>> good afternoon and welcome to the heritage foundation.

for those in-house we would ask that our mobile devices have been silenced or turned off. today's event is hosted by can .ssign center the silent center focuses on teaching the foundations of liberty and the political tradition to those who should public -- shape public position. david? >> good afternoon. fallen osama has bin laden is dead the threat to islamic terror remains. indeed isis continues to direct or x -- aspire attacks in the west including the halloween

attack in new york and a string of atrocities in europe. its leader has not yet been captured and mean live in -- innwhile meanwhile it is afghanistan and yemen. across the world it continues to attract followers and well western governments have made progress in countering islamic terrorism since the attacks of 9/11 confusion remains over the 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. war advice in the art of as relevant today as when he first wrote it down. know yourself, know your enemy and in 100 battles you will never be defeated.

how do terrorists think about strategy? do they think about strategy differently than we do? how do they define winning? what do they fear the most? to help us think through these questions we are pleased to have professed her -- professor karl walling, ski -- americans must learn in order to defeat terrorism. he teaches in the department of war and strategy at the united states naval war college. he previously served as an interrogator in the us army and has top at harvard. republicanuthor of empire alexander hamilton on the war and government, and the coeditor with brandon lee of strategic logic and political rationality.

he currently is writing a book on the history of the peloponnesian war. [applause] nothing in this reflects thex -- u.s., the department of the navy, or any other government entity. handout i passed around i have two quotations at the top. one is from sun tzu, know yourself and know your enemy in 100 battles you will never be defeated. that strikes me as a bit optimistic. sometimes your enemy has much superior force that it doesn't matter how much you know you are still going to lose. in most cases knowledge of

strength and weakness of your opponent are crucial upon incentivizing's strategy. those of you who know american football or even played it after a high schoolor game you take a break and then you watch game film. you look at what you did well and what you did badly, then you look ahead to the next game, whatever film you can get on your upcoming opponent. coaches do an assessment in which they try and find a way to get their strength against the opponent's weaknesses, and your opponent pitting strength against their own weaknesses. know what kind of conflict you are getting into, and you have to do it before you construct a strategy. the second rotation i have from

one of my favorite french philosophers that says, the ancient philosophers were both serious and they 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 they play wargames. some times experiments. sometimes what they are doing is testing hypotheses by actually seeing what happens when you are out in the field. component essential of our thinking strategically. you have to play before you find. if you don't play before you you areu may discover not ready to fight. i am going to ask you to play a game with me.

there is something even mischievous about it. that each to pretend .ne of you is a young terrorist your superiors have identified things that may enable you to rise to command such that you are no longer the kind of person who detonates the bomb but someone who is in charge of the .eople who did tonight bombs your job is to learn to think strategically about how to use terrorism. here i need to stress something. talk much at all about the ideology that drives terrorists. instead, i'm going to talk about -- that's not working? is this better? all right.

instead i am going to talk about the methodology of terrorism. i am going to base my talk on war thatheories of have been taught and how terrorists -- such theories of war to serve their strategic purposes. the key point here when i say how to think like a terrorist, how to think about how terrorists try to think strategically. pretend that you are a young person, -- terrorists, also pretend i am your professor and that this is the first day of terrorism 101. introduction of thinking about terrorism. when i say introduction it means

it is not terrorism 400 or 5000. to get into the most sophisticated ways of thinking about it. i am going to like us some fundamentals. the more sophisticated approaches are ways of combining the fundamentals. studyou terrorist you strategic theory. read your son soon you read .ao zedong tow you want to find out what works and what does not work so that you can be a more effective terrorist yourself. there are four cases i am going first the, the socialist revolutionaries in russia from 1895-1905. the second is the irish

republican fighting against 1916-1923. third is the shining path in and 1980's.1970's slm, algerianthe defendants movement fighting against the french in 1950. i'm looking at what is common in these different approaches to strategy. what worked, what failed. we as terrorists, we are terrorists in this experiment. we are terrorists want to know what works and what fails. we need to make a distinction between methodology and --. plenty of people who join terrorists organizations are criminals. just because the criminal

