Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism Beyond the Sandpit

We have to be cognisant of lessons from the 6 January US Capitol attack, and from Canada’s, New Zealand’s and Australia’s various experiences with ‘freedom convoys’ converging on national parliaments.

Overall, these events highlight that efforts to counter extremism and build resilience can’t focus just on specific extremist fringes. Rather than considering the ability to recognise and withstand the appeal of anti-democratic ideas as a skill needed by individuals identified as ‘vulnerable’, or as a commitment by certain at-risk communities, the task takes on a fuller meaning as the threat changes and shifts.

As well as the ‘classic’ counterterrorism and counterextremism topics related to jihadism, a successful approach to combating terrorism requires research, commentary and dialogue on other (violent) contestations of democracy. This is certainly the approach that ASPI’s reoriented counterterrorism program is taking.

This broadened focus involves overlapping forms of ideological extremism, such as anti-government and conspiracy extremism, militant patriot and sovereign citizen movements, and other anti-pluralist discourse, gender-based hate and novel expressions of anti-Semitism, including how these developments are affected by evolving information and propaganda dynamics in a changing strategic environment.

We need a forward-looking, integrative approach that views countering terrorism and extremism as enduring political and societal challenges. If we define resilience as the ability to withstand extremist ideas through a commitment to Australian democracy and identity, we need to allow for contestability—that is, the ability to also question the meaning and application of national values, particularly in times of crisis or when the practice of democracy has polarising or exclusionary effects.

Keeping the strategic effects on democracy and the rules-based international order in centre view is fundamental to a comprehensive, long-term response in harmony with broader national and foreign policy objectives.

In terms of what lies ahead on the threat landscape, we must continually ask ourselves whether our approaches to countering terrorism and extremism are directed by a clear understanding of the distinction between the desired end state and the ways and means to get there.

Adapting to changed times means aligning a range of security priorities and other national objectives so they complement each other, rather than allowing the driving logic of one policy field or strand of national power to have adverse effects on another.

Going beyond the sandpit is therefore about recognising the need to stake out new strategic parameters and ensuring that the right questions are driving our analysis and policymaking.

Katja Theodorakis heads ASPI’s counterterrorism program.This article is published courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).