President Donald Trump started his second term with swift moves and directives, delineating his administration’s pivotal preferences, many of which were expected and much debated during the drive. One likely focus has received less engagement, yet it will greatly shape the United States’ foreign policy and approach for national security. Counterterrorism will probably be a persistent priority. 

Comparing emerging approaches and agendas with past US efforts describes the future form of U.S. counterterrorism ambitions. The country’s tactics and methods are developing to avoid the flaws and traps of earlier movements. It primarily considered global terrorism via the prism of state sponsorship, an elongation of Soviet actions to dilute America and its partners by supporting terrorist organisations seeking to strike the developed world. Internally, the U.S. regarded domestic terrorism as the actions of small, disparate clusters motivated by extremist fringe political manifestos.

President Trump’s return to office is expected to concentrate more on key issues, on counterterrorism as a mechanism of policy. This transformation is not a return to the guidelines of his previous government but a reaction to influential geopolitical transformations.

The Biden government’s approaches, which reprioritised national security agencies away from post-9/11 counterterrorism techniques, have arguably left the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorist aggression than it was before the 2001 raids in New York and Washington. The government also confronts increased attacks from criminal cartels and transnational mobs, primarily located in Mexico and Latin America, extending meaningful national security concerns.

America will not return to war on terror as its immediate counterterrorism policy, a critical lesson from historical movements, instead of largely targeting extremism’s considered root reasons and entering into global disputes, which President Trump witnesses as endless battle, his government will concentrate on eliminating terrorist networks, preventing risks and disciplining state sponsors for delivering material support or organising terrorist actions – though not necessarily pursuing regime shift. 

The current government is unlikely to confront meaningful public or allied resistance to its counterterrorism procedures. European, Middle Eastern and African partners are expected to be more forgiving of President Trump’s procedure compared to President Bush’s more general “war on terror.”

The government will obscure the ropes between procedures targeting transnational criminal groups (like drug and human trafficking) and terrorist outfits. The Trump management has already designated cartels as terrorist bodies under U.S. law. 

Predictive criticism of President Trump’s approaches as racist or “Islamophobic,” equivalent to the response to the travel prohibitions during his first period. The president dodges crafting counterterrorism as a religious or civilisational contention, having actively wooed Muslim-American voters and preserved good ties with leaders in the Islamic world. He differentiates between radical “Islamists” and religious and ethnic bodies.