doesn't mean their bosses are irrational. terroristgive the leaders credit for being rational at least until they have proved themselves otherwise. when i say rational i mean about their methodology, not ideology. theart by thinking about rational use of violence. and the classic source for thinking about that is -- who defines war as an active violence to compel your absurd to do your will. in violence is not an end itself. it is the means to achieve something else, your will which is your political objective area --. your strategy to match the policy you have in mind

terrorism is a species of war i will argue today. the is to say you can apply logic to understand what terrorists are up to. violence to -- .chieve political objectives common way of looking at terrorism in were college is looking at it as a species of war. crime orferent from even worse, insanity. the objectives are political. they are not trying to get rich. the objectives are political and reach from compelling to expelling and occupying between fighting a revolution. , inspiring a revolution, to restore a .elophase -- caliphate

terrorism overlaps frequently with insurgency but is not identical to it. mao zedongorrow from , you have to understand about him. in the 1920's 20 guys found this party. them is how before do we take over, what will be our strategy? there might be something to over anout how to take entire country. phase aread a three of war. the first phase is called the strategic defensive. they terrorists have no money or weapons come up very have to get both. they need to get recruits.

terrorism is a recruiting tool for them. and kill hated figures of authority and young angry people say i want to be like those guys. i want to join the organization. , much morephase organized insurgency. they have acquired weapons, money, you begin to develop a base, sanctuaries where you train and discipline. terrorism is still part of the strategy but it is less important. the third phase you managed to transition to conventional warfare as your opponent has grown weaker and weaker. still using terrorism but the conventional dimension is much more important. when you think about the islamic state, in 2014 it shocked the

world. they have been conducting andorist activities in iraq during the search we thought we crushed them. no, they just went underground. 2014 they captured mosul. a bunch of guys in the trucks. equipped with the most modern american equipment. then would captured that equipment then they could move to stage one until stage two and they were hoping to go all the way to stage three. if you are working the counterterrorist approach, you don't want your opponent to get beyond stage one. that is one way of thinking about counter terror strategy. don't let them get beyond stage one, don't let it rise to the level of organized insurgency, don't allow them to have a state where they can plan conventional

warfare. i should point out that not all terrorists are able to follow the model. some can never get beyond stage one. occasionally, they managed to achieve their objectives by onying and relying simply terrorism. in other words, what i have been trying to say is that there is a method to the apparent madness of terrorism. terrorism is called the strategy of the weak. if you have an army or a state you would not resort to terrorism because you could achieve your means and goals through conventional is. there is a story about the indian ambassador to the u.s. after the first gulf war. what's the lesson of the first gulf war, don't fight the u.s.

without weapons. i would modify that story and say, don't fight the u.s. on his own terms. there is no military in the world that can beat the u.s. in a conventional war. therefore, you are going to need to escalate towards nuclear weapons which explains why some people are trying to acquire down -- them. or if you cannot win by the rules, change the rules. don't play by the rules of conventional warfare, terrorism. you can escalate or ratchet down. work is alive. it is always changing its form. that's why sun tzu compared it , just when you thought you were on top of it and that nobody could beat you it just

changed form and did something else. there is a method to this madness. terrorism is the strategy of the week. how do they do it. you can still win. the string its force multiplied by will. or largely what he called the intangibles like leadership, training, discipline, not to mention strategy. opponentn't beat your with force speak to his mind. if you cannot be your opponent's force defined -- defeat his mind. is the-- terrorism enemiesof the weak,

to give them what they want. there is a famous saying from the parties of socialist revolutionaries that terrorism is about the propaganda, it is a marketing strategy, you are trying to sell your cause. you do it through deeds. this cause is were so much that i am not only worth killing people, i will kill myself on behalf of it. spreading the gospel of the cause, propaganda indeed. in that sense, terrorism is trying to work on the lines of those who might support it. you might guess where i'm going. i'm saying that terrorism is political theater. in political theater you always have to worry about your --.

