Author

Steven Pifer

Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, Center on the United States and Europe

Director - Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative

Putin and nukes

Mr. Putin likes to talk publicly every now and then about Russia’s nuclear weapons. Two years ago, he reminded a summer youth camp audience that Russia was a nuclear superpower—as if anyone needed reminding. With a nuclear arsenal believed to number some 4,500 weapons, Russia matches the size of the U.S. arsenal and has 15 times as many nuclear weapons as any third country. Kremlin propaganda outlets such as RT and Sputnik regularly post articles crowing about new Russian strategic weapons developments to make sure no one forgets.

Sometimes, Mr. Putin’s comments are more than a little odd. In a 2015 television documentary, he said he was prepared to put nuclear forces on alert as the Russian military seized Crimea. That was strange because Ukraine had no nuclear arms. It gave them up in the 1990s, in large part because Moscow promised to respect Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity. Kiev even kept its Crimean-based troops in garrison, not challenging the invading Russian forces. As for the West, no country moved to intervene. So why would Mr. Putin think of a nuclear alert?

Last year, the Russian ambassador in Copenhagen threatened that Russia would target nuclear-armed missiles against Denmark. Ambassadors usually don’t say such things. Such talk apparently filtered down from the top.

This loose chatter about nuclear weapons becomes more worrisome against the backdrop of Russia’s “escalate to de-escalate” doctrine, which suggests a lower threshold for using nuclear arms in a conventional conflict. While much of Moscow’s strategic nuclear modernization program offers little reason for concern—the Russians are replacing old stuff with new stuff, just as the United States will be doing in the 2020s—Russia’s continued attachment to large numbers of tactical nuclear arms worries countries in its neighborhood.

In contrast, American leaders speak in a different way about nuclear weapons. Barack Obama usually refers to them in the context of cutting weapons numbers and reducing their role in U.S. security policy. He does not appear to see much need to remind the world that the United States has lots of nuclear bombs. It is difficult to believe that Mr. Obama would use nuclear weapons unless they were first used against the United States or an American ally. You could probably say that about every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower.

Then there is Mr. Trump

Mr. Trump appears to have a different view. On his August 3 MSNBC morning show, Joe Scarborough said: “Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point, if we had them, why can’t we use them.”

Mr. Trump’s campaign promptly denied that he had said any such thing. That would be reassuring…except that Mr. Trump has publicly said something very similar. In a March town hall, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews observed that most people don’t want to hear about possible nuclear weapons use, especially from American presidents. Mr. Trump responded: “Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?”

U.S. nuclear weapons are in fact used—in a way—on a daily basis. Their existence serves as a deterrent against aggression. (One can debate how safe nuclear deterrence is, but that is another question.) If ever a nuclear weapon were used, however, the whole game would change, and a Pandora’s box would open, full of all kinds of bad, nasty, and unpredictable things. Responsible leaders understandably don’t want to go there.

In another March interview, Mr. Trump declined to exclude the option of using tactical nuclear arms against ISIS. Huh? What would he do? Incinerate an ISIS-occupied city in Syria or Iraq, killing thousands of innocent civilians, to get the ISIS fighters there?

Mr. Trump’s remarks make clear that he does not understand much about nuclear strategy. He also does not understand the weapons themselves. The foundation for U.S. nuclear deterrence is the strategic triad: submarine-launched ballistic missiles, silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, and long-range bombers. When the question came up at Republican debate last year, Mr. Trump’s confused answer suggested that he had no clue what the triad is.

The Kremlin might want to consider this

By all appearances, Mr. Trump is Moscow’s favored candidate in the November election. The Russian president speaks of Mr. Trump in very positive terms. Some analysts believe that Russian intelligence was behind the recent leak of DNC e-mails to Wikileaks. The Russia media has embraced Mr. Trump as its favorite for the White House in 2017. And why not? Mr. Trump speaks highly of Mr. Putin, wants to tear up America’s trade pacts, would weaken U.S. alliances, particularly NATO, and appears ready to recognize Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. If you’re sitting in the Kremlin, what’s not to like?

The Kremlin leadership, however, might consider this: Does it really want someone with Mr. Trump’s irresponsible attitude toward all things nuclear holding the U.S. launch codes?

And while it’s at it, the Kremlin leadership also might consider its own nuclear pronouncements.

