Fighting Ideologies: Lessons Learned from the War on Terror and Their Application to Strategic Competition

Ideology—an overarching narrative that explains what is wrong with the world, an ideal state for how the world ought to be, and a course of action for realizing that world—is a critical warfighting capability that helps adversaries explain and sustain their military actions over a prolonged period. The United States, along with its allies and partners, devoted critical time and energy to countering the ideology of al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham as part of a comprehensive strategy to defeat these groups in the Global War on Terror. Some of these lessons have application to today’s fight against state actors in an era of strategic competition. Ultimately, we need to consider how our actions uphold or undermine our adversaries’ ideologies and fight both the military capacity and the ideology of our adversaries in a synergistic way where both are undermined simultaneously. This article was initially presented as a paper at the Post-9/11 Irregular Warfare Lessons Learned Conference in Annapolis, Maryland from September 17-18, 2024. The conference was sponsored by FPRI’s Center for the Study of Intelligence and Nontraditional Warfare and the Department of Defense’s Irregular Warfare Center. The United States along with its allies and partners devoted critical time and energy to countering the ideology of al Qaeda (AQ) and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) as part of a comprehensive strategy to defeat these groups in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). These ideologies, which were part of a larger interpretation of Islam called Jihadi Salafism, formed a critical warfighting capability for these terrorist groups that explained what was wrong with the world and who was to blame for it, an ideal state for how the world ought to be, and how to get there. Today, the United States and its allies face threats posed by strategic state competitors, especially Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. While considerable focus has been placed on these countries’ military capabilities, including their nuclear ambitions, considerably less attention has been paid to understanding and fighting their ideologies. As with AQ, ISIS, and other Salafi Jihadis, ideology plays a critical role in the warfighting capabilities of our strategic competitors, and we should be actively taking measures to undermine their ideology. Some (but not all) of the lessons learned from countering Jihadi Salafism have application to today’s fight against our strategic adversaries. Most importantly, we need to understand ideology as a warfighting capability and consider how our actions uphold or undermine these ideologies. Additionally, we need to fight both the military capacity and the ideology of our adversaries in a synergistic way where both are undermined simultaneously. And, while doing this, we need to be careful of increased apocalypticism in our adversaries’ ideologies, which could signal a willingness to use weapons of mass destruction.