Terrorism Now

The nature of terrorism and how to fight it have become defining global security questions since the end of the Cold War, especially after the attacks on New York and Washington D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001. Now, U.S. President Donald Trump and some of his advisers see Islamist terrorism as the sharp edge of a threat to Judeo-Christian civilization, in some ways equivalent to the ideological and military struggles against Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union. That’s a view with potentially broad implications for government policies and foreign relations. It’s also hotly debated.

The issue of who is or might be a terrorist is driving divisions within and between countries. Battles over who can get asylum in the U.S. and European Union are being fought between those who emphasize the risk that terrorists will hide among refugees and those who focus on welcoming families fleeing terrorized lands. In mid-2017, Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries cut ties with Qatar in part because of its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Saudi bloc considers a terrorist group. The EU and U.S. do not, although the Trump administration has considered giving it that designation. For Trump, the threat of terrorism is so great he’s pushed to have the North Atlantic Treaty Organization focus on it. That’s exacerbated worries among the European states in the alliance that the U.S. president is insufficiently committed to NATO’s original mission — the joint territorial defense of its members — at a time when the increasing assertiveness of Russia is their bigger concern.