      

 

 

On August 15, the Africa Security Initiative, part of the Brookings Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, will host an event focused on the DRC and the broader region. Thomas Perriello, President Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Africa Great Lakes region, will share his thoughts and detail his experiences there. Special Envoy Perriello will be joined by Anthony Gambino, former USAID mission director for the Democratic Republic of Congo. Michael O’Hanlon, Brookings senior fellow, will moderate the discussion.

Following conversation, panelists will take audience questions.

      

 

 

I believe General Allen is correct to recognize the severity of the threat Donald Trump would pose to our military and indeed our broader foreign policy. But leave that aside. I would challenge General Dempsey’s contention that retired military personnel should, and generally do, stay out of partisan politics. Has he forgotten the following?:

• George Washington, our first commander in chief, also became our first president several years after his military retirement;
• General Ulysses S. Grant, the winning general for the Union in the civil war, became president four years later;
• General Dwight Eisenhower, the winning general for allied forces in World War II, became president of the United States eight years later;
• General Colin Powell, impressed by Barack Obama’s abilities, endorsed him for president eight years ago;
• Admiral Mike Mullen, our last chairman of the joint chiefs before Dempsey, was reportedly vetted and approved to be Michael Bloomberg’s vice presidential choice when Bloomberg was considering an independent run for president this year;
• General Wesley Clark ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004; other former flag officers have done the same;
• When then-Senator John Kerry was denigrated by a right-wing group for his supposed failings in uniform during the Vietnam War, a number of high-ranking former military officers came to Kerry’s defense in 2004.

In fact, Dempsey’s rule doesn’t work in practice, nor should it. There are some rules that should apply, however. Clearly, active-duty officers should not engage in political activity, nor attempt to inculcate their troops with their own political views. Clearly, even retired officers should be very careful about impugning the integrity of a presidential candidate based on national security secrets that they do not and cannot be expected to know. Former military officers should be careful about teaming up in a concerted way to back one candidate and attack another by invoking their military credentials in what amounts to intellectual bullying or political shaming. And ideally, retired officers should voice their views with a degree of restraint, and precision, avoiding sweeping arguments when it is possible to make their points in a professional and specific way.

These would be among the guidelines I would counsel. Some of them are admittedly somewhat vague and murky—but that’s life. Better to have debate in some of the grey areas of public policy than to deprive our national political debate of the seasoned and reasoned views of some of its finest and most knowledgeable citizens, just because at one time they happened to wear the uniform of the American armed forces.

      

 

 

Although ISIS has hideouts around the world, Syria is really its epicenter, as my colleague Will McCants has written in his book “The ISIS Apocalypse.” It’s the epicenter not only in terms of operational hold on territory, but also in terms of the group’s narrative: that of waging an apocalyptic fight against the infidels, through which it will “liberate” the Middle East and turn it into a broader ISIS-controlled caliphate.

But current U.S. policy on Syria appears to try to pull off a far-fetched three-cushion pool shot, in the words of The Washington Post’s David Ignatius: try to get joint U.S.-Russian operations against Nusra and ISIS, and reduce Bashar Assad’s attacks on moderate rebel forces so they can gain ground. (And in the meantime, I’ll add, get support from Jordan’s King Abdullah and all of our allies to put pressure on different groups at different times.) But will all that actually come together? I applaud Secretary of State John Kerry, with his seemingly boundless energy, for trying to find some way forward. But with only 300 U.S. personnel on the ground and no advantage in structural forces, this approach is not going to work. It won’t work because fundamentally the United States and its allies are weak on the ground militarily—and we don’t have a serious strategy for changing that.

We need to think about solving this problem, and soon. I would propose the following changes in our Syria policy:

• On the diplomatic front, I think we need to envision some kind of a confederation model as our political goal. There is no other realistic way to square the fact that the United States doesn’t have major allies on the ground, except the Kurds, with real military potential. And yet, we are still hoping to simultaneously defeat ISIS, defeat the Nusra Front, and replace Assad. That approach just doesn’t make sense.
• Secondly, in terms of military assets on the ground, there are several things we should do differently. For one, we need to be somewhat more willing to work with groups that are tainted by past association with the Nusra Front, as long as we can vouch for the fact that they are not themselves Nusra members. We should give them anti-tank missiles—though not anti-aircraft missiles—and much more help in terms of ammunition, logistics assistance, and food, to help them build up their forces. We must also be clever about employing various options for no-fly zones: We cannot shoot down an airplane without knowing if it’s Russian or Syrian, but we can identify those aircraft after the fact and destroy Syrian planes on the ground if they were found to have barrel-bombed a neighborhood, for example. These kinds of operations are complicated, no doubt, and especially with Russian aircraft in the area—but I think we have made a mistake in tying ourselves in knots over the issue, since there are options we can pursue.
• Finally, we should push the debate about what creating safe havens really means. I don’t think we should start declaring safe havens, but rather try to help them emerge. The Kurds are making gains in Syria’s northeast, for instance, as are some forces on the southern front—so, if the United States, in cooperation with its allies, accelerates and intensifies its involvement on the ground in those areas, safe havens can essentially emerge. An important advantage of this approach is that it doesn’t require putting American credibility on the line, but does help local allies build up and reinforces successes on the ground.

