 Well, good morning and my thanks to our hosts and to the resolve network for all the work that you do We can't killer capture our way out of this fight We all nod our heads reassuringly when a senior leader gets up and makes this remark and Then collectively in the same breath we say we will defeat destroy Eradicate or annihilate terrorist organizations We keep saying we will win Look most terrorist groups die within a year So I guess if you're fighting terrorist organizations, it is possible to win But perhaps organization isn't the right unit of analysis Most terrorist organization most terrorist movements instead last a very very long time But don't worry Dias has been defeated The governments of Iraq the governments of the United States in fact the 81 members of the global coalition To defeat Dias have declared that we have defeated Dias So after hearing that Dias has been defeated will our societies be more resilient When the next bomb goes off in the next country perpetrated by the next organization or individual associated with Dias or With al-Qaeda for that matter which is striding into its fourth decade in each of these countries There's a new leader Experimenting with new terrorist tactics and weapons exploiting new grievances Exploiting new conflict zones So when the next bomb goes off because it will well, we have bred Fragility into our societies instead of resilience Why do our leaders insist on saying that we will win when we know we can't killer capture our way out of this fight? Why are we held hostage to a logic that sets the threshold for our success? so impossibly high and Then through funding relegates us to relying on our intelligence or intelligence-led military and law enforcement capabilities alone Well at the same time that's the threshold for success for our adversaries so low That even after they have lost the very claim to their legitimacy They still can't help but succeed To remain and expand Why do we keep playing into their hands? I'd argue that it's because we don't have a grand strategy an organizing principle that we all agree on That understands the essential nature of terrorism Therefore our citizens don't know what we're trying to accomplish nor what's realistic to accomplish an Absent that collective understanding They simply demand safety and our political leaders merely respond by talking tough on terrorism Now terrorism is complicated in menacing How could we articulate a grand strategy that? Would be understood and even if we could wouldn't that grand strategy just by necessity have to be bellicose given how scary the threat is At the risk of donning rose-colored glasses I can think of a time when such a menacing threat was met with a fairly sober and rational response That could be easily distilled into one intelligible word containment That was an overly bellicose And it was built on a line of argumentation that politicians could confidently articulate administration after administration without sounding weak The understanding that merely our way of life was more empowering was more legitimate Offered a better future than that of our adversaries and what they had to offer instead was bankrupt And then if we empowered civil society and built alliances our adversary would be small it would rot from within Now I'm not arguing the containment was perfect was without its critics nor that it's the right strategy itself for the current threat I'm also aware that it's easy to think that this Cold War paradigm the idea of a grand strategy It doesn't relate to terrorism because the Soviet Union was a rational political actor and Terrorism after all is just about the wanton violence the attack Therefore counterterrorism must simply be about stopping the next attack Well, we've gotten really good at stopping the next attack and Terrorism is generally up by an order of magnitude since 9-11 Because terrorism is not about the act of violence The next attack is just a means to an end The end being the psychological impact on an audience beyond the physical target the attack intended to induce political change Maybe that political change is revolutionary overthrowing governments and the international system or maybe it's about preventing change protecting the status quo In either case it's about highlighting a sense of collective victimhood and then selling violent empowerment as the way to vanquish that victimhood In order to shape society over time according to a vision of the future that the extremist believes is more legitimate than the alternatives And if terrorism is inherently about the political and psychological payoff from the threat of empowering violence counterterrorism has to be Primarily about blunting the psychological and political effects and undermining the legitimacy of violent empowerment If violence fails to generate the desired psychological and political payoff the incentive for violence decreases over time And what when I say over time I mean across generations and continents and sexes Here's your cub of the caliphate in this picture. We understand why the KKK is a 150 year movement When we understand the essential nature of terrorism in this context as a fight to garner social and political legitimacy Over time we understand that traditional counterterrorism is Necessary in a very limited way when violence is already mobilized, but it's entirely reactive and insufficient as grand strategy And we realize that the only way to marginalize the effects and attractiveness of violent extremism Is to foster alternative forms of community-centric empowerment? CVE is not a sideshow It's the main event So before crafting a strategy articulating a policy passing a law Conducting an operation launching a narrative campaign or even covering a terrorist attack on cable news We should ask ourselves the following question Will this effort empower the majority community in question for whom the terrorist claims to speak? To further marginalize the attractiveness and political and psychological impact of violent extremism in that community And if the answer is no it might feel really good, but it's probably lousy counterterrorism As my students in the peer-to-peer countering violent extremism program taught me Making victims and villains villains is the problem not the solution We need to help communities make heroes Thank you