watch landmark cases monday and join the conversation. our hashtag is landmark cases, and follow us at c-span, and we resources on our website background on each case. the landmark cases companion book, a link to the national constitution center's interactive constitution, and the landmark cases podcast at c-span.org/landmarkcases. >> now a conversation with u.s. naval war college professor karl walling on combating islamic terrorism. he argues muslims are the best messengers for countering terrorist ideologies and the military is the least effective way to fight terrorism and extremism.

>> good afternoon. welcome to the heritage foundation foundation after lewis lehrman auditorium. of course what with those who join us on our heritage.org website as well as those for joining us on c-span network this morning. for those in house we ask that courtesy check our mobile devices have been silence or turned off. of course we'll will post todas program on heritage homepage for everyone's future reference. today's event is hosted by heritage simon center for principles and politics, the simon center focus on teaching the foundations of liberty, the principle of the american political tradition to those who shape public opinion. leading and welcoming our guest is turned on, director of the

simon center for principles and politics and family foundation fellow. david? >> good afternoon. the caliphate has fallen. osama bin laden is dead. the threat of islamic terror remains. indeed, ices can do to direct inspire attacks in the west, including the holy attack in new york, and a string of atrocities in europe. its leader al-baghdadi has not yet been captured. meanwhile, al-qaeda remains active in afghanistan, syria and yemen. across the world, islamism continues to attract followers and the threat of terror still looms. while western governments have made considerable progress in countering islamic terrorism since the attacks of 9/11, confusion remains over the exact nature of the threat and the

mindset of the jihadist. if we are to defeat this enemy, we must first learn to think like him. some advice in the art of war remains as true today as when he first wrote it down 2500 years ago. know yourself, know your enemy, and 100 battles you'll never be defeated. how then do terrorists think about strategy? more specifically in what ways do they think about strategy carefully than we do? how did they define winning, what do they fear most, to help us think through these important questions, with replays to have with us you did at the heritage foundation professor karl walling. through a careful study of terrorist organizations spanning the entire globe, professor walling has distilled the key lessons americans must learn in order to defeat terrorism. professor walling teaches in the department of war and strategy

at united states naval war college in rhode island. he previously served as interrogator in the u.s. army and has taught at harvard university, carleton college, the use air force academy and colorado college. he is the author of republican empire, alexander hamilton on government and the cognitive with brad lee after tragic logic and rational to. he currently is writing a book on the history of the peloponnesian war. please help me and welcoming professor karl walling. [applause] >> before i begin i have to say this. nothing in this talk with next official views of united states naval war college, the department of navy, department of defense or any other government entity. in the handout i passed around,

i have two quotations at the top. one is from sun tzu, know yourself, know your enemy, in 100 battles you will never be defeated. that strikes me as a bit optimistic. sometimes it in me has so much superior force that it doesn't matter how much you know, you're still going to lose. but in most cases, knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses relative to your opponent are a crucial component of devising a strategy. those of you who know american football or perhaps even played it, know that after sunday game or a friday night game on high school, you take a break and then you watch game film. you look at what you did well and what you did badly, your strengths and weaknesses, and then you look at to the next game, whatever film you can get on your upcoming opponent. and coaches do an assessment of

comp which they tried to find the way to pick fit their stres against an opponent weaknesses and prevent an opponent from pitting strengths against their own weaknesses. this is the foundation of strategic thinking, and assessment first, know what kind of conflict you're getting into, and you have to do it before you construct a strategy. the second quotation i have is from one of my favorite french philosophers who says the ancient philosophers were most serious when he seemed most playful, and most playful when they seemed most serious. that is to say, play can be a very serious thing. at work colleges around the world, hopefully here, sometimes they are thought experiments and just that. sometimes what they're doing is they're testing hypotheses empirically by actually seeing

what happens when you're out in the field. so plate is an essential component of thinking strategically. you have to play before you fight. if you don't play before you fight, you may discover that you are not ready to fight. so i'm going to ask you all to play a game with me. there's something mischievous about the game, even devilish. i want you to pretend that each one of you is a young terrorist, each one of you. your superiors have identified you talents that may enable you to rise in the command, such that you are no longer the kind of person who detonates the bomb, but someone who is in charge of the people who detonate bombs. your job is to learn to think

strategically about how to use terrorism. and here i need to stress something. i am not going to talk much if not all about the ideology that drives terrorists. instead of going to talk about -- its networking? all right. -- not working? is this better? instead of going to talk about the methodology of terrorism. and i'm going to base my talk on certain theories of war that had been taught for millennia and how terrorists adapt such theories of war to serve their strategic purposes. now, so the key point here when i say how to think like a terrorist, i'm saying how to think about how terrorists try

