The May 2026 White House release of the 2026 United States Counterterrorism Strategy reveals a comprehensive effort to deal effectively with real terrorism threats to Americans. The document identifies the three most pressing counterterrorism threats: “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs, Legacy Islamist Terrorists, and Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.” The report identifies these groups as representing a “threat that is significant and pervasive.”
Counterterrorism Strategy Eliminates Political Bias
As Liberty Nation News reported, an essential element of the National Security Strategy (NSS) is the ability of the US to work with regional governments “in ridding the region of narco-terrorists and other transnational criminals.” Consistent with that objective, the Counterterrorism Strategy makes it clear from the beginning that its purpose is to eliminate the specter of political bias. As the Strategy states in the introduction, “Our counterterrorism powers will not be used to target our fellow Americans who simply disagree with us. We will not permit the weaponization of America’s unparalleled CT [counterterrorism] capabilities for partisan purposes and in contravention of every American’s God-given rights.” The document wanted to distance what it stood for from what it contends was the political motivation of the previous administration. Trump’s counterterrorism team has established a series of priorities that focus on a wide range of terrorist threats. Among those threats are “Jehadi terrorists [that] have continued to plot against and kill Americans.”
Additionally, the CT Strategy seeks to “prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.” As a “special strategic category,” a priority will be to “maintain and increase our national assets to combat and render safe the most dangerous terrorist threat to America: non-state acquisition and use of weapons of mass destruction, especially the terrorist use of nuclear or radiological devices.”
To affect its CT Strategy, the Trump administration has divided the world into five regions: Our (Western) Hemisphere, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia. To underscore the Trump Administration’s overarching NSS of America First, one of the actions taken by President Trump during his first day in office was to designate “cartels and gangs flooding drugs, weapons, and illegal aliens into the United States as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.” Consequently, the president has committed the Department of War to eradicating these FTOs to eliminate the threat they pose to the US. President Trump has authorized the Department of War to take direct action against cartel drug-smuggling fast boats. According to Military Times, “As of May 6, the Trump administration and U.S. military have disclosed 57 strikes,” leading to the killing of 180 would be drug smugglers. These efforts have resulted, as the CR Strategy states, “in a more than 90% decrease in maritime drug smuggling into the United States.”
Strategy Addresses Regional Threats
In the Middle East, the CT Strategy identifies Iran, left unattended, as the “greatest threat to the United States.” However, since February 28, Iran has not been left unattended. Operation Epic Fury has resulted in Iran’s terrorist outreach being significantly degraded. Finishing the job of ensuring that Tehran’s Islamic fanatics never get an atomic weapon is the focus of the current Iran conflict. Important to note is that the US’s increased “domestic energy production means the Middle East is no longer as central to America’s stability.” Addressing the current conundrum, the CT Strategy asserts, “we will not allow strategic waterways such as the Strait of Hormuz or Red Sea to be held hostage by non-state or state actors.” The US Navy is attending to that problem now.
The threat the US faces in Europe involves the fact that “nefarious actors -- al Qaeda, ISIS, cartels, and state actors – have freely exploited Europe’s weak borders and diminished CT resources to turn Europe into a permissive operating environment for plotting against Europeans and Americans.” Consequently, the US is working with European allies to return to a “common sense and reality-based counterterrorism” approach.
Africa has become a significant threat since surviving remnants of ISIS, “the world’s most dangerous terrorist group,” is reconstituting in West Africa as well as “the Sahel region, the Lake Chad Basin, Mozambique, Sudan, and, of course, Somalia, where parts of ISIS have re-established themselves and Al Shabaab maintains its tribal-based Islamist insurgency.” The CT Strategy has two goals in Africa. The first is to ensure that “none of the Jihadi groups can build a base of operations that allows them to plot and execute attacks against the United States and American interests.” Secondly, and an objective that was all but ignored by the Biden administration is to “protect Christians, who have been slaughtered at the hands of these Jihadi groups.”
The Asian threat stems from South and Central Asian populations residing in the US who are “being targeted for radicalization by these terror groups.” Consequently, the Trump administration is seeking to rebuild relationships with friends and partners in South and Central Asia that are “crucial to reducing the terrorist threat to the homeland.” The idea is to work with international governments to reduce the terrorists’ influence there so as not to be exported to the US.
The CT Strategy concludes with an exhortation to understand that the “primary responsibility of the US Government’s counterterrorism enterprise is to prevent a mass casualty terror attack on American soil. Weapons of mass destruction provide terrorists with the ultimate means to cause such harm.” To that end, the CT Strategy is, as it states, “a common sense and reality-based Counterterrorism Strategy” consistent with the NSS and America First guiding principle.
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The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.
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