The best way to neutralize a budding insurgency is to reform a degraded government: bolster the rule of law, give all citizens equal access to the vote, and improve the quality of government services. In the words of David Kilcullen—former special adviser for counterinsurgency in George W. Bush’s administration and chief counterterrorism strategist for the U.S. State Department—the most important thing governments can do is to “remedy grievances and fix problems of governance that create the conditions that extremists exploit.” If America does not change its current course, dangers loom.
