{"id":64595,"date":"2023-05-11T18:59:35","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T18:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2023\/05\/11\/what-could-derail-great-power-competition-a-terrorist-attack\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T00:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:54:08","slug":"what-could-derail-great-power-competition-a-terrorist-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/pentagon\/2023\/05\/11\/what-could-derail-great-power-competition-a-terrorist-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"What could derail great power competition? A terrorist attack."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 As the U.S. focuses on great power competition with China and Russia, a terrorist attack or massive <a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/your-military\/2020\/10\/02\/special-operations-forces-must-look-and-fight-differently-for-future-conflicts\/\" target=\"_blank\">crisis response<\/a> would be a \u201cstrategic distraction,\u201d according to a panel of military and government officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid, speaking Wednesday at the Global SOF Foundation\u2019s SOF Week here, said the most likely type of attack isn\u2019t a large-scale al-Qaida-style coordinated one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead, what\u2019s more likely are is strikes from small \u201cleaderless\u201d cells or lone actors. That\u2019s partly because of the decades spent by U.S. intelligence and military forces dismantling large terrorist networks, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Smaller cells and lone actors are harder to track, and they leverage technology to mask their work and support each other in disparate locations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Al-Qaida and its affiliates extend from south Asia to both east and west Africa, she said, while the Islamic State continues to proliferate in parts of Africa and its affiliates also continue to operate in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The bulk of those organizations are \u201cmore diffuse and diverse than what we\u2019ve seen in decades,\u201d Abizaid said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This challenge threatens the work of countering peer adversaries such as Russia and China, experts said. Anne Patterson, former assistant secretary for near eastern and north African affairs at the U.S. State Department,<b> <\/b>said during the same panel event<b> <\/b>the U.S. must \u201ckeep a focus on terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNothing would be a bigger distraction to great power competition than a terrorist attack,\u201d added Patterson, who is now a senior fellow at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Patterson said the key to staving off terrorist attacks is special operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat can SOF do to make these countries more resilient and able to protect themselves against terrorist attacks?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Retired Lt. Gen. Kenneth Tovo, former head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, noted terrorist groups and crises are often used by peer adversaries as part of their approach to competing against the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe are likely to see an increase in crises that require some level of attention,\u201d Tovo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are<b> <\/b>more than 70,000 special operations individuals operating in more than 80 countries, but Tovo said they shouldn\u2019t handle it all. Crisis response is vital, but that response, \u201cdoesn\u2019t necessarily need to be us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The hard part is the \u201cinvestment in advance\u201d that it takes to build partner forces, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">SOCOM commander Bryan Fenton said during his Tuesday keynote<b> <\/b>address here that the U.S. training support provided to Ukraine in 2014 may have led to some of the recent battlefield successes against Russia, but that support began even earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fenton said, that all started in 1994 when special operations troops went to Ukraine and started partnering with Ukrainian forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cFirst, it was just being there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then it was staying there and returning to work with the same Ukrainian teammates over the years. And lastly, he said, it was \u201cplowing in the lessons we have learned in places like Iraq and Afghanistan\u201d to the Ukrainian forces, now being used against Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Special operations must continue counterterrorism and crisis response while also competing with peer adversaries such as Russia and China, experts said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":117577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":19,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["pentagon-congress","flashpoints","home","middle-column","news"],"primary_category":"flashpoints"},"4":{"categories":["newsletters","daily-news-roundup","middle-column","home","news","pentagon-congress","flashpoints"],"primary_category":"flashpoints"},"5":{"categories":["newsletters","daily-news-roundup","home","middle-column","news","pentagon-congress","flashpoints"],"primary_category":"flashpoints"},"6":{"categories":["newsletters","daily-news-roundup","home","middle-column","news","pentagon-congress","flashpoints"],"primary_category":"flashpoints"},"7":{"categories":["newsletters","daily-news-roundup","home","middle-column","news","pentagon-congress","flashpoints"],"primary_category":"flashpoints"},"8":{"categories":["home","federal-oversight","management","leadership"],"primary_category":"leadership"}}},"categories":[160,36,19,154,30],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3481],"class_list":["post-64595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-newsletters","category-pentagon","category-sofic","category-smr"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"A6UA4QW7TJERZHBERMKHLEQBTE","arc_canonical_url":"\/pentagon\/2023\/05\/11\/what-could-derail-great-power-competition-a-terrorist-attack\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What could derail great power competition? 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