The White House has unveiled President Donald Trump’s national security strategy. It has four main points: Protect America, promote our prosperity, preserve peace through strength, and advance our influence.
But one of the biggest points is the return of using “jihadist” and “Sharia,” language President Barack Obama’s administration tried to avoid.
From Fox News:
“The primary transnational threats Americans face are from jihadist terrorists and transnational criminal organizations,” the document states, according to excerpts released ahead of the speech.
A search of the document shows the word jihadist appears 24 times in the 68 page document. Obama’s 2015 national security strategy mentioned Islam twice.
The document mentions that America “will pursue threats to their source, so that jihadist terrorists are stopped before they ever reach our borders.”
Trump listed the ways to do this: disrupt terror plots, take direct actions, eliminate terrorist safe havens, sever sources of strength, share responsibility, and combat radicalization & recruitment in communities.
David Reaboi at Security Studies Group noted another massive change:
He is correct. Back in January 2016, Homeland Security released a report that called for officials to stop using jihad and sharia. The Washington Free Beacon reported at the time:
Under the section on terminology, the report calls for rejecting use of an “us versus them” mentality by shunning Islamic language in “Countering Violent Extremism” programs, or CVE, the Obama administration’s euphemism that seeks to avoid references to Islam.Under a section on recommended actions on terminology, the report says DHS should “reject religiously-charged terminology and problematic positioning by using plain meaning American English.”Government agencies should employ “American English instead of religious, legal and cultural terms like ‘jihad,’ ‘sharia,’ ‘takfir’ or ‘umma,’” states the June 2016 report by the Council’s countering violent extremism subcommittee.—The DHS report stated that to avoid a confrontational “us versus them” stance in public efforts to counter Islamic radicalization, government programs should use the term “American Muslim” instead of “Muslim American.”
The Obama administration insisted on this even though ISIS made it NO secret that they wanted the world to live under Sharia law. The terrorist group even formed an all female brigade to help enforce Sharia law through brutal and violent means.
Trump said that America “will respond to the growing political, economic, and military competitions” around the world. He did not hold back against China and Russia:
China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.
It even included critical language towards Russia over meddling with other’s election processes:
Today, such actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data.
It also calls out Russia for its behavior against its neighbors:
Although the menace of Soviet communism is gone, new threats test our will. Russia is using subversive measures to weaken the credibility of America’s commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions and governments. With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region. Russia continues to intimidate its neighbors with threatening behavior, such as nuclear posturing and the forward deployment of offensive capabilities.
Trump’s strategy is also not very friendly to the Middle East since officials consider the regime a threat to any peace in the region:
Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, has taken advantage of instability to expand its influence through partners and proxies, weapon proliferation, and funding. It continues to develop more capable ballistic missiles and intelligence capabilities, and it undertakes malicious cyber activities. These activities have continued unabated since the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran continues to perpetuate the cycle of violence in the region, causing grievance harm to the civilian populations. Rival states are filling vacuums created by state collapse and prolonged regional conflict.
He made it clear that incidents have shown that Israel is not the cause for the disruption of peace in the Middle East. Instead, it has shown that threats from Iran along with jihadist terrorist groups have caused “the region’s problems.”
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