a lot of you folks work up on the hill and political theater apparently goes on in washington as well. if you think about the audiences of the theater, there are five audiences for five primary audiences for violence. the first body of his or her adversary in government. a message to them and what message might that be? me -- all give you an example. you want to intimidate anyone to support the government. a classic example is ireland. the british may take control in ireland. -- the police would

follow people on from work and kill them and hang a sign on them saying this is what happened to traders. police stopped showing up to work. what good are police stations about policeman. if you are supporting the ir -- the ira did not deal kindly with you. another way of doing this is to raise cost to the government. it loses the will to fight. this is very important if you understand war in general. when you go to war you have a political objective, you better have a political objective.

no one in his right mind goes to war without knowing what it is they are trying to accomplish and how. objective has some value. and thekeep fighting .ost of beats that down the rational thing to do is make peace. you don't throw good money after that. -- after that. longer worth it. the old argument is that cost al s for theillion-dollar attack on 9/11. war raising costs until people say i don't want to do this.

tzuhasng to sun benefited from it protracted war. the state does not benefit, who might? the nonstate actor. another dimension of this is do you really want to provoke the government to overreact? is way of talking about it you want to draw a foul. those of you who watch soccer, a , you hunt in his general direction and he falls on the ground. you draw a follow. .- a foul you are putting on theater for the referee. you can think the same way about

certain at some terrorist violence. you do something around us and despicable, making your opponent so angry that it will react a policyr even worse and despicable manner. you are playing for the sip the house -- sympathy of the people here. in order to ignite a war the terrorist organization conducted a horrible massacre in a town. they were killing people indiscriminately right and left, they killed a pregnant woman, they cut open her womb and took out the fetus and put the fetus on top of her.

-- why wouldthing anybody do anything like that, trying to makere french colonials angry, so angry that they would respond equally appalling manner. but the french colonials went on a ride at an killing indiscriminately and the french navy bombarded muslim villages from the sea and french bombers hit those villages also. what does that mean? unintentionally the french wound up eating recruiters for the flm. their willingness to inflict collateral damage on innocence fed into the -- narrative. the process the french

delegitimized themselves in the struggle. if you think about it that way, .errorism is political judo when you are not strong what do you do? use your opponent's strength against him, political judo. another audience for terrorism surprisingly is terrorists themselves, the theater is on them. you are all young terrorists, here. you have not had much to eat. when you get to eat it is all --. this is not good form around. you have to stay -- sustain the morale of people who joined the organization. how do you do that? you get a victory was in a well -- in a while.

return on your investment every once in a while. if you can get little victories every once in a while people say i will keep supporting this cause because it may be a growth stock and make return on the individual vote -- investment i have made. another thing which terrorists -- are the audience of terrorism is a discipline problem. let's face it are the kind of people that are willing to join these type of organizations are often angry, loose cannons. you want to make sure that they follow your strategy, not killing indiscriminately. i use that term i mean in a manner that is not consistent with your strategy. you don't want them taking control of the operation.

they violate orders, discipline them. kill them. just as an example to other terrorists spirit sometimes there is a rival terrorist organization competing for support. if you are a member of the flm you would not want his rival organization -- another audience for terrorism is called the constituent population. sometimes known as friends. i did that deliberately to set you up to have you understand that terrorism has a lot to do

with election politics. for yourpeople to vote side against the other side. whereas we in america use editorials in speeches and social media to persuade what is going on with terrorists who are using bows and guns, trying to make them make a choice. populationonstituent -- we can call your base. what is the message you are trying to send to your base. they could be depressed so it is good form around. if you are successful operationally you might gain financial support. even though pal qaeda lost its and so too did financial support

for the organization. and in that way, it was a way of appealing to those who are naturally sympathetic to al qaeda. another audience is what is called these non-constituent populations, what i call the neutrals. if i were to compare it to american politics, those who are neither democrats nor republicans, but the independents. you are sending them a message, too. mainly, you are with us or against us. there will be no neutrals in this conflict. i know you are sitting around, and all you are saying is give peace a chance. i know that you have been listening to john lennon talking about imagine. you want peace, you want a compromise -- sorry. no, no, no, no, no. that will not work. the first people to die

