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Forget China and Russia, terrorists are still a major threat

A Hellenic navy special forces sniper watches maritime operations during bi-lateral training in Souda Bay, Greece. U.S. special operations forces, Hellenic navy special forces and Hellenic forces participated in bi-lateral training exercises to strengthen their partnership and share knowledge. (U.S. Navy photo by Joel Diller/Released)

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It is an undeniable fact that the U.S. military has been gradually shifting its focus from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations to near-peer threats, such as China and Russia. Navy SEALs have been practicing with increased frequency in the Pacific in anticipation of a potential conflict with the former. Special Forces teams are rotating more frequently in Europe, training alongside allied and partner nations to address the latter. Yet there are some in the foreign policy, defense, and intelligence communities who argue that the future will still be rife with counterterrorism operations such as those against al-Qaeda, ISIS, and al-Shabaab.

Earlier in July, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) held a panel that debated the future of American foreign policy and military operations. Two members of congress with military and intelligence backgrounds presented their views on the topic.

Representative Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) said, “I worry that the pendulum is going to swing too far away from counterterrorism, and we’ll lose those valuable lessons learned, as we did after Vietnam. I can almost imagine the champagne popping in the defense industrial base because now we can get back to our comfort zone of building bombers and tanks and aircraft carriers. Having special operators learn languages doesn’t create a lot of jobs in middle America.”

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  • Avatar
    Max H

    While we had better not lose these hard-won lessons, the fact of the matter is that Islamic terrorism, in and of itself, has never been a true threat as far as bringing down our nation in any kind of traditional sense. There is no movement on any real scale to do so. One could argue that it does present a threat based on eroding of our system of governance by usurping the Constitution, but that is beyond non-traditional, so I'll let it lie. The Russians & Chinese have the potential to upset the current global order of things. Whether you like that order or not is subject to debate, but any significant change would necessitate a change to America's approach and stake in the game. These are the types of things (usually in conjunction with each other) that cause world wars.

  • Avatar
    Grover H

    They better be ready to do both. Thy have been doing counter-terrorism for almost 2 decades.