FARAH PANDITH
Pushing his $1.9 trillion stimulus package through Congress, President Joseph Biden argued long and hard that the only way to defeat a deadly virus was to go big. Now, he has to go big on another infectious virus: the rising swell of hatred and violence that has ripped through regions as diverse as Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa and North America, where the growing dark forces of hate and extremism led to the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Biden and his expert team have first-hand experience with terrorist movements as well as the benefit of the long arc of history. But much has changed in the 20 years since the September 11, 2001 attacks – the last time organized extremists took aim at sacred symbols of America.[1] Looking back at the horror of that day and what it unleashed, we are reminded of the power and malevolence of organized, relentless bad actors and what they can achieve in the name of some twisted ideology. A new federal intelligence report says domestic terrorism in 2021 could likely escalate with “support from persons in the United States or abroad.”[2] It’s why President Biden must be bold, focused and use all instruments of soft power to diminish the appeal of the ideology.
The confluence of a pandemic, bitter political terrain at home and abroad, emotional fatigue and deep fears of “The Other” is a context ripe for bad actors to recruit and radicalize. The worry is that if American leadership is not clear and decisive, we will allow a powerful dark era to take hold. The Biden Administration offers the U.S. a chance to finally develop a comprehensive, global approach that connects lessons from the past and amplifies new opportunities for a contemporary world where the threat landscape is shaped by “us versus them” ideologies; groups that manipulate religion, history and technology; influencers pushing the power of “purity” and ideological war fronts from the violent far right to the so-called Islamic State.[3] This requires creating an entirely new outlook, framework and organizational system.
Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) emerged circa 2006 as a soft power tool to help fight the ideology of extremists. But even with a clear understanding of the soft power capacity needed then (and since), the U.S. government still does not have all the necessary assets to win an ideological war. While it is hard to grasp why America’s soft power capacity is still lacking, it is important to state that CVE has never received the attention and benefit of resources given to a traditional war. Non-kinetic warfare is not unknown to us; and American power, innovation and creativity must be used forcefully as it is the best tool to confront the virus we face.
In my book, How We Win: How Cutting-Edge Entrepreneurs, Political Visionaries, Enlightened Business Leaders, and Social Media Mavens Can Defeat The Extremist Threat, I write, “Whether you define CVE broadly or narrowly, the discipline focuses on strengthening the fabric of local communities to resist extremist ideas, exposing youth to alternative ideas about identity and belonging, and putting a social, mental, and cultural system in place to support these efforts.” [4]
CVE requires deep listening, partnerships with local communities and investment in new networks of like-minded actors who can help reshape their own societies to reject the threat of bad actors who are luring in new recruits offline and online.
If America and our partners do not invest in the labor-intensive work of transforming the cultural and emotional ecosystem that informs how a person thinks about identity, we will fail. Identity and belonging are at the very heart of a person’s emotional movement to consider the narratives, ideology and value system of extremists. An advanced, smart CVE strategy is critical. It must include leadership on the mega, macro, micro and nano levels to form a holistic approach that changes the very ecosystem of how individuals and communities understand their identities and connectedness.
This may sound complicated, but solutions exist right now, and the Biden Administration has an extraordinary opportunity to use them. However, this new era is far more complex and demanding than previous times. Adversaries have also learned new tactics over the last 20 years, and their ideologies of hate and extremism are morphing into digitally connected, global networks to recruit and radicalize. Previously implausible threats like QAnon have become too dangerous to ignore.
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Solutions exist right now, and the Biden Administration has an extraordinary opportunity to use them.
QAnon is just one of the movements that have reshaped the American threat landscape. Like the so-called Islamic State, beginning as an unlikely enemy, QAnon is now pulling in ideological foot soldiers from all over the world (nearly 70 countries), and it may also bring them to America’s shores (i.e., as foreign fighters).[5] American white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-government movements and militias have all moved into sharper focus as “a serious and growing national security threat,” according to the Biden Administration.[6]
In asking for a threat assessment within his first 100 days, Biden has signaled the urgency he places on this issue. He has also used unambiguous language around all aspects of hate and extremism, mindful of the rule of law, freedom of speech, civil rights and civil liberties. He has spoken with empathy for victims of hate and has used his office to draw a clear line on the Capitol attack. Calling the perpetrators“ domestic terrorists,” he has sent the right signal to our citizens, national security establishment and the world. He is off to a great start.
But facing this unprecedented threat at home and recognizing the seriousness of extremist threats abroad, Biden must advance a larger, more comprehensive focus on the ideological terrain. He can do more than his predecessors did to make deep progress in changing the environment so that the ideology of hate and extremism is starved of oxygen to ensure that millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are protected. He can do this through advancing a smarter CVE strategy that looks at the current and future terrain.