frequently when terrorism gets out of control is the neutrals. we ones who say why can't all just get along? why can't we reason with each other -- the reason is we are getting shot at from both sides, the terror risks and that and the-- terrorists counter terrorists. they do not want neutrals, because they give people an alternative way of achieving their objectives through the political system. a final audience for terrorism is international opinion. what you want to do is get your issue on the international agenda. think about international politics today. so many different issues. we focus on trade, the environment, nuclear proliferation, focusing on global climate change -- there are only 24 hours in a day. there are opportunity cost to of these in any one struggles, so you want people to make your issue their priority.

the one that international organizations and leaders should focus upon. and another example of this is in the algerian war for in the pregnant. the terrorist violence against the french and the french counter violence, which involved torture -- the french becoming like -- imagine that. in 15 years after world war ii, the french are imitating the ge stapo. the rested terrific to of the world, and eventually a young senator from massachusetts got up and made a speech in the senate, saying that what the friends are doing -- french are doing is disposable, they are -- despicable, they are on the

wrong side of history, they should grant the algerians independent. and in that young senator, john f. kennedy, became president. at that moment, the handwriting for thehe wall thread. if you want american support, get rid of algeria. so in that sense, plaintiff -- playingal opinion to international opinion was very helpful for the flm. if you have not figured this out already, it should become perfectly clear to you that the media are a crucial battlefield for this. if enacted terror occurs and there are no -- if an act of terror occurs and there are no cameras around to show it, what significance does it have? your message does not get out. so we have to think about the and how terrorists try to manipulate the media to

achieve their objective. as i said before, i see terrorism as trying to produce a , andnt election manipulating the minds of these different audiences. at this point, i should note the incredible irony -- there is enormous overlap between strategies of terrorism and strategies of nonviolent civil disobedience. in other words, the strategies with theda overlap strategies of gandhi and martin luther king. and that is a real irony -- think this through for a moment. willing to use violence beyond the pale, but martin luther king and gandhi renouncing violence under any circumstances. any sober person, i have

not drunk today, how can any sober person say that there is an overlap in this strategy? the answer has to do with the media, and above all, the business of provoking overreaction. think back to the american civil rights movement for a moment. think of the march on selma. think of the confrontation between the police and the nonviolent protesters at the bridge. think of the beatings they took. think of turning fire hoses on the protesters, and a german shepherd going at people's throats. they have film of people trying to sit and rest and get a meal, and vigilantes beating them up. .he key thing here is film if you have it on tape, you can it to the entire

country. and who looks better -- the people beating them up or the ones who have the self-discipline to take it? you create martyrs this way. you create something towards the protesters, and that helps them recruit. and it helps them deal with the actions of the government. family -- if my [inaudible] martyrs are not a bad thing. there are some people who are kooky and want to be martyrs. that might say something about , as individually personalities. but from the standpoint of the cause, having martyrs is a really good thing. from the standpoint of the success of the american civil rights movement, a horrible thing that dr. king was assassinated, but the standpoint

of the success of that movement on his assassination was very helpful. i am saying there is some overlap here, and it is because you need the media and because the same audiences for terrorism, by the way, are the same audiences for non-violent civil disobedience. i know a lot of you folks are working on the hill, and you are about this.ing these things i am talking to you about should be reasonably familiar. , it it comes to terrorists is rooted in the political psychology -- that is a fancy term for how you understand human nature. the most useful source for thinking about is e hisiavelli, who developed philosophy based on three passions -- fear, love, and hate. , this is a violent

election. you want to motivate your base, which appeals either to love your cause or hatred of the other cause. then there are those neutrals, or the independents out there. well, you are going to pull them to your cause by getting them to love it, but if that does not work, get them to hate the other guy's cause more, and that might help you. by the way -- make sure they are afraid to get in your way. finally, there is your opponents base. you want to marginalize them. you want to strip them of as many supporters as possible by intimidating them. all of this means that competing narratives, competing story are crucial to marginalize your adversaries, localize your constituents, and compel the neutrals to pick a side. terroristr, this is