to think strategically. so we can that you are a young terrorist, also pretend that i am your professor and that this is the first day of terrorism 101. your introduction to thinking about terror. when i say introduction, that means it's not terrorism 400. it's not terrorism 5000. i'm not going to get into the most sophisticated ways of thinking about it. i'm going to lay out some of the fundamentals. because the more sophisticated approaches are all different ways of combining the fundamentals. now, as a young terrorist you study strategic victory the same way they do it other war colleges. this is just a fact. you read your sun tzu, you read mao zedong. you also look at historical

cases of the successes and failures. you want to find out what works and what doesn't work. so that you can be a more effective terrorist yourself. and there are more cases i'm going to draw on here today. the first is the party of socialist revolutionaries in russia from approximately 1895-1905. the second is the irish republican army fight against england in 1916-1923. the third is that shining path in peru in the 1970s and 1980s. the fourth is the slm, the algerian independence movement fighting against the french from approximately 1950-1963. what i'm looking at is what's common in these different approaches to strategy, what

worked, what failed. because we as terrorists, remember, we are terrorists in this thought experiment. we as terrorists want to know what works and what fails to we need to make a distinction between methodology and -- plenty of people who join terrorist organizations are criminals. some are not but just because they are criminals are nuts doesn't mean their bosses are irrational. we should give the terrorist leaders credit for being rational, at least until they have proved themselves otherwise. when ice irrational, i mean about the methodology, not about the etiology. so i start by thinking about the rational use of violence and the classic source for thinking about that is -- [inaudible] who defines war as an act of

violence to compel your adversaries to do your will. the violence is not in in in itself. instead it is a means to achieve something else, your will, which is your political objective. so your matching strategy to achieve whatever policy you have in mind, terrorism is a species of war i am going to argue today. that is to say, you can apply logic to understand what terrorists are up to. it is premeditated violence against noncombatants to achieve political objectives. a common way of looking at terrorism in war colleges, we look at it as a species of war. that means it's different from new crime or even worse, insanity. the object is our political.

they are not trying to get rich. the object is our political and range from compelling political reform to expelling an occupier, to inciting a revolution. in our case here at terrorist u., inspiring a revolution to restore a caliphate, impose sharia law. terrorism overlaps frequently with insurgency, but is not identical to it. here i have to borrow from a very famous theorist insurgency, mao zedong. you have to understand, in the 1920s he hangs around 20 guys in the chinese party. really a bunch of frat boys. the question before them is how do we take over all of china? what would be our strategy?

he succeeded so that might be something to learn from mao about how to take over an entire country. and he developed a three phased. of war. the first phase is called the strategic defensive. terrorists have no money, they have weapons, and need to get both. particularly what with the neeo get his recruits. so terrorism is the recruiting tool for them. you blow up, kill hated figures of authority, and young, angry people say i want to be like those guys. i want to join the organization. the second phase, and by the way in this first phase, it is primarily terror. the second phase, it's much more organized insurgency. they have acquired weapons, acquired money. you begin to develop a base, sanctuaries where you can train a discipline your folks.

terrorism is still part of the strategy but it's less important. and in the third phase you managed to transition to conventional warfare as your opponent has grown weaker and weaker. you are still using terrorism but the conventional dimension is much more important. when you think about the islamic state, daesh, in 2014 they shocked the world. they have been conducting terrorist activities in iraq. during the search we thought we question. no, they just went underground. but in 2014 they captured the city of mosul, a bunch of guys in pickup trucks, routing the iraqi army equipped with the most modern american equipment, shocking. then they captured that equipment and that needs to able to move from stage one to at least state to back of [inaudible conversations] are hoping to go all the way to

stage three, intent. it you are working to counter terrorists approach, you don't want your opponent to get be on stage one. that's one way of thinking about counterterrorism strategy. don't let them get beyond stage one. don't let it rise to the level of organized insurgency. certainly don't allow them to have a space where they can practice conventional warfare. but i should point out that not all terrorists are able to follow the maoist model. some can never get be on stage one. occasionally, not frequently, the terrorists still managed to achieve their objectives by staying, relying simply on terrorism. in other words, what i've been trying to say to you is there a real method to the apparent madness of terrorism.