None of these proposals would be a panacea, and each would come with challenges. But we are in need of a more realistic Syria policy, recognizing that the current three-cushion-shot approach is not working, nor will it ever work if current conditions continue.

      

 

 

Now, it is up to Clinton to sketch out a positive vision for her own presidency. In so doing, she must strike a balanced tone—acknowledging and tapping the energy (and at times anger) of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and their wing of the Democratic Party—while also reaching out to independents and moderate Republicans to whom she should appeal (given her past and her politics, and most of all, her opponent), but who at present tend not to think favorably of her.

Against this complex backdrop, I would offer only a few suggestions for her upcoming speech:

• On the state of the world, we need a nuanced view. Yes, there are big problems. Yes, ISIS is a greater threat than President Obama has sometimes acknowledged. On balance, however, things are troubled but not bad. Democracy has taken a hit in recent years, and the world’s economy has struggled in many ways for a decade, and Russia and China have caused considerable problems of late. But taking a larger perspective, the international order still has many strong points. Our alliances are strong. Despite recent setbacks, a higher percentage of people around the world live in democratic countries and above the poverty line this century than ever before. Child mortality globally is way down. U.S.-India relations are better than ever, as are America’s ties to other key rising powers like Indonesia. The U.S. military is indeed very strong (as retired General David Petraeus and I write in a forthcoming Foreign Affairs article), even if there is much to do to make it even better.

• We do need to do better in fighting ISIS. Ideas on how to attack it in Syria and Libya, among other places, will be key, even if details will necessarily need to await 2017. And while I think President Obama has done better in dealing with Russia and China than commonly understood, Obama has not explained his strategies for handling these powers very well to the United States. Clinton can help.

• The fading middle-class economic dream in the United States remains the central issue of this campaign. It explains the rise of Sanders and Trump better than any other single factor or phenomenon. Clinton’s views on economics are good but they come across as a bit piecemeal, borrowing from Sanders on a few key points like the minimum wage and trade but somewhat lacking her own key stamp. Above all other issues, I hope she concentrates on this tonight.

• We have not heard much about Benghazi or about Clinton’s email problems this week. To be sure, many Republicans have inflated these issues beyond all reason. But Clinton should still apologize for her mistakes to the country, without overdoing it. As best I can tell, she put no true national secrets or American personnel at risk in her emails, and while Benghazi was a tragedy that might have been preventable, no one can be perfect in times like these. We don’t typically excoriate our military commanders for mistakes that tragically may cost American lives in a given tactical operation, recognizing that such setbacks happen in war. That is not to excuse the lack of proper attention to Libya and Benghazi by the U.S. government back in 2011 and 2012, only to put it in perspective.

• It would be good to hear some nice words about Republicans too, in an effort to reach across the aisle and defuse some of the anger in American politics today. I don’t mean just to compliment Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, but also to note the importance of people like Pete Domenici and Warren Rudman in fiscal policy and deficit reduction (and more recently, John Boehner and Paul Ryan); George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole in the Americans with Disabilities Act; the Republican Congress of the 1990s in welfare reform; George H.W. Bush again as well as people like Christie Todd Whitman in environmental policy; George W. Bush on PEPFAR/AIDS and also on stressing inclusivity while avoiding anti-Muslim rhetoric after the 9/11 attacks; and good GOP governors or former governors like Mitch Daniels, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush in fostering economic growth as well as education reform across much of the country. To Democrats angry with the current Republican presidential ticket, as well as much of the current congressional leadership, this may seem like bending over backwards to appease the opposition. But in fact, the above folks are not the opposition that Clinton needs to defeat now; they are responsible, constructive, patriotic members of the other main political party in the United States. They are not the enemy, and by reaching out to them, Clinton can improve her odds of beating the person who is now very much the adversary—not only of the Democratic ticket, but of much of this country’s finest bipartisan traditions and accomplishments.