war college. outside of the war college, never call yourself a terrorist. you are a holy warrior, a freedom fighter from the oppression of the crusaders. you draw attention to the cause you are fighting for, not to the fought. which you have by the way, counter terrorists will do just the opposite. call attention by the means to which you fight in order to undermine your cause. in a terrorister use of the media, and it is what i call desensitizing. israel andive to palestinian, terrorism has gone on for a long, long time. in the 1970's, it might have been shocking if a palestinian and israeli, or vice versa, [inaudible] pick up the newspaper and say oh, there was a terrorist attack in israel

today -- that is not news. it happens all the time. if you are a terrorist, you are trying to get attention. if these small acts of violence do not work, you escalate to bigger ones. you kill people at the olympics. if that is not working, you escalate to a bigger one. i know, let's fly some airplanes into some buildings. that might get people's attention. there is an escort tory dynamic escalatory- .ynamic here think of the russians in chechnya, for example. they are fighting al qaeda as really nasty version of it. but it is hard to get information about what is going on in chechnya. that is because russians will not let the media in. i'm pretty sure what the russians have done in chechnya is a poly.

but because terrorist strategies depend on use of media -- is appalling. but because terrorist strategies depend on use of media, the russians have a better chance of defeating it then the use of media in a free society. it is the price of freedom, that we will be more vulnerable than a closed society. another consideration is message trade-offs. and you folks at heritage notice. -- know this. what appeals to one audience completely turns off another audience. poliis polly psy 101 -- -sci 101. and when you are doing the messaging, you have to calibrate it. some things that might look simply irrational to us in america make really good sense if you pay attention to the audience for which this theater is directed. some of you may remember three years ago, there was a poor

jordanian officer captured by the islamic state and was burnt alive in a cage. turn it off. for us. but imagine you are a young, angry guy, who really wants to stick it to the crusaders. i want to join isis, man. i want to do the same thing. give me a chance, i want to burn somebody alive in a cage, too. turns off one audience, but turns on another. and if you are a terrorist strategist, you have to say that is a risk factor here. could really provoke people to react against me, but it might help me with recruiting, which is a more -- more important to me at the time. i will say a few things about how terrorists win and make some suggestions about how the counter terrorists might defeat them. how do they win? we should know this.

should know this, the conditions that enable terrorists to win, but i have to define victory. victory is achieving your political objective. their terrorists achieve political objective? frequently, they sell their violence as part of a struggle for national liberation. it is one of the most common sources of terrorism. if you can say this is about umpire, whether from an -- empire or authoritarian regime or from american

of the gulf, some very rich money have given a lot of ofvery extreme versions islam, and some of that winds up in terrorist hands. my argument here is that you really need to be thinking about -- you have to look at both. you have to look at people who are willing to give money, rich people, the koch brothers in saudi arabia, for such an equivalent, and if you don't like that one, george soros. you have to look not nearly at those who were giving the money, but at the religious leadership. are there religious leaders

willing to stand up to those who practice terrorism? about a year in egypt, they issued a law saying that terrorism is not islamic. those who practice it are not true muslims. one to say that, but 100. but why settle for 100? you you want 1000 on your side. the more you can do to get people say that, the better off you are. here is my solution. uftis aroundid to m the world. how is it going to look for them if we give them money.

delegitimized them and essentially turn them into targets for those who practice terrorism. this often happens in strategy. you know what you must do to win, but you are not sure how to get there. victoryng to say that here is when religious readers throughout the muslim world denounce terrorists such that people would say no good muslim can be a terrorist. .f that happens, you win the question is how do you make it happen. footprint andight indirection with tons and tons of plausible deniability that would be a beginning.

