Vital Interests: You have been involved with tracking terrorist networks for over 20 years. During that time there have been devastating terrorist attacks, various groups have come forward with agendas ranging from the establishment of an Islamic caliphate to the preservation of white Christian nationalist societies. Can you give us a long view, a synopsis, of how the Global War on Terror has evolved and where we are now?

Peter Bergen: One of the themes of my recent book, Trump and His Generals, is the continuity between Obama and Trump, once you get past their very different rhetorical styles, particularly regarding the so-called Global War on Terror. Neither sent large conventional armies into the greater Middle East. Generally speaking, they both felt that they were elected to get out of America's seemingly endless wars. President Obama pulled out of Iraq at the end of 2011 and we see President Trump pulling out of wherever he can manage it. 

What's fascinating to me is that where we are in Afghanistan is exactly the same place today as at the end of Obama’s presidency. Obama wanted to drill down to just embassy protection in Afghanistan but he left around 8,500 troops because he just did the math and determined that was a necessary level.

That's pretty much exactly where we are today, with Trump drawing down to around 8,000 troops and he isn't going to withdraw further, at least for the foreseeable future. 

To confront terrorist activity around the world, there is reliance on special operations forces, the use of drones, the use of cyber warfare, and  a decided avoidance of large conventional military deployments. This reflects a lot of commonality between the two administrations. The campaign against ISIS was certainly amplified by Trump, but it was essentially the same plan that had long been in place under Obama.

One way to look at this is Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, who was running the counter ISIS campaign under Obama, and who publicly said that 45,000 members of ISIS had been killed. This was six months before Obama left office, and then about a year later, General Tony Thomas, who runs SOCOM under Trump said that up to 70,000 had been killed in total.

Fallujah,Tikrit, and other key Iraqi cities had been taken from ISIS under Obama and the campaign against Mosul had started. In Syria, the campaign to defeat ISIS in Raqqa hadn't started but certainly planning was underway during the Obama administration.

To give Trump his due in the fight against ISIS, he did a number of things that certainly sped up the process. One, he removed the cap of only 500 troops in Syria that was in place under Obama. Obama and his team were very concerned about mission creep in Syria, so they kept the number of ground troops quite low. They kept the number of helicopters at three, which is effectively one due to refueling and repair time. Perhaps most significantly, they didn't arm the Kurds.

Trump upped the number of troops and increased the amount of air support. In May of 2017, Trump decided to arm the Kurds knowing that it would certainly irritate the Turks. But taking the ISIS stronghold in Raqqa was not feasible with only U.S. Special Forces. You need a strong ground force and the Syrian Democratic Forces, largely Kurdish, provided 60,000 battle-ready soldiers. Trump also devolved to local American military commanders greater authorities so they did not have to check in with the White House when executing operations. 

VI: Does the rise of ISIS, and their ambition to form a caliphate backed by a jihadi army of some 40,000 fighters, demonstrate the weakness and failure of counterterrorism strategies?

Peter Bergen: Obviously a good question. I think it was very specific to the time and place of Iraq at the end of 2011. First of all, you had Nouri al-Maliki who was a terrible sectarian Prime Minister, who was arresting leading Sunni politicians, promoting Shia interests and marginalizing the Sunnis. While the Iraqi Sunnis didn't love ISIS necessarily, they hated what they saw as a Shia government in Baghdad even more. Of course, then you had the United States military pull-out at the end of December 2011. General Jim Mattis, when he was out of Central Command, had advocated for leaving 18,000 thousand troops there. You can debate whether or not the Iraqis at that time would have accepted it, but certainly the Obama team wanted to get out, and they did.

So the United States wasn't present. The Iraqi government was incompetent and sectarian, and the Iraqi armed forces were very weak and corrupt, and they saw that ISIS was so strong. If you look at the Iraqi counterterrorism division today, which did all the fighting in Iraq on the ground against ISIS, they are a pretty effective fighting force, and the fact is, a rather unheralded American military success. Admittedly, after ISIS was already almost at the gates of Baghdad, we just came in and trained these guys.

