STRATEGIC INTENT
"We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans
and confront the worst threats before they emerge.
In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is
the path of action. And this nation will act."
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
JUNE 1, 2002
The intent of our national strategy is to stop terrorist attacks against the United States, its citizens, its interests, and our friends and allies around the world and ultimately, to create an international environment inhospitable to terrorists and all those who support them. To accomplish these tasks we will simultaneously act on four fronts.
The United States and its partners will defeat terrorist organizations of global reach by attacking their sanctuaries; leadership; command, control, and communications; material support; and finances. This approach will have a cascading effect across the larger terrorist landscape, disrupting the terrorists' ability to plan and operate. As a result, it will force these organizations to disperse and then attempt to reconsolidate along regional lines to improve their communications and cooperation.
As this dispersion and organizational degradation occurs, we will work with regional partners to implement a coordinated effort to squeeze, tighten, and isolate the terrorists. Once the regional campaign has localized the threat, we will help states develop the military, law enforcement, political, and financial tools necessary to finish the task (figure 3). However, this campaign need not be sequential to be effective; the cumulative effect across all geographic regions will help achieve the results we seek.
We will deny further sponsorship, support, and sanctuary to terrorists by ensuring other states accept their responsibilities to take action against these international threats within their sovereign territory. UNSCR 1373 and the 12 UN counterterrorism conventions and protocols establish high standards that we and our international partners expect others to meet in deed as well as word.
Where states are willing and able, we will reinvigorate old partnerships and forge new ones to combat terrorism and coordinate our actions to ensure that they are mutually reinforcing and cumulative.
Where states are weak but willing, we will support them vigorously in their efforts to build the institutions and capabilities needed to exercise authority over all their territory and fight terrorism where it exists.
Where states are reluctant, we will work with our partners to convince them to change course and meet their international obligations.
Where states are unwilling, we will act decisively to counter the threat they pose and, ultimately, to compel them to cease supporting terrorism.
We will diminish the underlying conditions that terrorist seek to exploit by enlisting the international community to focus its efforts and resources on the areas most at risk. We will maintain the momentum generated in response to the September 11 attacks by working with our partners abroad and various international forums to keep combating terrorism at the forefront of the international agenda.
Most importantly, we will defend the United States, our citizens, and our interests at home and abroad by both proactively protecting our homeland and extending our defenses to ensure we identify and neutralize the threat as early as possible.
Victory in the War Against Terror
Victory against terrorism will not occur as a single, defining moment. It will not be marked by the likes of the surrender ceremony on the deck of the USS Missouri that ended World War II. However, through the sustained effort to compress the scope and capability of terrorist organizations, isolate them regionally, and destroy them within state borders, the United States and its friends and allies will secure a world in which our children can live free from fear and where the threat of terrorist attacks does not define our daily lives.
Victory, therefore, will be secured only as long as the United States and the international community maintain their vigilance and work tirelessly to prevent terrorists from inflicting horrors like those of September 11, 2001.