I’ll be rooting for all the above (and also hoping to get to bed before midnight). Please bring it on, Hillary!

      

 

 

The Saudi press and the Royal Court had promised the king would attend the summit as late as Sunday. He is currently on vacation in Tangiers, Morocco—a short plane ride from Nouakchott. He travels with his own medical facilities. But Nouakchott offers few additional medical facilities and no luxury hotels, the summit was held in a special large tent. No explanation has yet been officially provided for his absence.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi was also expected to attend the summit but did not show. Egyptian authorities say he was too occupied by business at home. Some press reports claim Sissi was afraid of a possible assassination plot.

Salman, 80, has suffered from pre-dementia for several years, according to some sources. He has taken on a full schedule as monarch, however, and traveled extensively. In his absence while in Morocco, Crown Prince Muhammed bin Nayef is running the Kingdom’s business. Deputy Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman visited Washington last week for the ministerial meeting on fighting the Islamic State. The king’s ill health will fuel the rumors of tension between the two princes.

The king’s ill health will fuel the rumors of tension between the two princes.

The king was expected to stay in Tangiers through August and attend a wedding of one of his sons there. Long vacations are normal for Saudi monarchs.

Aside from the no-shows, the summit had no surprises on substance. It condemned terrorism and called for unity, as well as endorsed the Arab peace proposal originally drafted by Salman’s predecessor, King Abdullah. 

       

 

 

What legacy will Obama leave on the continent? On July 19, the Africa Security Initiative hosted a discussion on President Obama’s legacy in Africa, featuring Matthew Carotenuto, professor at St. Lawrence University and author of “Obama and Kenya: Contested Histories and the Politics of Belonging,” and Sarah Margon, Washington director at Human Rights Watch. Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon moderated the conversation.

O’Hanlon observed that Africa’s 54 countries have, on the whole, seen reasonably high economic growth rates in the past two decades. There’s been a slight decline recently, due in part to reduced demand for commodities in China. Trends in the spread of democracy have followed a similar path. The continent’s population is also continuing to grow rapidly. Security threats have eased in some places, he said, and intensified in others. Besides a few regional conflicts and human rights issues—some quite significant—the continent is arguably showing more promise than at any previous time, yet recent years have seen some reversals.

Obama’s policies in Africa

Margon highlighted some strengths and weaknesses of Obama’s policy in Africa. Strengths, in her view, include that the Obama administration:

• Improved governance and democracy through strong messaging;
• Balanced counterterrorism and civil rights, without letting the former dominate the latter;
• Made human rights and LGBT issues a clear priority;
• Carried out the Africa Leader’s Summit and the “Power Africa” electricity initiative, with modestly promising results; and
• Used social media to engage local populations.

Weaknesses, Margon argued, were that the administration:

• Focused on security assistance in ways that gave somewhat less priority to governance issues at times, at least in terms of U.S. financial resources, and aligned the United States with authoritarian regimes in several cases;
• Provided inconsistent follow-up towards crisis response in Guinea, Nigeria, and the Central African Republic, among other places; and
• Failed to hold governments accountable for human rights violations in places like Ethiopia.

A closer look at Kenya

Obama’s relationship with Africa is particularly challenging because of his Kenyan heritage, Carotenuto argued. He noted that Obama was sensitive to charges of favoritism and to critiques that he might be too focused on the continent of his relatives and his late father. In the United States, the “birther conspiracy” garnered a good deal of media attention, he said, and delayed Obama’s visit to Kenya until 2015. On the other hand, once Obama did go—he was the first sitting American president to do so—he was well-received because of his diaspora tie.

Obama has managed to nurture ties with Kenya despite the political turbulence in the country, Carotenuto continued. Kenya’s 2007 elections sparked a period of post-election violence, during which more than 1,300 people were killed. Current President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto have since been tried by the International Criminal Court for human rights violations during that time, and during their trials attempted to deflect blame by painting the ICC and the Obama administration as neo-colonial institutions favoring the opposition party. Since then, according to Carotenuto, there has been a rise in authoritarianism in Kenya, with increased restrictions on freedom of the press and a rise in human rights abuses. To further complicate matters, he added, al-Shabab has become a rising security threat for Kenya. Although the United States first began conducting drone strikes against the group in June 2011—with a Kenyan military intervention in Somalia following shortly after—there has been little effort to engage local development issues in Kenya’s northeast, where many Somalis live. This, combined with President Kenyatta’s recent decision to close the Dadaab refugee camp (which would displace 300,000 people), has caused greater insecurity, according to Carotenuto. At the same time, Kenya has made progress in other areas: for example, it passed a very progressive constitution in 2010.