If you look at what's happening in Iraq right now, the whole crisis was triggered essentially by the demotion by Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Madhi of Lieutenant General Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi in September. General al-Saadi was the head of the key counter terrorism Golden Division and widely regarded as a hero in Iraq for his success fighting ISIS. He is widely seen as non-sectarian. 

His removal was the precipitant for widespread anti-government protests, which were largely nationalist in nature and anti-Iranian. With the killing of Qassem Soleimani and strikes against Shiite militia in Iraq, the polarity of all of this is reversed - at least for now.

VI: A counterterrorism strategy that evolved under Obama, and then accelerated under Trump, is “decapitation,”  the targeting of high-value terrorist leaders. This is accomplished mostly by the use of drones, not requiring troops on the ground or even special forces operations. All that is required is good intelligence to identify the leadership of ISIS, Al Qaeda, or other terrorist designated groups. Is this an effective policy that has actually weakened terrorist organizations and thwarted operations they might want to undertake?

Peter Bergen: If you look at the Abbottabad documents, it is clear that Osama Bin Laden was keenly aware that the drone campaign was devastating Al Qaeda in the federally administered areas of Pakistan. Many of his top leaders and middle management were being killed to the point that Bin Laden was considering moving Al-Qaeda either into a remote area of  Afghanistan, back further into Pakistan, or even Iran.

The tactic of General Stanley McChrystal in Iraq was taking out the entire management structure of Al Qaeda in Iraq. After Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death in 2006, the violence accelerated, but when the entire management was taken out it worked for a while. Obviously, it's not sufficient because, at the end of the day, the political grievances that produced these groups needed to be addressed.

What is different today, if we're talking about a 30,000-foot view, between September 12, 2001 and today in the Middle East? To me, the biggest difference is extreme sectarianism. Fueled by Saudi Arabia and Iran, this is tearing apart Yemen, Syria, and Iraq.

If you go back to Bin Laden's speeches in the post 9/11 era, he was not looking to amplify some struggle between the Shia and the Sunni. His mother is an Alawite, which is regarded as a heretical form of Shiism. Religious divisiveness was not a feature of his speeches. I think that's the big difference - I don't think this stoking of extreme sectarianism is going away anytime soon.

With the collapse of Arab governments in countries like Libya and Yemen, there is obviously the opportunity for radical groups to prey on weak hosts. They're not strong themselves, but they function very well in weak or failing states. Then, you add to that economic problems in these countries, not suggesting that all terrorists are somehow poor, but the foot soldiers are often on a payroll, whether it's ISIS or Taliban.

Another factor leading to ISIS recruits is the unprecedented immigration of Muslims into European countries which really make little effort to host them in any meaningful way or make them feel welcome as fellow citizens. As a result you get second-generation or sometimes even  first generation individuals turning to militant Islam in European countries. That's why you saw 1500 French citizens go to Syria to join ISIS. You saw 750 Belgians, same numbers from Britain, from Germany. You only saw a few dozen Americans who went to Syria to join the ISIS caliphate.

I think those underlying conditions that produce ISIS, which I see as a Middle Eastern phenomenon and partly a European phenomenon, but not really at all an American phenomenon, are still there. Could a son of ISIS emerge from a merger between elements of Al Qaeda and elements of ISIS, or can ISIS regroup once the United States military gets thrown out of Iraq as seems to be about to happen, that is certainly possible.

There is, however, a big difference between the rise of ISIS in 2014 and 2020 and that is the Syrian Democratic Forces that are in Syria and the Iraqi counterterrorism service that is in Iraq. There is a better-formed opposition to a potential return of a group like ISIS. But the fact is that the conditions that produced ISIS in the first place continue to exist, even if you remove all the leaders, at a certain point, it could reconstitute itself as we are now witnessing.

