Approaches for Countering Violent Extremism at Home and Abroad

Abstract

As the struggle against violent extremism continues 15 years after 9/11, practitioners of counterterrorism note that law enforcement and military approaches alone cannot break the cycle of violence, and new threats emerge as existing threats are defeated. This article provides an overview of post-9/11 efforts related to countering violent extremism (CVE), or the prevention, intervention, and rehabilitative efforts to provide a noncoercive, nonkinetic pathway toward preventing recruitment and radicalization to extreme violence. Specifically, this article explores the spread of the ISIS ideology and the Obama administration’s CVE efforts, and provides an overview of subsequent articles in this series that expand on particular CVE approaches.