America’s new counter-terrorism strategy is a partisan polemic 

Sebastian Gorka, America’s counter-terrorism tsar, is abrasive. Critics of the Iran war are “testicularly challenged”. Journalists are “scumbags” or “punks”. As for terrorists, they must be vapourised into “red mist” and their bodies stacked “like cordwood”. Mr Gorka takes pride in his work. “I pinch myself everyday,” he enthused on a podcast last year. “I’ve been waiting about 25 years for this job.”

It should therefore come as little surprise that America’s new counter-terrorism strategy—hailed by Mr Gorka as his “life’s work”—is more polemic than policy. For a magnum opus, it is short: just 16 pages, including covers and pictures. It is also light on detail. The strategy identifies three “major types of terror groups”: narco-terrorists and transnational gangs; Islamist terrorists; and violent left-wing extremists. It says nothing about threats stemming from the war in Iran or the long-standing menace from right-wing extremists. Described as “apolitical”, the document is anything but. Donald Trump’s name appears dozens of times in a nominally non-partisan memo. “It’s not a strategy,” says Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It’s an ideological, political document that fails to analytically assess the counter-terrorism threat.”

There is little new inside. The document largely spells out what the Trump administration has already been doing. The priority, it says, is going after drug cartels. For eight months, America’s armed forces have struck alleged “narco-terrorist” boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. To date, it has carried out 57 confirmed strikes, which have killed at least 192 people. The document boasts that sea-borne drug trafficking has decreased by 90%. The campaign’s dubious legality aside, experts say the document betrays a lack of focus. “If every criminal group is also a terrorist group there’s no distinction anymore,” warns Colin Clarke of the Soufan Centre, a non-profit. “It takes finite resources away from fighting actual terrorist organisations.”

The government also vows to keep tabs on “legacy Islamist terrorists” like al-Qaeda and ISIS. It boasts of loosening rules of engagement, which has led to a surge in air strikes. In Somalia, for example, strikes since the start of 2025 have risen to 190—a nearly four-fold increase on the Biden years. Some of the strategy’s sharpest barbs are reserved for Europe. The old world has become an “incubator” of terrorism stemming from its “open borders”. It warns the continent must “act now and halt its wilful decline”.

Strikingly, the document does not mention the impact of the Iran war. A spate of attacks in recent months, some of which appear to have been inspired by the conflict, have raised questions about America’s counter-terror apparatus. Thousands of federal agents have been dragooned into immigration duty. And in the days before the Iran war began, the FBI fired a dozen staff, including agents who worked in a unit monitoring threats from Iran. “The Iran war is a gaping hole in this document,” points out Mr Clarke.

The strategy’s focus on left-wing extremism is similarly hazy. Political killings by left-wing types, such as the murders of Charlie Kirk or Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, are a real and growing issue. But it is not clear whether these killings actually constitute terrorism. The administration has nonetheless designated amorphous, left-wing militant groups as “terrorist organisations”. Worryingly, violence perpetrated by right-wing extremists has been expunged from the document. “The people in charge are taking something that has traditionally been apolitical and non-ideological and weaponising it for ideological purposes,” laments Mr Levitt. “We’re less safe for it.”■