VI: The ISIS groups that are now active in Asia and in Africa, these are often referred to as franchises or branches of ISIS. You are saying that they're created by their local circumstances, not because ISIS is sending emissaries from their bases in Anbar province to organize local ISIS chapters?

Peter Bergen: I think it depends. The ISIS chapter in Libya, which is now largely defunct, was a fully owned subsidiary of ISIS Central. Groups like ISIS in Afghanistan are more guys who slap on the ISIS patch. Similarly, in places like Sri Lanka or the Philippines, we've seen they self-affiliate rather than get seeded by the mothership. 

VI: Let’s discuss what is happening now in America’s counterterrorism efforts: recently there was a U.S. drone attack in Iraq that killed General Qassem Soleimani, a prominent Iranian military commander. This action is being characterized by President Trump as taking out one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists who was planning attacks against American personnel and interests. Does this decision to kill a member of the leadership of a sovereign nation, with whom we are not technically at war, constitute a significant change in United States counter-terrorism policy? Is General Soleimani in the same category as Bin Laden or Baghdadi?

Peter Bergen: One interesting thing to me is how the Trump administration is missing an opportunity to frame this in a way that would be to their advantage. If you go back to the arguments around the targeted killing of the radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011, who after all was an American citizen, part of the argument for this assasination was that his threat was imminent. The standard for imminence was that he was just as a matter of course constantly planning and advocating for attacks against the United States. That is the argument that the lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel and the White House made to essentially justify the strike. President Obama bought those arguments and by all accounts readily signed off on this drone strike.

I think the Trump administration instead of getting caught up in specifics about how imminent the threat was and which sites precisely were being targeted, would perhaps behoove themselves to look at the justification that the Obama administration used, which was that this guy was constantly planning terrorist attacks just as a matter of routine. I think that would be a better case for them to make rather than trying to not respond to questions about how imminent Soleimani’s planned attacks were.

VI: If Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism and the terrorism they support is Shia, what about states that are linked to Sunni terrorist groups such as Saudi Arabia? Can you conflate the two? 

Peter Bergen: Remember, the main aim of al-Qaeda was the overthrow of the Saudi government. Certainly, there has been support for terrorist attacks  - we saw a Saudi citizen conduct a terrorist attack in the United States just in the last several weeks. This kind of ideological virus continues to exist in Saudi Arabia. Mohammed bin Salman, obviously, he's made quite a number of errors, but one thing that he has done is he's pushed back the religious police in Saudi Arabia, and he has allowed women to drive. He is pushing back against the fundamentailist Islamic Wahhabi ideology that gave birth to the Saudis 9/11 hijackers. So that is  a good thing.

I think the idea that the Saudi Arabian government is a state sponsor of these groups is an overstatement. Certainly, there are individual funders of these groups, whether it's al-Qaeda or ISIS, in the Kingdom, and the Gulf states and some Gulf-based charities have played roles in supporting these groups.  I think that has been dialed back over recent years. The Muslim Brotherhood is a banned organization in Saudi Arabia right now. It's actually designated as a terrorist organization.

The Saudis have had a sea change in that view of radical jihad, which isn't to say that it doesn't exist in Saudi Arabia as an idea. I think for the Saudi state, it is not as a matter of state policy supporting jihadist groups. Obviously, in Syria, it's a different matter. Certainly, the al-Qaeda affiliate there is getting support from Gulf individuals and has benefited. But it is hard to say that states are actively involved in supporting radical groups rather than their efforts to oppose the Assad government. 

I think you have to get down to individual countries and individual groups, rather than making blanket statements about it. I think with the Iranians, as a blanket statement, you can say, yes, the Houthis in Yemen are supported with weapons, intelligence, missiles and drones by the Iranians, and you can say that Hezbollah is an arm of the Iranian government in Lebanon, and these PMFs in Iraq, yes, they have some local independence, but they are certainly getting help from Iran as well. I think in these relationships, it is clear that there is direct support from the Iranian government.