A smart CVE strategy is one that includes:
Reorganizing government for the global ideological fight, including creation of a CVE “lead” for the inter-agency
Connecting efforts between domestic and international ideologies
Offering sticks and carrots to social media platforms, states and companies that create safer ideological environments
Developing predictive tools such as cultural listening [7]
Bringing mayors, governors, global alliances and other partners into the fight in a more connected way
Upgrading America’s communication prowess and building an advanced, 21st-century infrastructure of soft power
Taking recommendations from various CVE Commissions and Task Forces including the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s 2016 CVE Task Force Report [8]
Increasing the budget for soft power at home and abroad
Declaring clear objectives and success metrics on the ideological war
Filling in blank holes of knowledge (e.g. female radicalization)[9]
Building dozens of global networks of activists, social entrepreneurs and civil society organizations
Scaling what America has already invested in
The Biden Administration is likely evaluating what is possible and what it can learn from the past. There are important lessons from the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, including going too slowly on CVE and not thinking big enough. However, the most important lesson is that Biden has to prioritize soft power. His Administration must sell soft power the way it is “selling” the vaccine. Every state across America can develop entire systems of influence to stop hate and extremism, for example. In America and abroad, nations can catalyze CVE programs (off-ramps, mental health support, former extremist PSAs, digital literacy and so on). It will not be enough to increase funding to some CVE grant programs; the Administration must reboot the effort, fix the lacking soft power infrastructure (the Global Engagement Center is no replacement for the former U.S. Information Agency, for example) and engage Congress. Soft power has hardly gotten attention from Congress over the last two decades, but maybe now that Congress was actually attacked, lawmakers may have a deeper interest in funding CVE programs at scale. Solutions are available and affordable right now.
We can’t win if we don’t activate all sectors; each town, city and state needs to take hate seriously. I know this firsthand. When I was asked to leave the National Security Council to join the Department of State to operationalize our concept of CVE more than 14 years ago, there was no one doing CVE at State, DHS or elsewhere. It was not popular, people’s eyes glazed over when talking about the ideological fight and there were no resources. We have come a long way. There is an entire CVE industry within government and outside of it.
But it has not reached its potential. Twenty years after 9/11, we must, finally, do all we can as whole of society. How We Win examines what government, business, social media companies, philanthropists and all of us must do together to defeat the extremist threat. It takes all of us.
Biden knows this new threat terrain. He also knows we have not done enough over the last 20 years because the results of our actions are evident. Hate and extremism is growing. A smarter, wiser and forward-leaning posture will make all the difference. Because the current soft power assets are outdated, now is the time advance smartly.
Government Organization
The U.S. government’s organization around CVE soft power is well-intentioned but disconnected, ad hoc and filled with small-scale programs that leave too many blind spots to the changing landscape. Part of the challenge has been the way it was organized after 9/11 and then tweaked over the years. This current structure is setting America back.
Biden needs to overhaul the leadership for the entire CVE portfolio, giving one person responsibility over a comprehensive, global, whole-of-society strategy that also coordinates a whole-of-government approach, encompassing the Department of State, Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Commerce, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defense and Department of Education, among others. The CVE lead bears responsibility for the entire ideological threat landscape, and, like the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that person needs to report to the President.
Government Infrastructure
CVE will not thrive if it lives as a stepchild of counterterrorism. Kinetic power and strategy are vastly different and must be treated this way. The Biden Administration must re-imagine the best way for soft power to accelerate across various dimensions. For example, are CT personnel, development personnel and public diplomacy personnel the right ground force? The current system of CVE has not produced results. We must ask why. We must be willing to change the old infrastructure to allow American might in soft power to thrive.
Partnerships
Biden will not succeed in safeguarding society against dark ideologies if America doesn’t work closely with a wide set of international partners who provide exponential strength. At the highest level, these partners are multilateral organizations, global businesses and nation states. They include large coalitions of NGOs and local community groups. A multilayered approach toward partnership investment – working together to help build resilience within communities – will result in increasing resilience against extremists.
In my work in the Bush and Obama Administrations, I had the latitude to experiment with solutions to the ideological challenge, and they made a difference. Working with our embassies, we successfully built pilot programs, partnerships and new networks of change makers – all of which were designed to disrupt the environment through careful, steady relationship building, increased avenues to mobilize grassroots ideas and seed funding to build new CVE concepts; and we had buy-in from the White House.
The Biden Administration must look at the world with fresh eyes and ask, How can we strengthen the current CVE partnership architecture? What should be taught in schools (digital literacy, for example)? [10] How can we disrupt channels and go on the offense?
This requires a shared, common CVE strategy with sources of excellence in different nations, woven into a comprehensive strategy. No nation is immune from the threat of hate and extremism, and no nation has rid itself of bad actors. As we do with traditional wars in building a military coalition, not every country is expected to do everything. The
responsibilities are aligned and shared.
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No nation is immune from the threat of hate
and extremism
America’s strength is to be convener, facilitator and intellectual partner with the ideas and people on the ground. We can do far more than we have done and can mobilize new movements in authentic ways.
Preparedness, Prediction and Soft Power Infrastructure
Biden needs to invest in forecasting beyond traditional intelligence. Identifying societal indicators of change could not be more important in a world where digital natives (millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha) are seamlessly connected. America needs to be ahead of the curve and have better predictive analysis of what is happening within the emotional, cultural and psychological experience of youth.
