, sustainable security across the continent.
—Alex Plitsas is a nonresident senior fellow with the Middle East Programs’ Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and leads the initiative’s Counterterrorism Project. He previously served as the chief of sensitive activities for special operations and combating terrorism in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
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Recognize the changing nature of Islamist terrorism
The administration’s recent Counterterrorism Strategy mischaracterizes Islamist terror groups. This lack of nuance jeopardizes the United States’ ability to translate the national counterterrorism strategy to the operational level, plan and conduct successful operations, and work to deter Islamist terror threats to the homeland. By characterizing Islamist terror groups as “legacy,” the report does not accurately reflect the evolution of these groups in recent years, preventing the development of actionable efforts to prevent their spread. Two key inaccuracies surrounding the historical role of the Muslim Brotherhood and terror groups’ loss of physical territory are worth examining in further detail.
First, the report states that the Muslim Brotherhood is the root of modern jihadi terrorism. The Muslim Brotherhood did work to promote its pan-Islamist ideology around the same time that Ayman al-Zawahiri, a key al-Qaeda leader, rose to prominence in Egypt. The two groups were linked by place and time—not ideology. In fact, Zawahiri frequently criticized the Brotherhood for not ascribing to his strict interpretation of Islam. Although members of the Muslim Brotherhood have certainly plotted and committed acts of violence, on the whole, the group remains a social and political organization and is not involved in terrorism. By emphasizing the Muslim Brotherhood, especially its political branches in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, as a prominent terror threat to the US, the administration risks wasting scarce counterterrorism resources on a group that does not, on the whole, espouse a militant ideology.
Second, and more importantly, the report suggests that the US should conduct covert and military operations against terror groups in the Middle East and Africa. While there is some value in these operations—especially in the Horn of Africa against ISIS and the Houthis—for the most part, terror groups do not hold significant territory in these regions. ISIS now operates primarily out of ungoverned spaces in Afghanistan and Africa, with small leadership cells inspiring online terrorism elsewhere in the world. Planning to conduct military or covert operations will result in massive expenditures of capital, and possibly lives, and have limited effects against groups that now operate in a dispersed, global, online ecosystem.
Effectively responding to today’s Islamic terror threat requires nuanced policy that is reflective of the way terror groups currently operate. The report suggests that Europe address counterterrorism through intelligence sharing and proposes that the US begin a counter-propaganda campaign in Asia—two ideas that have previously worked to counter terror threats to the homeland. These are strong ideas, but they are buried deep in the report. By acknowledging the reality on the ground, and the digital evolution of terror groups, the administration would be well-served to expand on these two feasible policy options.
—Morgan Tadych is an adviser to the Atlantic Council’s Counterterrorism Project, an open-source intelligence (OSINT) professional, and Army veteran. She spent much of her military career researching strategic Russia/Eurasia issues and deployed to conduct counterterrorism missions.
Focus more on the root causes of radicalization
The Trump administration’s new Counterterrorism Strategy reflects a heavily operational view of the current threat landscape that risks underinvesting in the non-kinetic tools necessary to fully achieve its stated goals. The document acknowledges that terrorist threats have become increasingly decentralized, digitally enabled, globally networked, and tied to identity, grievance, and ideological mobilization rather than solely territorial control or hierarchical command structures. It prioritizes operational disruption capabilities, including sanctions, cyber operations, law enforcement coordination, and military pressure. Those tools remain essential and continue to save lives.
But the strategy stops short of fully grappling with the implications of its own diagnosis.
Modern extremist movements increasingly compete in the cognitive and social domain, not solely the physical one. The strategy itself recognizes that extremist ecosystems thrive through online influence, ideological mobilization, and social reinforcement. The Islamic State and its affiliates demonstrated this clearly after the collapse of the territorial caliphate in 2019. The movement survived not because it retained conventional military strength, but because it built resilient ideological and social ecosystems capable of sustaining recruitment, mobilization, and global relevance through digital infrastructure.
