Don’t Avenge Paris

In the wake of the Paris and Beirut attacks, we must remember that national security decisions intended to avenge are rarely the right call. What we really need our leaders to take action not based on what feels good, but on what works.

This has always been important — but it’s especially so now, when violence is on the rise. Since ISIL’s September 2014 call for attacks by its supporters, we’ve seen ISIL-inspired attacks worldwide, and more attempted – seven foiled plots just in the UK this year.

How will the West translate this latest series of attacks into a new security posture that can sap, rather than fuel, this escalating and increasingly well-coordinated violence? Hopefully, its governments can produce a reasoned approach to assess, contain, and prevent the next threat. Here are some suggestions:

Aim carefully before firing. Recently, Secretary of State John Kerry attributed the Counter-ISIL Coalition’s progress to no less than 8,000 airstrikes, 40 of which had taken place the previous day. If you have to take 8,000 shots, you probably don’t have the best targets. The intelligence community should seek better ground-level intelligence in Syria and Iraq and build a “Radicalization Impact Assessment” that would determine how airstrikes affect ISIL recruitment. We should consider dropping a bomb only when it is clear that the military gains from the strike will outweigh the inevitable recruitment that follows.

Contain the threat. The Paris attack was likely inspired, not ordered, by ISIL (although its perpetrators may have received ISIL guidance and training). More than 1,800 French nationals have traveled or attempted to travel to the battlegrounds of Iraq and Syria, and at least 250 have returned, which makes France Western Europe’s top source of people with the network, training, skills, and motivation to carry out ISIL attacks at home.

France’s law-enforcement capacities are strong, but several countries between Syria and Western Europe lack adequate border security. Moreover, differing policies among EU members have led to patchwork enforcement throughout the Schengen Zone, whose overall border security is only as strong as its weakest link. Europe’s freedom-to-travel ethos keeps traveler screening policies weak, although France has already called for necessary reforms.

We should constrict ISIL’s trans-border movement, funding new technology to screen travelers, encouraging use of Interpol watchlists, and make it our diplomats’ top priority to create a politically permissive environment to expand screening policies such as adoption of the EU Council’s border recommendations. In this new era of escalating attacks outside the warzone, lax border security is simply no longer an option.

Prevention at home. Efforts to arrest and kill ISIL members will be futile if they are replaced with new recruits. What motivates someone to join ISIL? Maybe they are un-integrated immigrants, impoverished and seeking someone to blame, or someone who just wants an excuse to kill. Turning away from these communities is exactly what ISIL wants, and we can deprive them of recruits through initiatives that build trust, expose ISIL’s banality, and create alternative livelihoods – building hope rather than fear. For example, ever since Belgium, home of the Paris attack’s “mastermind,” instituted community engagement policies in its city of Vilvoorde, local officials say the city has produced no more foreign fighters for ISIL. That is certainly not a typical result, but it is exactly the type of success story we need to scale up.