Across the continent, meanwhile, Nigeria faces similar security threats from Boko Haram—but U.S. policies between Kenya and Nigeria vary greatly. Prior to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency, Washington put more pressure on Nigeria than on Kenya to reform, Carotenuto said. Kenya has generally not been held accountable, as the United States has continued to support its fight against al-Shabab.

Authoritarians, term limits, and popular sovereignty

As Margon explained, there has been a dramatic expansion of security assistance across the board in Africa. That can be problematic when the aid supports countries with authoritarian regimes like Rwanda and Uganda. Margon was particularly disappointed with Obama’s 2015 visit to Ethiopia. She believes Obama has failed to hold Ethiopia accountable, particularly after a 2009 counterterrorism law led to a clampdown on civil society.

Carotenuto and Margon also addressed the issue of long-term leaders like President Kagame of Rwanda, President Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and President Museveni of Uganda. All have used—and in some cases abused—the election process to allow themselves to stay in power. This has not just weakened the political system, in their views, but damaged citizens’ autonomy. Countries like Uganda, where a president has been in power for many years, see more violations of basic human rights, Margon observed. Carotenuto pointed to 2014 Afrobarometer data suggesting that Africans overwhelmingly support democracy; promoting term limits is not just an American or Western project.

Overall, the participants agreed that the effects of Obama’s legacy in Africa have not yet been fully manifested. The fact that Barack Obama was the first African-American elected to be president in U.S. history will not necessarily make his legacy in Africa particularly historic.

Note: Anne Wilcox, an intern with the Center on 21st Century Security and Intelligence, contributed to this post.

      

 

 

The upheaval and political instability in Turkey also holds significant implications for Turkey’s foreign policy and the fate of a neighboring region already in turmoil from the war in Syria and insecurity in Iraq. The West desperately needs a stable, democratic, and predictable partner in its NATO-ally Turkey to address the many challenges besetting the region and to fight the Islamic State (or ISIS). How will recent events affect regional stability and Turkey’s cooperation with the West on security issues, including the resettlement of Syrian refugees? What does the failed coup mean for the coalition against ISIS engagement in Syria?

On July 20, the Foreign Policy program (FP) at Brookings hosted a panel discussion to consider these questions and other domestic and international consequences of the coup attempt in Turkey. Brookings Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on the United States and Europe Fiona Hill introduced and moderated a wide-ranging conversation featuring FP Senior Fellows Shadi Hamid, Kemal Kirişci, Michael O’Hanlon, and Ömer Taşpınar.

After the discussion, the speakers took questions from the audience.

      

 

 

The horrific attack in Nice last week underscores the acute terrorist threat France is facing. There is no simple or single answer to this danger, but the French parliamentary recommendation to create a French version of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) is a smart idea which Paris should implement.

The NCTC was created after the September 11, 2001 attack on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. Initially the Bush administration and the American intelligence establishment were opposed to creating a new agency but the Commission report made it a political necessity. At first called the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, it became NCTC in 2004.

The Center services as the focal point for all terrorist threat reporting and assessment. All the various intelligence and security agencies including CIA, NSA, FBI, the Defense agencies and state and local police services share information with the Center, which has representatives from many of them at its headquarters. By bringing all the data to one central service it is more likely that analysts will connect data points together, famously “connect the dots” and assess threats.

The Director of NCTC is responsible for the national threat assessment. When the President convenes an interagency terrorist threat meeting it is the Director who presents the assessment. John Brennan was the first director of the Center.

It also oversees the development of information technologies that are used to share data on threats. This helps make the databases of different intelligence and law-enforcement agencies interact better and share information. This tries to avoid the problem of stovepipes in intelligence collection and analysis that have damaged assessment in the past.

If there was an NCTC before 9/11 there is a reasonable chance the plot would have been thwarted.

If there was an NCTC before 9/11 there is a reasonable chance the plot would have been thwarted. A center integrating all terrorist reports would have focused attention much earlier on the arrival of known al-Qaida operatives in the United States in time for the FBI and local police to surveil them, see their contacts and take action.