Operational disruption can suppress networks, but it rarely eliminates the conditions that allow those networks to regenerate. If extremist ecosystems increasingly exploit identity, grievance, alienation, and belonging, then prevention infrastructure and resilience-building become increasingly important components of counterterrorism strategy. A vulnerable individual no longer requires direct physical contact with a terrorist organization to absorb ideology, find social reinforcement, or move toward violence, while online ecosystems now compress the distance between grievance and mobilization and enable extremist narratives to circulate across borders in real time.
That reality exposes a quiet but important tension within the strategy itself. The document diagnoses a threat environment increasingly shaped by ideological mobilization, decentralized radicalization, and identity ecosystems, yet the practical instruments it emphasizes remain overwhelmingly coercive. Operational disruption remains indispensable, but disruption alone rarely produces durable strategic outcomes. If the United States seeks to achieve the strategy’s stated goal of identifying and neutralizing terrorists who have the intent and capability to plot attacks against Americans, then counterterrorism policy must also invest in the capabilities and institutions necessary to compete in the environments where extremist organizations build legitimacy, belonging, trust, and narrative resonance.
—Danielle Cosgrove is an adviser to the Counterterrorism Project. She is a distinguished guest lecturer at Stanford University, a Stanford Medicine X scholar, and the founder of an acquired threat mapping startup.
Combine soft power with hard power
The National Security Council’s Counterterrorism Strategy usually lays out the foreign and domestic threats the United States faces, and strategies that might counter them, in a nonpartisan fashion. Unfortunately, the 2026 version falls short. It is different than its predecessors with its novel claims, flowery and theatrical politicization, and an absence of actual strategies.
The elevation of narcotraffickers into the leading terrorist problem set is of course notable, as this issue was previously countered via law enforcement, the US military, and intelligence agencies, all under a counter-narcotics strategy. I believe that this new designation into the counterterrorism realm is a mistake, akin to comparing apples and oranges. Let’s not forget that Americans’ demand for drugs drives the drug trade. There certainly is not a demand in the US for anything that terrorists offer. Moreover, the document blames the narcotrafficking problem in part on “the borderless America created by the Biden Administration.”
Other politicization is rampant throughout the document. Language about threats from “radically pro-transgender” groups was notable, even though no serious counterterrorism expert has such nebulous groups on their radar. Antifa also is referenced, despite numerous terrorism experts questioning whether such a distinct group even exists.
Counterterrorism is a team sport, and the United States depends on its allies to help keep the country safe. Is the administration suggesting that it will task Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officers and analysts to work with international partners and collect intelligence on transgender terrorists and Antifa? If so, they will be laughed out of meetings with allies.
Left-wing extremists do exist—witness the high-profile murder of activist Charlie Kirk by such an extremist in 2025—and the document spends ample time on them. But it notably says nothing of threats from right-wing groups, despite the fact that these groups have caused the vast majority of US domestic terrorism deaths since 2001. Leaving out an entire ecosystem of domestic terrorists is analytic malpractice.
In Africa, where the most potentially dangerous terrorist sanctuaries are flourishing, the document engages in more political theater. One of the more head-scratching claims is the line: “We are rebuilding bilateral [counterterrorism] relations with African governments who had been ignored or insulted by Biden-era neocolonial policies focused on globalist left-wing cultural hegemony.” The Africa section also laments the plight of Christians in Africa, who it calls “the most persecuted people on Earth,” exaggerating a real problem for political effect. However, the document does not address current near-term crises on the continent. In Mali, al-Qaeda’s Sahel branch looks likely to oust the government. The Atlantic Council’s own Alex Plitsas after a recent trip to Africa noted that the US military efforts on the continent were under resourced and under prioritized, warning that the lights were blinking red in terms of the terrorism threat.
Finally, any counterterrorism strategy must not only include kinetic options; the US can’t just kill its way out of this problem set. The death of a senior ISIS terrorist last week from a US and Nigerian joint operation was enormously welcome, but ISIS has proved resilient, and this is just one part of what must be a whole-of-government strategy. But the document completely ignores soft power, and the Trump administration’s elimination of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) among other major cuts to the US State Department have contributed to an erosion of US soft power worldwide.
—Marc Polymeropoulos is a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense program of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and an adviser to the Counterterrorism Project. He worked for twenty-six years at the CIA before retiring in July 2019 at the senior intelligence service level.