Trump’s counterterrorism strategy turns toward the culture war

The Trump administration’s May 6 release of its 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy represents a significant shift from those principles.

Ideology was not meant to be a basis for targeting

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

I spent years working inside the U.S. counterterrorism system, and I recognize much of the strategy’s language. It identifies traditional counterterrorist groups and facilitators, such as al-Qaida and Iran. It also expands counterterrorism priorities to include drug cartels and transnational criminal networks, a shift for which a reasonable argument can be made.

But the strategy introduces a third priority that blurs ideology, identity and operational threat. It says counterterrorism activity will prioritize “violent secular political groups” whose ideology is “anti-American,” “radically pro-transgender” and anarchist. Ideological identity appears to become the gateway into counterterrorism scrutiny before intent, capability or concrete movement toward violence is established.

Counterterrorism experts have always examined ideology — radical beliefs, propaganda and grievance narratives — because those factors can help explain why someone might move toward violence. But ideology was meant to be evidence in context, not a basis for targeting by itself.

The new strategy applies this flawed approach to European security. The strategy describes the continent as both a target of and an “incubator” for terrorists, attributing that danger not only to weak borders and diminished counterterrorism resources, but to “unfettered mass migration,” “alien cultures” and “globalist ideals.”

The effect is to turn a security challenge into a cultural indictment, suggesting that Europe’s vulnerability lies not only in counterterrorism gaps, but in societies that have become too open, too diverse or too liberal to protect themselves.

That framing is hyperbolic and analytically weak. European governments have spent more than two decades building counterterrorism systems around passenger data sharing, terrorism financing controls, watchlisting and cross-border intelligence, and law enforcement cooperation. Those systems are organized around terrorism-related conduct, not cultural suspicion.

Report reduce complex reality to a single dimension

Credit: NYT

Credit: NYT

The strategy’s migration claim is equally distorted. A 2025 study by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism found that migration-related terrorism in Europe has not grown as a threat over time and remains limited in scale. The answer is targeted assessment: who is mobilizing, who is recruiting, who is facilitating and where institutions are failing to detect movement toward violence.

Collective suspicion is not analysis. It is a shortcut.

The strategy’s approach to Africa is similarly reductive, proposing a lighter military footprint and expecting regional governments to carry more of the burden themselves. That tradeoff may sound prudent. But in places where governments are weak and institutions are fragile — across the Sahel and parts of West Africa, where jihadist groups are expanding — a lighter U.S. footprint only works if intelligence sharing, partner-force development and diplomatic engagement are sustained.

If “burden shifting” becomes a euphemism for disengagement, it will leave precisely the gaps terrorist groups are built to exploit.

The strategy also reflects selective framing in Nigeria, treating attacks on Christian communities as the defining lens for understanding jihadist violence in that country. Nigeria has experienced one of the world’s deadliest jihadist insurgencies for more than a decade, with catastrophic consequences for Muslim and Christian civilians alike. Reducing that complex reality to a single dimension does not reflect an accurate threat assessment — it serves a narrative.

Past shows us that overreach has consequences

Defenders of the strategy will argue, not unreasonably, that the underlying threats are real. Cartels are killing Americans. Iran has not abandoned its support for terrorism. Jihadist networks are plotting. Violent extremists exist across the ideological spectrum, and some domestic threats have been underestimated in the past.

The problem is not what the strategy identifies. The problem is the framework it builds around those threats — one that treats some political and religious identities as victims, and other political or cultural identities as warning indicators.

Counterterrorism is a long game. The networks that plot against Americans take years to build, and so do the partnerships, the intelligence relationships and the institutional trust needed to disrupt them. When allies doubt whether Washington is a serious security partner or an ideological combatant, they share less.

When domestic communities feel targeted for their beliefs rather than their actions, they cooperate less. When analysts are pushed to track politically defined threats rather than the operationally real ones, the system loses the clarity it depends on.

History offers a warning. After 9/11, the urgent desire to prevent the next attack led to surveillance overreach, flawed detention practices and policies that too often blurred the line between evidence-based suspicion and religious or ethnic profiling. Those missteps handed adversaries a recruitment narrative and the country spent the better part of a decade trying to correct them.

The threat landscape today is no less complex. Meeting terrorist threats demands precision, depth of partnership and institutional credibility. A strategy that treats culture, identity and ideology as substitutes for evidence of movement toward violence puts those at risk — and leaves America less prepared for the threats that actually require counterterrorism.

Brian O’Neill is a retired CIA executive who has served in such leadership roles as deputy director of analysis at the National Counterterrorism Center and as executive editor of the President’s Daily Brief. He now teaches national security at Georgia Tech and contributes to the journal “Just Security” and other outlets.