Hal Brands, Columnist

America Needs a Counterterrorism Strategy That Won’t Break the Bank

With rising threats from China and Russia, there won’t be more trillions to spend fighting jihadists.

September 18, 2018 at 11:00 AM UTC

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

A light footprint.
Photographer: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

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Has the war on terrorism been worth it? The 17th anniversary of 9/11 last week elicited a flurry of pieces debating this issue, a number of them focused on a recent think-tank report estimating that counterterrorism has cost the U.S. nearly $3 trillion since 2001.

Given that there is still no end to the war on terror in sight, it’s not surprising that many observers consider that investment to have been profligate and unrewarding. That judgment is probably too harsh in view of what U.S. counterterrorism strategy has accomplished. But it’s true that the U.S. will need a more cost-effective strategy in the future.