Thread 🧵re SOF raid that took out ISIS leader Qurayshi:
1. Like previous administrations, Biden seeks to get out of 'endless wars' and pivot from Mideast to Asia. Adversaries get a vote, however, so CT efforts must continue. Biden: we will come after you.
1. Like previous administrations, Biden seeks to get out of 'endless wars' and pivot from Mideast to Asia. Adversaries get a vote, however, so CT efforts must continue. Biden: we will come after you.
2. CT efforts should be seen not in terms of victory or defeat, but rather as an ongoing effort— short of both war and peace—in which both lethal and nonlethal tools are employed to compete with adversaries and disrupt acts of terrorism washingtoninstitute.org/media/4359
3. CT officials very focused on making sure any shift in CT policy seeks a maximum return on US 20-year investment in CT while preserving the many advances made during this period. With fewer troops on ground, looking to leverage opportunities to keep adversaries off balance
4. 1 thing to follow will be extent to which US allies were aware of this raid, to prepare for possible ISIS responses to the attack. Revitalizing CT alliances is another key focus of the Biden admin washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysi…
5. Note here Biden's multiple thank you's to SDF, the key US partner on the ground, but no mention of Turkey which lies just across the border from where the op took place in Idlib
6. There is broad trans-Atlantic consensus on threats posed by ISIS & AQ, although sharp divisions—over matters like Turkish incursion into northern Syria & whether to repatriate foreign fighters—have defined how key countries address these threats
7. The recent ISIS prison attack in Hasakah underscores immediacy of need to address issue of ISIS detainees and displaced persons
8. As @diplocharlie & I wrote in 2019, the coalition’s most urgent task is designing a coordinated response to detention & prosecution of ISIS detainees. In the immediate term, this means preventing ISIS prison breaks within Syria’s current security vacuum washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysi…
9. As the anti-ISIS coalition found after the killing of Baghdadi, that success had benefits but the ISIS threat & regional instability meant that coalition forces needed to remain on the ground to contain the situation 
10. Ongoing CT threats underscore that for all the talk of shifting America’s national security posture, the reality is that conducting CT efforts and competing with Russia and China can be mutually reinforcing with a modicum of strategic planning washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysi…
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