In my travels to 80 nations talking with Muslim youth, I began to see changes within their lived experience. Communities told me how changes in language, dress and interests directly reflected identity. Many youth were rejecting diversity of expression and replacing it with a monolithic expression of Islam, believing that there was a right and wrong way to show your “Muslimness.” These youth were recasting every conceivable part of their daily lives to demonstrate an austere devotion to “authentic” Islam. They are expressing their identities on a daily basis and in a “surround sound” environment that encompasses everything they do, eat, watch, read or otherwise consume; Islam has become a sort of lifestyle brand.[11] While this might seem inconsequential, it is not: these preferences are sharp indicators of political patterns and societal trends that shape society and provide clues to how to disrupt mal-intended influences.
Seeing around a corner into the cultural domains is not the work of government – but it needs to be. We were caught off guard to obvious major changes occurring within the daily experience of Muslims. Did this contribute to our surprise that Muslim youth would find the ideology of ISIS appealing? The same is true with other communities. Take the “sudden” emergence of purity movements in America: Could we have used predictive analysis on consumer behavior or AI power to condense data showing a rise toward white supremacism or conspiracy theories?
We need to collect cultural intelligence and include social scientists in our efforts to understand society – and its direct impact on identity. America needs to invest in the work of prediction and analysis in the cultural domain. Just as businesses predict the next trend, government needs to recognize shifts within societies. Our embassies do not always report on them, and if they do, the information is not assembled for social scientists and others to interpret identity as the root of an ideological threat. How people experience themselves, how they view the world and where they think they belong is fundamental to understanding the next threat. Without these insights, our work in stopping hate and extremism will be prolonged.
It is essential that the Biden Administration consider the turning point we have today in the aftermath of a violent attack on the seat of our democracy. Biden has promised to tell the truth to the American people. Here is the truth on extremism: we can’t stop violent extremists completely. But we can dramatically shrink the pool of recruits, and that will help to flatten the terrorism curve. That should be our goal.
It’s time for the new Administration to go big on soft power.
[1] Pandith, Farah, and Jacob Ware. “Opinion: Two Decades after 9/11, Terror Has Morphed.” CNN. Cable News Network, September 11, 2020. https://www. cnn.com/2020/09/11/opinions/terrorism-extremism-9-11-pandith-ware/index.html.
[2] “Unclassified Summary of Assessment on Domestic Violent Extremism.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security, March 17, 2021.
[3] Pandith, Farah, and Jacob Ware. “Countering Violent Extremism: Three Moves Biden Should Make Now.” Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations, January 28, 2021. https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/countering- violent-extremism-three-moves-biden-should-make-now.
[4] Farah Pandith, How We Win: How Cutting-Edge Entrepreneurs, Political Visionaries, Enlightened Business Leaders, and Social Media Mavens Can Defeat the Extremist Threat (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2019), 15.
[5] Morris, Loveday, and Emily Rauhala. “In the United States, QAnon Is Struggling. The Conspiracy Theory Is Thriving Abroad.” The Washington Post. WP Company, November 13, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ world/qanon-conspiracy-global-reach/2020/11/12/ca312138-13a5-11eb-a258- 614acf2b906d_story.html.
[6] “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki and National Economic Director Brian Deese.” The White House. The United States Government, January 22, 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-brief- ings/2021/01/22/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-and-national- economic-director-brian-deese/.
[7] Sparks & Honey Briefing | 03.02.2021. YouTube. YouTube, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bI0XEXnge0.
[8] “Turning Point.” Turning Point | Center for Strategic and International Studies. Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 14, 2016. https://www.csis.org/features/turning-point; “Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Subcommittee Interim Report and Recommendations .” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, June 2016.
[9] Pandith, Farah, Jacob Ware, and Mia Bloom. “Female Extremists in QAnon and ISIS Are on the Rise. We Need a New Strategy to Combat Them.” NBCNews.com. NBCUniversal News Group, December 11, 2020. https:// www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/female-extremists-qanon-isis-are-rise- we-need-new-strategy-ncna1250619.
[10] Singer, P.W., and Michael McConnell. “Teaching Cyber Citizenship Must Become a National Priority.” Time. Time, January 21, 2021. https://time. com/5932134/cyber-citizenship-national-priority/.
[11] Pandith, 180.
FARAH PANDITH, a former diplomat, is a foreign policy strategist and author of How We Win: How Cutting-Edge Entrepreneurs, Political Visionaries, Enlightened Business Leaders, and Social Media Mavens Can Defeat the Extremist Threat. Pandith served in various senior roles on the National Security Council, at the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development as a political appointee under former U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Under U.S. Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, she served as the first-ever Special Representative to Muslim communities. After leaving government, she was appointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council, serving from 2015 to 2017, and also chaired its CVE Task Force. She is a senior fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School as well as an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In fall 2020, the Muhammad Ali Center named her its premier Muhammad Ali Global Peace Laureate.
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