The writer is a former envoy to the US and the UK, and a former editor of The News.

President Barack Obama’s approach to terrorism is increasingly reminiscent of the policy of his predecessor, George W Bush. This is what was conveyed by his actions in the wake of the failed Christmas Day attempt to blow up a US airliner and the suicide bombing days later that killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration obviously needed to respond to a threat that is real and sustained. But the raft of security measures that were announced raised a fundamental question: had the Obama Administration relapsed into employing an old policy toolkit, rather than frame a different strategy to deal more comprehensively and effectively with the threat than had been the case in the eight years of the Bush administration?

The new security initiatives represented no break with the past approach. Plans were set in train to intensify US airport security by installing full-body scanners that will digitally undress passengers. Racial and religious profiling will be revived by instituting a list of 14 nations whose citizens will now be subjected to vigorous searches at American airports and full “pat downs” at airports worldwide of passengers flying to the US.

This response follows the well-worn path of taking “visible steps” each time there is an incident or terrorist attempt. Their aim is as much to allay public concerns as to enhance security. The debate in the Western media today swirls around how costly, effective, intrusive or disruptive these security procedures will turn out to be.

What is more disturbing is that these measure single out for extra screening people from what are designated as “countries of interest,” including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria, as well as from nations listed as “state sponsors of terrorism” – Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Nearly all are Muslim countries and many ostensible “allies” of the United States.

This has set off a storm of protest in Pakistan and other countries over a move that will exacerbate tensions and provoke hostility from the very nations whose support Washington needs to fight terrorism. Declaring entire populations of a country potential suspects and stigmatising them will hardly win the US any hearts and minds. As an American attorney put it, citizens from these countries will “now wear a badge of presumptive guilt,” thanks to requirements that breach human rights law.

The step runs counter to Obama’s Cairo speech of June 2009 in which he promised to chart a new beginning with the Muslim world on the basis of “mutual respect.” The discriminatory measures undermine this goal and risk strengthening the widespread perception in the Islamic world, fuelled by Bush’s disastrous policies, that Muslims are the target of implacable Western hostility.

These measures also try to redeem defects in American intelligence by shifting the blame elsewhere. It was an intelligence failure that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab to almost blow up a Detroit-bound plane. Only the failure of the explosives to detonate averted a disaster. The new procedures expose weaknesses in American intelligence that is unable to pinpoint potential terrorists and separate them from the rest of the population of these 14 countries. But detection will still depend on good intelligence not “pat-downs” or profiling.

The US security establishment also misses the point when it defines the threat in terms of countries rather than by identifying the underlying causes and radicalising influences that lead to terrorism as well as create “sanctuaries” in people’s minds. Increasingly, the threat is “located” in cyberspace from where activities are directed and support mobilised.

As the noted French scholar Olivier Roy recently wrote, “the threat comes not from some soil that can be invaded or occupied, but from within the globalised Web.” Globalised young people who are being lured by Al-Qaeda’s message are often radicalised “neither (in) Pakistan nor Yemen nor Afghanistan….These terrorists go there after being radicalised in the West or in a Western environment.”

This underlines the need to understand the spread and complexity of radicalising influences and experiences – from Palestine and Iraq to Afghanistan – involving a new generation of violent extremists before embarking on a fresh phase of fighting terrorism. The Jordanian doctor who bombed the CIA outpost near Khost had apparently been radicalised by Gaza and Iraq.

What the US has yet to do – to fulfil the promise of Obama’s Cairo speech – is to evolve a global strategy that also addresses the structural problems and conditions that contribute to radicalisation and enable extremist ideologies to lure followers from among the young. The sense of political injustice that pervades the Muslim world provides the oxygen to terrorists and wins adherents for their narrative. This can only be countered by an approach that deals with causes, and not just symptoms and challenges the narrative that extremists use to justify violence.

Counterterrorism cannot just be about the capture or elimination of terrorists. Unless there is a strategy to prevent others from following their path and to halt the flow of recruits from among angry, disaffected youth, terrorism cannot be successfully combated.

President Obama’s Cairo speech marked an effort to defuse the cumulative anger in the Muslim world about past Western policy and seek an end to years of mistrust. But his foreign and security policies have not been consistent with these objectives.

That requires dealing with the issues that are close to Muslim hearts and minds and the most proximate cause for the spread of violent extremism: non-resolution of long festering disputes and conflicts in the Muslim world – from Palestine to Kashmir – foreign occupation, political injustice and socio-economic deprivation.

So far Obama’s record has not advanced the goals of his Cairo speech. US disengagement from Iraq appears increasingly problematic. A strategy to escalate the war in Afghanistan has been put in place, but devoid of political content. Drone attacks in Pakistan have been ratcheted up. A faltering effort to restart the Middle East peace process to address Palestine has been pushed back by Israel. US-prompted air strikes are underway in Yemen. Washington is also being driven into taking a more aggressive stance towards Iran, which can mire the US in a wider confrontation in the Islamic world.

In many of the 14 countries that the US has placed on a virtual “black-list,” traditional Islamic political movements are being outflanked in a sea of anti-Americanism by militant organisations with sympathy for Al Qaeda’s narrative, even if they disagree with its methods. This is a disturbing trend which needs to be reversed, not reinforced by US actions.

Nothing illustrates this better than the American reliance on the drone-launched missile campaign to “take out” militant targets in Pakistan’s tribal territory. This militarisation of counterterrorism de-emphasises and detracts from the need to engage in the ideological battle against Al Qaeda and its militant allies. If there is a steady stream of young men eager to replace those killed by drone strikes, is the campaign against the terrorists being won or lost?

For all the claims about the effectiveness of this remote control “no-risk covert war,” the strategic costs of alienating and infuriating the overwhelming majority of the public far outweigh the presumed tactical gains. To ignore the ramifications of a rising political backlash is to be locked in denial.

The question Washington needs to ask is whether its anti-terrorism efforts can succeed in an environment of intense and growing anti-American sentiment. The only way to reverse this trend is to move decisively to resolve disputes, heal conflicts and engage with the grievances in the Muslim world that are leveraged by the extremists. Until strategies are fashioned to deal with the unjust situations in which Muslims find themselves as victims, the danger of radicalisation will increase.

As the US seeks ways to enhance homeland security, it needs to recognise that without a longer-term, comprehensive strategy that has political, economic and ideological components, it will only be preparing for the last terrorist attempt while new threats continue to be spawned.