Counterterrorism is framed as an internal ideological struggle over Muslim mainstream
Evidence
The current struggle against Islamist terrorism is much less a clash of civilizations than an ideological struggle within Islam. The United States cannot win unless the Muslim mainstream wins. There is very little likelihood that people like Osama bin Laden can ever be won over with soft power: hard power is needed to deal with such cases. But there is enormous diversity of opinion in the Muslim world. Many Muslims disagree with American values as well as American policies, but that does not mean that they agree with bin Laden. The United States and its allies cannot defeat Islamist terrorism if the number of people the extremists are recruiting is larger than the number of extremists killed or deterred. Soft power is needed to reduce the extremists’ numbers and win the hearts and minds of the mainstream. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 499
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- SEED: Angle: the recruitment-versus-killing equation as a measurable frame for counterterrorism policy — soft power justified in purely instrumental, body-count terms.
- DEFINE: Distills Nye’s soft-power doctrine into its core logic: the US must win an ideological battle within Islam because it cannot outkill recruitment.