United States Counterterrorism Operations Under the Biden Administration, 2021-2023
Anthropologist and Costs of War Director Stephanie Savell (Senior Fellow, Brown University) documents that, between 2021 and 2023, the U.S. government conducted counterterrorism operations in 78 countries. These operations include ground combat in at least nine countries and air strikes in at least four countries during the first three years of the Biden Administration. Though the total number of countries with U.S. counterterrorism operations decreased slightly from 2018-2020 – from 85 countries – the counterterrorism footprint remains remarkably similar to what it was under the first Trump Administration.
Many U.S. military operations are not included in the report – notably, those aimed at what U.S. officials and media identify as the military threat posed by Russia and China, the focus of much current U.S. foreign policy; military bases that have housed counterterrorism operations; arms sales to foreign governments; and all deployments of U.S. special operations forces and Central Intelligence Agency operations. Further, the map does not display “military information support operations,” or “psychological operations,” which the U.S. military carries out in many countries on the map and beyond, such as in Iran. All of these are significant elements of the bigger picture of U.S. counterterrorism strategy but beyond the scope of the current data set.
The map illustrates that the war launched by the United States government in response to the 9/11 terror attacks continues.
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Stephanie Savell is a public anthropologist researching militarism, (in)security and activism in relation to the United States post-9/11 wars and policing in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Under her leadership, the Costs of War project has produced research cited in thousands of media articles and broadcasts and by President Biden in his official speech about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Since 2017, Savell's regularly updated global map of U.S. counterterrorism operations has been featured by USA Today, CNN, BBC World News and Smithsonian magazine, among others. She is co-author of The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life (Routledge, 2014) and, in addition to Costs of War reports, has published in journals including American Anthropologist and American Ethnologist, and media outlets such as The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, and Axios. Her media appearances include interviews on CNN, NPR, Al Jazeera, Vox, The Problem with Jon Stewart, C-SPAN Washington Journal and Democracy Now. She earned her Ph.D. from Brown University.