VI: The distinction then is that whatever jihadist terrorism originated in the Gulf region had a clear religious component, while the Iranian support for its terrorist proxies seems to be more politically motivated, more anti-American, anti-Israel. 

Peter Bergen: Yes, and also geared to essentially ensuring that Iran is a regional superpower. From the perspective of the Saudis, the Iranians control Lebanon, they control Syria, they control Iraq, and they control Yemen.

VI: Isn’t this so-called Shia Crescent a determined ambition of Iran, which arguably, they want for domestic security after the devastating Iran-Iraq war,  where there were close to a million casualties?  

Peter Bergen: Yes - the Iranians are quite focused on the defence of their homeland.

VI: I would like to turn our discussion to the ideas put forward in your book. From one presidential administration to another there has been a range of relationships between the White House and the Pentagon - some close and cooperative, others strained and contentious. Trump demonstrated a positive attitude toward the Pentagon, staffing many of his key departments with generals while at the same time he denigrated the intelligence services.  How did this all play out?

Peter Bergen:  I think an important aspect of this was the fact that in a normal administration there would be 200 or so people that they could easily call on with significant government experience to fill deputy, assistant, and under secretary roles. But you had a situation where more than 100 of those officials had signed Never-Trump letters, therefore none of them were going to be considered. A consequence was that nearly the entire Republican national security establishment was off the table for a position in the Trump government. Active duty military officers certainly would never sign a Never-Trump letter, and also retired senior military officers were quite unlikely to have signed such letters. So military officers became part of the available pool.

You add to that that Trump was the first president in American history who had neither served in  the military nor served in public office. He really didn't know how any of this worked. People like Jim Mattis, who had run Central Command, which is in charge of all U.S. wars in the Middle East, or General John Kelly who ran SouthCom, which has a similar role, south of the border, and H.R. McMaster, who fought in the Gulf War and the Iraq war and also had a long tour in Afghanistan - all these general officers had a deep understanding of the mechanics of the national security establishment.

What is quite fascinating is that none of these people had ever met President Trump before they were offered a job. When they met him for the first time, they were offered positions as Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Homeland Security, and National Security Advisor. John Kelly has said, not only did he not know Trump, he didn't know anybody who knew Trump. Trump and the generals lived in entirely different ecosystems.

By the end of 2018, they were all gone, and I think they're gone because they were prepared to disagree with the President on matters of policy. The military honor-based code is not something that Trump observes very much. I think it was more than just style - it was really substance. Whether it was the treatment of NATO allies, the kid gloves treatment of Putin, the blockade of Qatar, the abrupt decision to pull out of Syria, the dispute over what to do in Afghanistan, all these things added up and over time, they were either forced out, resigned, or just left early.

VI: The War Powers resolutions currently being put forward gives Congress the ability to restrict what the Trump administration does in terms of military actions, particularly initiating war with Iran. Do you think the military welcomes this kind of intervention to restrain Trump in the military sphere?

Peter Bergen: Their job is to follow the orders of the commander in chief, and his job is to get congressional authorization for the use of force, particularly when it's politically controversial. If Congress passes some kind of War Powers Resolution that constrains him on Iran, that's the law of the land. They're going to follow the law of the land.

I thought it was fascinating that Matt Gaetz, who is a congressman from Florida, and one of the most rabid defenders of Trump, voted to support the resolution. He voted for this resolution and in the Senate, you have Rand Paul and Mike Lee and others who are likely to back a War Powers Resolution. Trump can veto it, obviously, but I think it would lay down a bit of a marker about future use of force.

