Fighting terrorism should be like a game of chess but the US approach has been more akin to playing chequers, says Bruce Hoffman, an American scholar who has spent years studying the phenomenon.

A chess-game approach means understanding the threat and enemy and being able to anticipate and thoughtfully respond to how it changes and adapts. This means a strategy that uses reason and guile, not just brute force. Chequers (known as draughts in Pakistan) becomes a one-dimensional numbers game which measures gains more by how many leaders or militants are eliminated than how the flow of recruits is retarded.

One of the great advantages of spending time at Washington’s leading think tank, the Woodrow Wilson Centre, is to be able to meet and listen to authorities on important issues. There is no shortage of terrorism experts, but what Bruce Hoffman has to say is significantly different from the run-of-the-mill ‘sound byte’ analysis that often poses as specialist ‘wisdom’.

Hoffman is currently a fellow at the Wilson Centre and a professor in Security Studies at Georgetown University. He has authored several books, including Inside Terrorism and his latest article provocatively titled ‘American Jihad’ appears in the current issue of The National Interest. One does not have to agree with all arguments to gain insights from his scholarly perspective.

I spoke to him in the immediate aftermath of the failed car bomb attempt in Times Square, which reignited the debate in America about whether the US is employing the right policy toolkit to address a complex challenge.

Hoffman has long questioned the adequacy of the approach. I asked him why – in sharp contrast to the UK and Europe – there is little or no mainstream discussion on what radicalises people and how this drives them to violent actions, in other words about what we in the Muslim world call ‘root causes’.

He agreed there was no public debate on radicalisation, and even less on how American foreign policy contributes to or accentuates radicalisation outside and within the United States. He also agrees that given the litany of “homegrown, near-disastrous incidents” that have occurred over the past year with the Faisal Shahzad case being the most recent, this task is now urgent. Unless “we better understood how our actions are perceived, the threat cannot be systematically addressed.”

However, official focus on individuals radicalised at home may now increase. The recently released national security strategy prepared by the Obama administration explicitly acknowledges the threat posed to the United States by homegrown terrorism. Just before the release of the document America’s top counterterrorism official described a new phase in the terrorist threat, one in which individuals who do not fit the ‘traditional profile’ attempt to carry out attacks on the US mainland.

It is yet to be seen how far Washington’s new security strategy translates into a more comprehensive approach that pays attention to non-military ways to deal with a multifaceted challenge. Hoffman agreed with me that an over-reliance on military means had de-emphasised or distracted attention from the need to engage in the ideological battle to counter the narrative that militants use. It is this that can stop the flow of recruits into violent networks and break the cycle of radicalisation.

I suggested that there is an unwillingness to address the underlying factors that feeds the ‘narrative of injustice’ terrorist groups use. He agreed and pointed to the lack of ‘non-kinetic’ dimensions in US counterterrorism strategy, despite the acknowledgement that these should form part of a holistic approach.

The radicalising effects of the protracted wars the US has waged in Iraq and Afghanistan are mentioned fleetingly in the mainstream media, but rarely figure as the subject of sustained debate. In March the New York Times reported the arrest of a New Jersey man in Yemen who was accused of joining Al Qaeda, and warned of the fears this case stirred that large-scale US military interventions abroad were radicalising American Muslims. The report cited a study that found that “the perception that the US is singling out Muslims” fuelled by years of military action in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and other Muslim countries plays a greater role than “poverty or social marginalisation” in turning what is still a tiny number of Americans towards extremism.

Hoffman explains that for a long time there was little acceptance of the ‘threat within’. The US always prided itself – with justification – on being able to better integrate Muslims in sharp contrast to the experience in Europe. But ‘this can’t happen here’ narrative according to him no longer squares with the reality of “homegrown” radicalism. Rather than learn from the experience of other nations – for example Europe which has long dealt with homegrown threats ranging from the Baader Meinhoff in Germany to the IRA and extremism in Britain – the view that has long prevailed in the US is that as the threat is external it has to be engaged overseas. A string of recent incidents has changed this view.

Hoffman has long supported the idea of a radicalisation commission – a bipartisan national body to study domestic terrorism. This should assess radicalisation and recruitment processes and suggest how to counter them by drawing on the best practices of other countries.

It is on the use of drones that Hoffman’s views diverge from much of the conventional wisdom in his country about fighting terror. This puts him among those who stress the limits of a decapitation strategy. The fallacy of a strategy that relies primarily on targeted killings turns counterterrorism into a numbers game and overlooks the fact that Al Qaeda, which has morphed into a loose and decentralised network, cannot be eliminated by this top-down approach. This also ignores the lessons of history. Israel pioneered and relied overwhelmingly on targeted assassinations for over three decades but hardly overpowered the Palestinian movement.

At best Hoffman says this approach can hold the threat at bay. The drone programme is just a tactic, not a strategy, he adds. And a lone tactic has never succeeded in defeating a terrorist organisation. Without other efforts to “stanch the flow of new recruits the kill-or-capture measures will only amount to a tactical holding operation.” For a game changing “strategic reversal the attrition of terrorist leaders has to be accompanied by concerted counter-radicalisation efforts” that thwart recruitment.

Others too have questioned the heavy dependence on the very open ‘covert war’ being waged by the US using predator drones in the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In an article last month David E Sanger asked whether the stepped-up drone strikes in Pakistan actually made Americans less safe. “Have they had the perverse consequence of driving lesser insurgents to think of targeting locations in the US?” “Are they inspiring more attacks on America than they prevent?” Sanger also said drone strikes were urging different local insurgents to combine forces and work together.

What this debate underlines are the continuing gaps in Washington’s operational strategy and the need for a comprehensive approach that Hoffman says “adjusts and adapts” to changes on the ground that are much too complicated to be “vanquished by mere decapitation”.

More importantly the US needs to step back and consider whether its militarised approach to countering terror is dispersing and enhancing the threat or reducing it. A more thoughtful strategy is needed that is predicated on an understanding of the spread and complexity of radicalising influences and factors so as to adequately respond to them.

The question Washington also 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 extremists. Until strategies are fashioned to deal with the unjust situations in which Muslims find themselves the danger of radicalisation will increase.