The Secure Freedom Strategy: A Plan for Victory Over the Global Jihad Movement

For at least thirty-five years, the United States has been at war with enemies sworn to its destruction. It did not seek enmity or hostilities with them. Both are the product of forces that long predated the establishment of this country, to say nothing of its adoption toward the end of the 20th Century of policies towards the Middle East or other regions. For much of this period, the U.S. government has pursued various strategies – including selective military engagements, benign neglect, willful blindness and outright appeasement – that have in common one very low common denominator: They all ignore the aforementioned realities and, as a practical matter, have exacerbated them. A lack of clarity about these realities or a strategy for dealing effectively with them has contributed to a strategic environment of great and growing danger and a wholly inadequate American capacity for contending with such perils. This paper recommends corrective actions, starting with a clear-eyed understanding of the enemy we confront – namely, an international, ideologically driven Global Jihad Movement and its enablers – and the essential elements of an effective strategy for countering it. The alternative approach is modeled after the successful strategy President Ronald Reagan pursued to defeat Soviet communism, embodied in his National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 75.