Product Description

A comprehensive look at the War on Terror and the best way to a safer future

Scholar Daniel Byman offers a new approach to fighting the war on terrorism. He convincingly argues that two of the main solutions to terrorism offered by politicians-military intervention and the democratization of the Arab world-shouldn't even be our top priorities. Instead, he presents a fresh way to face intelligence and law enforcement challenges ahead: conduct counterinsurgency operations, undermine al-Qaeda's ideology, selectively push for reforms, and build key lasting alliances.

Daniel Byman (Washington, DC) directs the Security Studies Program and the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University. He is a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and also served on the 9/11 Commission. He regularly writes about terrorism and the Middle East for the Washington Post, Slate, and other publications.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #625846 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Review
"Byman makes the valid...point that...al-Qaeda's propaganda war has been far more effective than that of the US". The Times Higher Education Supplement Thursday 5 June 2008

Review
"An impressively comprehensive analysis of one of the most formidable security challenges of our time. Its authoritative policy recommendations are as timely as they are compelling."--Bruce Hoffman, Senior Fellow, Combating Terrorism Center, U.S. Military Academy

"Daniel Byman writes with the access and intimacy of an insider and the critical, dispassionate eye of an outsider. At a time when the sky does, indeed, appear to be falling, he offers us hopeful, realistic solutions for defeating terrorism. The Five Front War should be required reading for scholars, soldiers, and citizens searching for the way ahead."--Dana Priest, national security correspondent, The Washington Post

"Daniel Byman lays out a series of cogent, well argued strategies to prevail in the struggle against violent jihadists in The Five Front War that will be of considerable interest to policy makers, journalists, and the interested public alike. An important and well written addition to the field."--Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know

From the Inside Flap
One of the most chilling things to emerge in the aftermath of the July 2005 London transit system bombings was the low profile of the bombers in their local communities. Several of the bombers had traveled to al-Qa'ida's new haven in Pakistan, where they were indoctrinated and trained, but the British security services had their eyes on other targets. One bomber was the son of a couple who ran a fish-and-chips shop; a typical Brit, so described, who was born and raised in Britain, loved cricket--and seemed to be, according to several neighbors, a nice guy. Yet in a chilling video aired on the anniversary of the bombing he declared, "We love death the way you love life." He also promised that the war would never stop until the United States and the United Kingdom left Iraq and Afghanistan and ended support for allies such as India and Israel. Get ready for more, says author, scholar, and staff member of the 9/11 Commission Daniel Byman in The Five Front War. From defining the face of jihadist terrorism to navigating the thicket of internecine struggles within the Muslim world to the difficulties of winning a war of ideas, Byman makes it clear that Americans must get more sophisticated about the enemy, start thinking long-term, and, most of all, develop a coordinated strategy that does not, unlike current efforts, necessarily put military intervention and a relentless push for democratization at the forefront.

The author paints a big picture that many of us haven't seen, examining everything the war on terrorism encompasses. He charts counterterrorism efforts to date, all the major jihadist terrorist attacks worldwide since 9/11, and the many challenges to come. He offers a new approach based on five distinct fronts: rethinking the role of the military, finding new ways to win the war of ideas, making sure our intelligence gathering works effectively with local partners, focusing homeland defense on realistic threats rather than worst-case scenarios, and rethinking--but not abandoning--the goal of spreading democracy.

He asks provocative questions: How much fear is acceptable? How do you measure victory? How have some older terrorist groups managed to disband and convince their young followers to lay down arms? Should the United States support democracy everywhere?

There are no quick and easy answers, but, Byman cautions, we cannot continue to stumble through this new world with narrow vision and without a coherent policy. Crucial to winning on the five fronts is choosing the right allies, and those alliances may be very different than those forged during the Cold War. Making such changes in foreign policy will require a common vision among the American people and United States leaders of both political parties through multiple administrations.

The Five Front War demonstrates with crystal clarity that we can--and we must--do better than we have in the past in order to protect our future.

Customer Reviews

Five Front War The Best To Date
Daniel Byman's The Five Front War is by far the finest book to date on the subject of the campaign against global Jihadism. Dr. Byman, director of Georgetown University's preeminent Security Studies Program, a former 9/11 Commission staff member, and an expert on terrorist groups in the Middle East, is amply qualified to deliver such a seminal work on the topic. Others equally well-qualified have written on the subject but have failed to match Dr. Byman's comprehensiveness, his dispassionate analysis and his diligence in avoiding polemics and partisan attacks. This work promises to elevate the quality of national debate on a broad range of topics, steering discussion away from exaggerated portrayals of the threat and nightmarish scenarios toward a sober assessment of what we have so far accomplished and what more needs to be done and how to do it. In introducing a measured, judicious approach to understanding the set of issues that fall under the rubric "War on Terror", Dr. Byman has made a desperately needed contribution. For this alone, the book deserves applause.

But there is much more of merit in its pages. The Five Front War is both a guide on how to think about issues relating to global Jihadism and a succinct but thorough analysis of the range of choices facing policymakers for the foreseeable future. If there is a major point to be found in the work, it is perhaps that contrary to early post-9/11 rhetoric, the world has not been fundamentally altered by al-Qaeda. Rather, Dr. Byman implicitly argues, the nation-state system remains the dominant framework in global affairs. Indeed, he argues, it is in working in concert with other nations based upon shared interest that U.S. policymakers stand the best chance of succeeding in the campaign against Jihadist violence. Byman reaches this conclusion through a very clear analysis of the weaknesses of the Jihadist foe, an analysis that has been painfully lacking in many prominent foreign-policy circles.

