Bluster: Donald Trump's War on Terror

by Peter R. Neumann

Defeating terrorism was one of Donald Trump's key campaign promises. But there is no easy way to make sense of Donald Trump's war on terror. Is it all bluster, aimed at mobilising his base, or does it represent a genuine shift from previous administrations?

Since Trump took office, American counterterrorism has become more militaristic and less interested in causes and consequences. Relationships with foreign partners have deteriorated and right-wing extremists feel powerful and emboldened. The most significant change of paradigm-the conflation of terrorism, immigration, and Islam-has not just resulted in costly failures, such as the "Muslim ban," but also undermined the trust of immigrant communities and multiculturalism in the US.

In Bluster, Peter Neumann assesses Trump's approach to countering terrorism, and argues that his war on terror looks strong and powerful in the short term, but will cause damage over time. The president has not just failed to provide a strategic framework for defeating terrorism; his entire approach has made the world less safe and undermined America's greatest 'soft power' asset-the very idea of America.

160 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Peter Neumann is Professor of Security Studies at the Department of War Studies, King's College London, and was director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, 2008-18. He was previously adjunct professor at Georgetown University. His most recent book is Radicalized: New Jihadists and the Threat to the West.

Reviews

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very good but would have been so much better if PN had waited until the end of Trump's term to put it together. It only covers his campaign and then his first two years of counterterrorism policy in office. It's very useful for those things, but obviously a lot of stuff (like the Soleimani assassination) happened in his second term.

This is my main criticism of the book, which is otherwise interesting, well-documented, and well-argued. Neumann's main arguments are 1. Trump did constitute a significant break from previous approaches to terrorism. Bush and Obama had significant differences, but they both tried to avoid demonizing Muslims, they didn't link terrorism and immigration as problems, they tried to stay within some boundaries of international law, and they believed the US had to make some effort to address the deeper causes of terrorism. Trump broke from all of these things, embracing autocratic allies, punitive violence, and Islamophobia. It was truly a view of the WoT that crawled out of the fever swamps of the radical right.

2. However, Trump was not fully able to enact this vision of the WoT because he was incompetent and rather indifferent toward staffing the federal bureaucracy and ensuring that his policies were enacted. He also wanted to devolve responsibility for fighting terrorism to "the generals" (people like SECDEF Mattis and the military leadership), and these figures wanted to keep the campaigns against terrorism within legal or ethical boundaries. This reality, of course, only fed Trump and the radical right's anger with the "deep state" and their desire to insert true loyalists and extremists if he wins the presidency again.

There's a lot packed into this book, including a good case that the chaos of Trump's policy-making and Islamophobic remarks actually harmed overall counterterrorism strategy and made the country less safe. Certainly his mainstreaming of white nationalist rhetoric, and his efforts to downplay right-wing extremism/terrorism, have had this effect. I just wish PN had waited for the end of Trump's term to do a full assessment.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have just finished reading this excellent book by my old friend, the international terrorism expert, Professor Peter Neumann. It is a concise and devastating analysis of Donald Trump's much vaunted (by himself) war on terrorism, especially (indeed exclusively) Islamist terrorism. The author uses a range of authorities to show how the administration of the current POTUS has at one and the same time followed in practice many of the same policies as the predecessors he so lambasted, while undermining their effectiveness by his incoherence of strategy, inflammatory rhetoric and 'Bluster' - the summary title of the book itself. Instead of making America great, the former 'land of the free' has become a greatly diminished influence for good under his leadership. In addition to the excellent notes and references that enable readers of the book to follow up on the background and basis of his analysis, the later part of the book points out that while Trump skilfully exploited the fears of decline and the sense of insecurity about the rapidly changing nature of society, he did not manufacture them, because there has been a widespread sense that very idea of America as the defender of the freedom and the convictions about liberal democracy are themselves withering. Peter's further thoughts about the nature of our Western political and intellectual malaise and how it can be addressed will be most welcome.

[Spikeybär · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short book offers a solid recap overview on the topic. However, it fails to deliver any new information or actual in-depth analysis. While it might be another passanger on the popular books-about-Trump train, it is a fast and well enough researched read.