In the aftermath of the\u00a0Brussels\u00a0tragedy, many good ideas are being floated to improve defenses against terrorists who are poised to strike.\u00a0Belgium needs more resources for police work, including staking out suspects.\u00a0Europe needs terrorist watch lists that are better automated and integrated.\u00a0Police forces and national intelligence agencies need to work together more effectively, readjusting the point at which traditional police work ends and counter-terrorism raids begin.\u00a0We need to use technology such as closed-circuit TV, as well as simpler but time-tested methods like bomb-smelling dogs, more effectively in unhardened public places like subway stops and the external lobbies of airports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The above are immediate and short-term measures.\u00a0They are crucial.\u00a0They are also insufficient. We need to continue to go after Islamic State’s finances, too, leading a worldwide effort to restrict its sources of revenue and ability to store and move funds around. Beyond these actions, we need\u00a0to do better with the long-term instruments of counter-terrorism.\u00a0These include the use of social media and other counter-messaging against the so-called caliphate.\u00a0 But they also include efforts within our own societies and especially those in Europe to promote social cohesion. Within many countries the inability to develop programs encouraging assimilation of immigrants, and of the home-born disaffected, has led to substantial\u00a0pockets of disenfranchised\u00a0citizens, a large majority being Muslim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At least on issues concerning Muslim-majority communities, the United States can help point the way. We are fortunate, largely to the credit of our nation’s Muslims who join our society in full and pursue the\u00a0American dream, to have relatively few problems with Islamist extremism.\u00a0Of course, there are exceptions, but on the whole,Muslim-American\u00a0communities are our single greatest\u00a0domestic allies\u00a0in the struggle against extremism at home. They\u00a0help provide information\u00a0on would-be terrorists in their midst; they do not typically shelter, aid\u00a0or\u00a0condone the thinking of such extremists. Most of all, acting as loyal citizens, they provide role models and hopeful visions to their young, reducing the odds that the 20-somethings who seem to wind up the main culprits in most attacks abroad will feel the same urge within the United States. Because our own terror watch lists\u00a0have gotten better\u00a0since 9\/11, and because of the hard work of border and immigration agencies, we are also\u00a0often ableto limit the movements of suspected terrorists to the United States from abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
None of this is to sound complacent. More than 70 individuals were arrested on American soil last year on suspicion of interest in supporting Islamic State\u00a0or otherwise conducting extremist activity, and we suffered the San Bernardino tragedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond matters of culture and assimilation, specific programs here contribute as well.\u00a0In\u00a0Montgomery County, Maryland, a coalition of faith leaders, school officials\u00a0and law enforcement officers collaborate to try to identify and help would-be radicals before they turn to dangerous ways.\u00a0In Ohio, fire departments try to reach into difficult neighborhoods and recruit workers. They recognize that their role in society can be less polarizing to some disaffected than would, say, certain types of police outreach, but that by extending the presence of the government into places where it is not always welcome, they can tamp down the temptations of some to turn to violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many places in Britain are doing the same thing.\u00a0Britain is a sort of bridge to Europe on this issue, like on many others \u2014\u00a0not having the apparent problems of, say, Molenbeek, the enclave in Brussels from which recent attackers have originated, but also having\u00a0more concentrations\u00a0of recent immigrants from the Middle East than does the United States.\u00a0Aware of this situation, British authorities\u00a0also try to extend the state’s connections with\u00a0shaky neighborhoods in ways that seek to engender trust in the state and better community rapport. Sometimes this can rely on police, who in the\u00a0United Kingdom\u00a0are usually unarmed. However, at other times, less traditional instruments, or less potentially imposing symbols of state authority, can be better. Again, fire departments come to mind, as do work programs that foster a sense of community involvement and cohesion (while also providing a paycheck).\u00a0Sometimes armies can help, depending on their roles and reputations in given societies.\u00a0Any of these can improve the government’s image in key neighborhoods, while also helping create the kinds of communications between community leaders and authorities that produce intelligence leads when things start to go off the tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
U.S. presidential candidates are not talking much about these kinds of issues.\u00a0But efforts to build social cohesion are not at odds with what some of them are advocating in response to Brussels. Greater police presence in jurisdictions likeMolenbeek, intelligence surges\u00a0and reforms, and also stronger actions against Islamic State\u00a0in the Middle East and beyond are needed, to be sure. But such measures are not, in themselves, adequate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Building social cohesion is difficult, of course, and often the strides forward are slow to come and hard to measure.\u00a0It usually must happen at the city level.\u00a0It is usually manpower-intensive work.\u00a0It is always painstaking.\u00a0Sometimes, of course, it simply fails.\u00a0But without a reinvigorated emphasis on building social cohesion, in which cities and other jurisdictions learn from each other and share best practices to tie their communities more strongly together, we will not succeed in this crucial challenge of our times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Army Gen.\u00a0Raymond Odierno\u00a0(ret.), former\u00a0Army chief of staff\u00a0and commander of multinational forces in Iraq, is a senior adviser at\u00a0JPMorgan Chase & Co.\u00a0Michael O’Hanlon\u00a0is senior fellow and director of research in the foreign policy program at the\u00a0Brookings Institution. They are co-chairs of Securing Global Cities, a joint project of Brookings and\u00a0JPMorgan Chase.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Belgium needs more resources for police work, including staking out suspects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":54095,"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":14,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"coauthors":[442],"class_list":["post-25297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"R7FVTHMEYZGTXO32NX4Q36EHGE","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinion\/2016\/04\/18\/assimilation-is-counterterrorism-odierno-and-o-hanlon\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n