Comparing Alternative U.S. Counterterrorism Strategies: Can Assumption-Based Planning Help Elevate the Debate?

Abstract : At the dawn of the 21st century, the United States faces numerous, significant, long-term, and novel challenges, not the least of which is countering the threat from today's virulent new strain of terrorism. Frequently, both expert decisionmakers and lay citizens have trouble assessing alternative strategies to address such issues because of the emotions they engender and of the deep uncertainty involved. RAND has a long history of developing and employing methods for addressing such questions and distilling complex policy problems into their essential trade-offs. One such approach, assumption-based planning (ABP), focuses on identifying and addressing the key assumptions and thus the key vulnerabilities underlying an organization's plans. In the hands of RAND analysts, ABP has often proved useful in helping clients evaluate and improve their organization's plan. But groups whose members hold conflicting views have not previously used ABP to compare alternative plans. The question thus arises: Can ABP help contentious groups more systematically debate alternative U.S. counterterrorism strategies? To help address this question, RAND conducted two sets of workshops using ABP. The first set engaged academic and policymaking experts, testing whether ABP could usefully compare the strengths and weaknesses of alternative strategies and how ABP would perform in a contentious group setting. The second set repeated the experiment with a lay audience that the RAND team assembled in collaboration with the League of Women Voters. The workshops examined three alternative approaches to counterterrorism: the current U.S. national strategy for combating terrorism, an enhanced law-enforcement and intelligence strategy focusing on terrorism as a criminal activity, and a disengagement and deterrence strategy that focuses on U.S. political withdrawal from Islamic regions of the world and the threat of massive retaliation against any future terrorist attacks.