Navy expert issues point-by-point take down of Trump’s strategy 'mess'

A former Naval War College teacher is blasting the White House’s new counterterrorism plan as a sloppy, politicized document that reads less like a sober strategy and more like a manifesto.

The 2026 United States Counterterrorism Strategy was released last week, and Nichols called it "a mess." Reviewing it, he noted typos, hyperbole and an unnatural obsession with former President Joe Biden. Worse, however, Nichols argued there's no legitimate strategy in the strategy document.

"As the security expert and Atlantic contributor Juliette Kayyem told me, such reports used to be serious documents meant to 'guide our intelligence and law-enforcement agencies,' as well as inform 'the citizenry, including state and local leaders,'" wrote Nichols.

In his analysis, Nichols wished anyone luck at trying to "make sense of it" at all. Still, it's an official document of the United States government and it's meant to guide policy. Nichols said it isn't clear how the "mercifully short" plan is supposed to do that.

He cited one excerpt, "projection", saying that it reads like what the Trump administration is doing today: "The fact pattern under the Biden administration was clear: individuals at the highest level of the U.S. Government used their significant powers to politically target individuals in the interests of those they favored, wanted to keep in power, or to help win elections."

According to Nichols, at one point the document offers up a bold declaration: "America’s new U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy is driven by the principle that America is our homeland."

"Glad we’ve cleared that up," Nichols mused.

As Nichols noted, the only recommendations listed in the memo are things like identifying “terror actors and plots before they happen," "cutting off “their arms, funding, and recruiting streams" then destroying them by “taking necessary and specific actions in self-defense to neutralize imminent threats to the United States.”

Nichols, a long-time national security expert, explained that these are not strategies. Strategies have "specific discussions of priorities and goals, how the instruments and means of national power will be brought to bear on those objectives, and the risks and rewards of various options," he wrote.

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