terrorism is commonly called the strategy of the week. look, if you hadn't army, you would not resort to terrorism because you could achieve your means and goals through conventional means. there's a story about the indian ambassador to the united states after the first gulf war. what's the lesson of the first gulf war? it says don't fight the united states without weapons. i would modify that story and say, don't fight the united states on its own terms. there's no military in the world today that can beat the united states in a conventional war. therefore, you either going to need to escalate towards nuclear weapons which explains why some people are trying to acquire them. or if you can't win by the rules, do you know what you do? change the rules. don't play by the rules of

conventional warfare. terrorism. you can escalate or you can ratchet down. what this means is war is a lie. war does not remain constant. it's always changing its form. that's why sense you compared it to water. they can be a solid, liquid or gas. and just when you thought you on top of it, that nobody could beat you, they just change form and do something else. i like him so there's a method to this apparent madness. terrorism is said is a strategy of the week. they can't win by conventional means so they seek other means. if you can't beat your opponent force on force, you can still win. the moral factors, the intangibles like leadership, training, discipline, not to

mention strategy. if you can't beat your opponent with force, defeat his mind. let me say that again. if you can't defeat your opponents force, defeat his mind. and so terrorism is the strategy of the week, manipulate the minds and political systems of their supporters. neutral antinomies to get what they want. there is a famous saying on the part of socialist revolutionaries that terrorism is about a propaganda of need. please note, it is a marketing strategy. you are trying to sell your cause to others, and you do it through deeds. this cause is worth so much that i'm willing not only to kill innocent people, but to kill myself on behalf of it. spreading the gospel of the cause, propaganda.

so in that sense terrorism is trying to work on the minds of those who might support it, not merely of adversaries. by now you might have guessed where i'm going. i'm saying that terrorism is political theater. and in political theater you always have to worry about your -- [inaudible] i know a lot of you folks work up on the hill and political theater, you know, apparently goes on in washington as well. you should think about the audiences of the theater. i'm going to say there are five audiences for five primary audiences for terrorist violence. who are the? the first audience is their adversary in government. you are sending a message to them, and what message might that be? namely, the government cannot

win. give you an example. you want to intimidate anyone for supporting the government, so it is unable to exert its authority. classic example, ireland. the british maintained control in ireland with police garrisons throughout the island but the i.r.a. did is they would follow a policeman home from work and they would kill him and he would pay assigned a rented say this is what happens to traders. do that enough times and you get a case of the blue flu, please stop showing up for work. what good are police stations without policeman? the i.r.a. create its own police force, its own courts. of course if you supporting the british and went to court, the i.r.a. did not deal kind of wiki. of violence there is directed at anyone who might support the government.

another way and doing this is to raise cost to the government. so what loses the will to fight. this is very important, if you are to understand war in general, terrorism is a species of war. when you go to war you always have a political objective, or rather you better have a political objective because no one in his right mind goes to war without knowing what it is they are trying to accomplish and how. well, every objective has some value. you can keep fighting until the costs reach that validator which costs exceed the value of the object of your fighting for? the rational thing to do is make peace. that's the rational thing to do. you don't throw good money after bad. so maybe you can raise costs to the government such that, say it

says it's a longer with the. the old argument is the cost al-qaeda proximally a million dollars for the terrorist attack on 9/11. ask yourself how much money we paid. a strategy of protected war raising costs in time and effort into people say i just don't want to do this. exhausting your opponent. said sun tzu, no state has ever benefited from a protracted war well, if a state does not benefit from a protracted war, who might? maybe those who don't have a state, a nonstate actor. another dimension of this is you really want to provoke the government to overreact. that's an interesting question. when we are talking about is you want to draw a foul. those of you who watch soccer, you know, i soccer player, you

know, you pop in his general direction and he falls on the grid and he acts like you just crippled him trying to get the reference to throw one of those cars. you draw a foul. in other words, you're you areg on theater for the referee. you can think the same way about certain acts of terrorist violence. you do something horrendous and despicable, counting that you make your opponent so angry that it will react in an equally or even worse appalling and despicable manner. because you are playing for the sympathy of the people. a good example of that, by the way, is from the algerian war for independence. in order to ignite that war,

that terrorist organizations conducted a horrible massacre in a town, and i mean really horrible. they were killing people indiscriminately right and left. they killed a pregnant woman. they kept open her womb, pulled out the fetus and then stuck the world on top of her. they nailed dead babies to walls. why would anybody do something like that? because they were trying to make the french angry, trying to make french colonials angry. so angry that they will respond in an equally appalling manner. the french colonials went on a wry it through muslim villages killing indiscriminately, and the french navy bombarded muslim villages from the sea, and french bombers hit those villages, too.

now, what does that mean? unintentionally, the french bottled up being recruiters for the fln. very willingness to inflict collateral damage on innocence fed into the narrative, the story the fln was trying to sell, exploited by the french. and in the process, the french -- >> we'll take you live to american university in washington, d.c. where the hosting a panel discussion on a new survey that shows while trust the media is up following the election of president trump, that confidence falls largely along partisan lines. this live event just getting underway. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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>> good evening, everyone. i'm the dean of the school of communication here at american university at a want to welcome you to the theater. .. at harvard university. the doctor couldn't be here but i wanted to highlight that achievement and also recognize professor john sullivan for winning this year's moulton and sonya