We are now almost two decades after 9/11 and all we have is the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) and the 2002 Iraq Resolution.That's the entire architecture for all of the wars that the United States has been fighting in various Muslim countries. Certainly getting involved in the war in Iran was not contemplated by either of these resolutions, and it would seem that you would absolutely have to have some authorization that isn't reliant on resolutions that were passed almost two decades ago for very different conflicts.

VI: You are pointing out a difficult dilemma for the military. You say their job is to follow the orders of the Commander in Chief, the President. Isn’t it also the case that anybody joining the military or any government service, the oath they take is to defend the Constitution?

Peter Bergen: The Commander in Chief has very broad authorities to do what he or she wants with the military. If he said, "Everybody has to dress in a Humpty Dumpty outfit at the Pentagon today," they would have to do that or they would feel that they had to do that. They would not be bound to follow an unlawful order such as attacking cultural sites, which Mark Esper the Secretary of Defence clearly stated is not going to happen, but they would follow lawful orders.

One of the scenes in my book is the signing of the Executive Order travel ban which took place a week after the inauguration in the Hall of Heroes at the Pentagon, which is one of the most sacred spaces in the Pentagon. Jim Mattis was there, and it was all part of the stagecraft of the Executive Order. Mattis was not happy about being used as a prop and have the Hall of Heroes a venue used for political purposes, but the fact is the Commander in Chief is the Commander in Chief, and if he wants to go to the Pentagon and sign an executive order, then that is that.

The interesting thing about my book, as I think about it, is the extent to which we have an unwritten Constitution that we've only become aware of during the Trump presidency, part of which would be that there are certain things the Commander in Chief just won't do, like  go to the Pentagon and basically make a highly politicized statement and sign a very politicized order. Or attack his own intelligence agencies and the Federal Reserve, this was part of the unwritten contract that the President wouldn't do those things but Trump is doing them. 

There is really nothing in the Constitution that says he can't do it, but, if it was an unlawful order, I think they would object. Interestingly, we now know through The New York Times that Mark Esper and John Bolton had a meeting in August with the President saying, "We should give this military aid to Ukraine," that we're obligated to do that.

VI: To conclude this conversation, which I think has provided many interesting insights, do you think there will be tensions between the Pentagon and the Trump Administration, given the kinds of orders the President has been making lately? 

Peter Bergen: I think Mark Esper and Pompeo seem to be even closer than Mattis and Tillerson were. Mattis and Tillerson didn't know each other when they came into the administration - they weren't Trump guys. They developed  a very tight relationship, which was solidified over breakfast every Thursday at the State Department and they had a mind meld to the point where they excluded H.R. McMaster, the National Security Adviser, all of which I document in the book.

Now, Mark Esper and Pompeo were classmates at West Point, they've known each other for a very long time. There's obviously a very high degree of confidence between them. Pompeo, according to The New York Times, had been advocating for killing Soleimani for a long time. Mark Esper, he presumably is not going to push back, I mean Pompeo is the strongest person in the war cabinet now.

Mark Esper may be a competent guy and a smart guy, but he's not Jim Mattis and Rob O'Brien, the National Security Adviser, may be a competent guy, but he's certainly no H.R. McMaster. Mick Mulvaney is certainly no John Kelly. The reason these guys are all gone is they disagreed with the President on matters of substance. The President is completely entitled to have  people in his cabinet that he wants, but I think he's substituted a team of rivals with a team of acolytes and, I don't know this for a fact, but I doubt there was a serious consideration of all the second and third order effects of killing Soleimani.

One of which was entirely predictable, which is the Iraqi Prime Minister has officially told Pompeo, "Start making plans for an American withdrawal." That of course, is a principal Iranian goal in the region - to get rid of the United States, so--

VI: So, Mission accomplished

Peter Bergen: Mission accomplished.

Peter Bergen is a journalist, author, documentary producer and Vice President for Global Studies and Fellows at New America; a professor of practice at Arizona State University; a Fellow at Fordham University’s Center on National Security and CNN’s national security analyst. He has held teaching positions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.