In Dr. Byman's view, the Jihadist philosophy is fundamentally intolerant - not just toward the West but, more importantly, toward Islam as it is practiced by the vast majority of the world's Muslims. Added to this is the fact that violent Jihadism is virulently anti-democratic. Individuals do not have the right to determine their own fate excepting the decision to embrace Islam and Sharia, according to Jihadist thought. These two core elements of Jihadist philosophy represent major, lethal vulnerabilities, argues Dr. Byman. In particular, the anti-democratic element in Jihadist thinking is contrary to the aspirations of majority opinion throughout the Muslim world, especially the Arab Middle East. If properly exploited by wise policy, says Dr. Byman, these weaknesses will eventually lead to the political irrelevance and demise of violent Jihadism.

Dr. Byman's commitment to dispassionate analysis is best illustrated in the chapter entitled, Killing Terrorists. Here, he explores the counterterrorist method known as targeted killing or tailoring anti-terrorist violence toward eliminating specific individuals. This is a practice utilized most aggressively by the Israeli government. It has generated considerable global controversy. For some reason, many people believe that it is morally more permissible to deliver explosives from a distance that cut down many, nameless, faceless people than it is to kill individuals who have been singled out for lethal violence owing to their culpability. Dr. Byman thankfully eschews discussion of this psychological puzzle and leaps straight into an analysis of the practical merits of targeted killings. His conclusion? That targeted killings can seriously impede terrorist groups by subtracting key figures from the scene and can nip attacks destined for the near-term future, but that there are political costs associated with targeted killings that warrant its judicious and sparse use as an anti-terrorist tool.

Dr. Byman is at his analytic best in the chapter entitled, Defending the Homeland. This might strike some as odd since his background is in Middle East politics and not homeland security. But the fact is that there are no real experts on homeland security and, in any case, Dr. Byman's thoughts on the subject are about how to think about homeland security issues rather than about specific DHS programs. He reminds us that we face a specific enemy with specific aspirations and specific capabilities. This mix of terrorist objectives and capability is what should guide decisions pertaining to homeland defense, argues Dr. Byman. Sadly, many of the decisions made in this area post 9/11 have been without a clear understanding of the enemy's goals and abilities. The result, says Dr. Byman, is that there has been a good deal of program-building and spending that does not match the terrorist reality. Indeed, one sometimes gets the impression that policy has been constructed on a foundation of Tom Clancy novels rather than a clearheaded assessment of real events. Dr. Byman's advice for future homeland security policymakers is to pay attention to the attributes of the enemy and avoid developing a defense agenda based upon doomsday scenarios.

This clearly-written work can inform policymakers and citizens alike. For anyone with even a modest interest in current affairs, it is essential reading. More broadly, it is a welcome and much-needed antidote to the neon prose and fuzzy analysis so prevalent in current public discussion of national security matters and the fight against global Jihadism. For this, each of us owe Dr. Byman a debt of gratitude.

J. Patrick Jones

Thoughtful strategies for containing Al-Qaida
This is a pragmatic examination of political, military, and governmental solutions that can vastly increase our safety. Favorite excerpt: "Reacting may be necessary to prevent overreacting."

Endorse Retired Reader's Review, Adding Images and Links
I've learned that Retired Reader's background and judgement are very close to my own, and as a general rule, if he reviews a book before me, I look for something to add rather than replicate what he has already set forth.

In my own work back in the 1990's for the Strategic Studies Institute I developed the concept of having five functional strategies within a national grand strategy; "Threats, Strategy, and Force Structure" by Robert David Steele Strategic Alternatives Report (Strategic Studies Institute, Nov 2000) also as Chapter 9 in Steven Metz (ed.), Revising the Two MTW Force Shaping Paradigm (Strategy Studies Institute, April 2001), the five strategies were: global (multinational) intelligence; interoperability (communications, computing, and data standards); force structure (four forces after next (bitg war, small war, peace war, home defense); preventive (mulitnational) diplomacy and assistance; and finally, home front.

It's good to see a book that takes this five front approach (I might mention, there are six fronts on the ground: the USA, Latin America, South Asia, Africa, Central Asia including sects in China and Russia, and Europe, which has so totally lost it on giving citizenship to aliens that they are suffering from terminal cancer.

Now here is the key point: using the image provided above, please recognize that in the larger strategic context of the ten high-level threats to humanity (poverty, infectious disease, environmental degradation, inter-state conflict, civil war, genocide, other atrocities, proliferation, terrorism, and transnational crime, the "terrorist" threat is a TACTIC and a TINY TINY, infinitesmally small part of the totality of the threat to the USA and any other Nation. To exaggerate this threat and to blow the entire bank and make the USA involvent over it, is to be impeachable for breach of trust, dereliction of duty, and criminal malfeasance in office.

Buy this book. It is one of the best works to date on the nuances of terrorism and how to approach terrorism. It is, however, valuable only for that small segment of the threat that it addresses. For a larger view, see the following ten books (or read my reviews for the snapshot--my article above is easily found on the Internet):

Modern Strategy
Security Studies for the 21st Century
Understanding International Conflicts (6th Edition) (Longman Classics in Political Science)
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World
The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

Please use the images loaded above for this book to reflect further on the larger strategic context within which this excellent book should be studied.