>> i am listening to you on c-span on the phone. i'm am a muslim, my name is mohammed. pakistan.is from .> slow down a little bit how best to help muslim countries to change the interpretation of the koran, , becauseyou call it these things are very related to the old testament. i'm sure you know abraham, ishmael, and sarah. they are related. the difference is that muslims

tend to take those things in a very literal sense. i would not say we take it as a joke, but we do not take it seriously. school joinedrade -- i came here and studied here. in the wayfference he was raised in the way i was raised in pakistan. i can make a comparison between , who was part of a terrorist organization, but there is no inference between that family and the average muslim family in america except the average muslim family has nothing to do with terrorism. they do not teach their children these things. reactam sure mormon would

the same way like the muslims. >> thanks. i suspect you are right. the issue is how islam is interpreted. i am not an islamic scholar. i am a fraud. i'm applying for a job at heritage where it might be a fellow for american political thought. here, they said one of you give us a talk on terrorism. it is really american political thought that i'm interested in. me -- i do occasionally teach courses on terrorism as part of my job. let me say i am not an islamic scholar. logicalit is entirely to say that the issue is how

islam is interpreted. there are teachers of interpretation. change the minds of the teachers and you can eventually change the interpretation. the question is how to we change the minds of the teachers. my suggestion is not with bombs. a military force can disrupt these organizations, can make it difficult for them to operate but it is not going to change people's minds. thank you all for having me here. [applause] i'm sure the professor is happy to answer any other questions.

if you want to hang out, we will talk. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

inpresident trump is richfield, ohio, to talk about the president's infrastructure rehabilitation plan. live coverage coming up in about one hour. just under one hour, at 2:00 eastern. tonight, two photojournalists and their experience covering the battle against the islamic in the iraqi city of mosul. here is a retired u.s. army special forces colonel who transitioned to a new career reporting on war, conflict, and disaster. from myis a still

phone. the rubble in the foreground is an armored isis suicide car bomb. vehicle borne improvised explosive device. that detonated against an iraqi humvee. the initial reports were incorrect that there were no casualties. an iraqi policeman standing about 40 meters away was killed just from the blast wave of that explosion. inspecting the rubble of this explosion, the isis fighter driving the vehicle was not only driving a suicide car bomb, he was wearing a suicide vest and had a folding stock ak-47 with six magazines. if his car broke down, he was going to run out toward the good guys and detonated himself. if it did not detonate, he had an automatic weapon. he was ready to die.

most of him was splattered against the wall laying in the courtyard and i sat in talk to him for a few minutes. --was an interesting moment you've never been in costco in the meat department and seen the stuff. was there,ft of him obviously a human being at one point, and i asked him what are you seeing now, what are you experiencing? are you where you thought you would be? he did not answer back, he only had half of a face, but it was interesting to be that close to the evil and how willing he was to die. he will be joined by victor blue whose work focuses on the protection of civilians. you can see the entire work tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span or listen with the free

c-span radio app. on the c-span networks, saturday at 9:20 p.m., i abate on the suit same-sex couple against the colorado bakery for refusing to make their wedding cake. from the national constitution center in philadelphia. sunday at 6:30, the chairman of the u.s. commission on international religious freedom on the current state of religious liberty in the u.s.. saturday, on book tv, c-span two at 10:00 eastern, on afterwards, james swanson talks with an associated press writer about the events leading up to the assassination of martin luther king jr. and sunday at 10:00 p.m., karen pence and her daughter charlotte share the story of her family's pet rabbit. lectures in history, tulane

university professor on moonshine drivers and the origins of nascar. historian0, landscape about the annual white house easter egg role which began in 1878 and the changes that have been made along the way. this weekend, on the c-span networks. this sunday, on 1960 eight, america in turmoil, civil rights and race relations. our guests are former black panther and emory university law school senior lecturer kathleen cleaver and a history professor at the university of texas at austin and the author of dark days, right nights. -- bright nights. from black power to barack obama. watch 1968 sunday at 8:30

eastern on washington journal and on american history tv on c-span three. now anthony scaramucci on what was like behind the scenes at of the trump presidential campaign and his time at the white house. democratic political consultant bob shrum monitors this conversation at the university of southern california. [applause] >> most of you know who anthony scaramucci is. ,e founded sky bridge capital white house communications director, and i have great sympathy for him because i once