It is obviously not foolproof. NCTC did not detect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber, who almost blew a plane on Christmas Day in 2009 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit. Nor did it prevent the attacks in California and Florida this year. No security service can prevent all terrorist plots, especially so-called lone-wolf plots that are very difficult to detect in advance. But a dedicated center for integrating all threat information improves the odds.

France has excellent intelligence and security services. I’ve worked with them in my career over several decades. They are professional—world leaders in their business. But like all intelligence communities there are inherent weaknesses in information infrastructure and sharing. The Nice attacker from Tunisia apparently was known to the police but not to the intelligence community. Perhaps he would have been more likely to be monitored if he was in a broader database.

The French parliament set up an investigation of their security infrastructure after the deadly attacks in Paris last year. Their report was released just before Nice. It’s top recommendation is to create a French NCTC. It’s a good idea.

Indeed, other European states should consider doing the same thing. And the European Union might want to establish a European version, integrating data across the EU.

       

 

 

From what we know so far, the attack was carried out by a deeply distraught, potentially deranged, and in any case extremely brutal local man from Nice of Tunisian descent and French nationality. Marital problems, the recent loss of his job, and a general sense of personal unhappiness seem to have contributed to the state of mind that led him to commit this heinous atrocity. Perhaps we will soon learn that ISIS, directly or indirectly, inspired the attack in one way or another as well. My colleague Dan Byman has already tapped into his deep expertise about terrorism to remind us that ISIS had in fact encouraged ramming attacks with vehicles before, even if the actual manifestation of such tactics in this case was mostly new. 

This attack will again raise the question: Why France? On this point, I do have a somewhat different take than some of my colleagues. The argument that France has partly brought these tragedies upon itself—perhaps because of its policies of secularism and in particular its limitations on when and where women can wear the veil in France—strikes me as unpersuasive. Its logical policy implications are also potentially disturbing, because if interpreted wrongly, it could lead to a debate on whether France should modify such policies so as to make itself less vulnerable to terrorism. That outcome, even if unintended, could dance very close to the line of encouraging appeasement of heinous acts of violence with policy changes that run counter to much of what French culture and society would otherwise favor. So I feel the need to push back.

Here are some of the arguments, as I see them, against blaming French culture or policy for this recent string of horrible attacks including the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the November 2015 mass shootings in Paris, and the Nice tragedy (as well as recent attacks in Belgium):

• Starting with the simplest point, we still do not know much about the perpetrator of the Nice killings. From what we do surmise so far, personal problems appear to be largely at the root of the violence—different from, but not entirely unlike, the case with the Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen.
• We need to be careful about drawing implications from a small number of major attacks. Since 2000, there have also been major attacks in the Western world by extremist jihadis or takfiris in New York, Washington, Spain, London, San Bernardino, Orlando, and Russia. None of these are Francophone. Even Belgium is itself a mixed country, linguistically and culturally.
• Partly for reasons of geography, as well as history, France does face a larger problem than some other European countries of individuals leaving its country to go to Syria or Iraq to fight for ISIS, and then returning. But it is hardly unique in the scale of this problem.
• Continental Europe has a specific additional problem that is not as widely shared in the United Kingdom or the United States: Its criminal networks largely overlap with its extremist and/or terrorist networks. This point may be irrelevant to the Nice attack, but more widely, extremists in France or Belgium can make use of illicit channels for moving people, money, and weapons that are less available to would-be jihadis in places like the U.K. (where the criminal networks have more of a Caribbean and sub-Saharan African character, meaning they overlap less with extremist networks).
• Of course, the greatest numbers of terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists occur in the broader Muslim world, with Muslims as the primary victims—from Iraq and Syria to Libya and Yemen and Somalia to South Asia. French domestic policies have no bearing on these, of course.

There is no doubt that good work by counterterrorism and intelligence forces is crucial to preventing future attacks. France has done well in this regard—though it surely can do better, and it is surely trying to get better. There is also no doubt that promoting social cohesion in a broad sense is a worthy goal. But I would hesitate, personally, to attribute any apparent trend line in major attacks in the West to a particular policy of a country like France—especially when the latter is in fact doing much to seek to build bridges, as a matter of national policy, with Muslims at home and abroad. 

There is much more to do in promoting social cohesion, to be sure, even here in America (though our own problems probably center more on race than on religion at the moment). But the Nice attacker almost assuredly didn’t attack because his estranged wife couldn’t wear a veil in the manner and/or places she wanted. At a moment like this in particular, I disagree with insinuations to the contrary.