Volunteerism remains a powerful tool for good around the world. Young people, in particular, are motivated by the prospect of creating real and lasting change, as well as gaining valuable learning experiences that come with volunteering. This energy and optimism among youth can be harnessed and mobilized to help meet challenges facing our world today and accomplish such targets as the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

On June 14, young leaders and development agents from leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs), faith-based organizations, corporations, universities, the Peace Corps, and United Nations Volunteers came together at the Brookings Institution to answer the question on how to achieve impacts on the SDGs through international service.

This was also the 10th anniversary gathering of the Building Bridges Coalition—a multi-stakeholder consortium of development volunteers— and included the announcement of a new Service Year Alliance partnership with the coalition to step up international volunteers and village-based volunteering capacity around the world.

Brookings Senior Fellow Homi Kharas, who served as the lead author supporting the high-level panel advising the U.N. secretary-general on the post-2015 development agenda, noted the imperative of engaging community volunteers to scale up effective initiatives, build political awareness, and generate “partnerships with citizens at every level” to achieve the 2030 goals.  

Kharas’ call was echoed in reports on effective grassroots initiatives, including Omnimed’s mobilization of 1,200 village health workers in Uganda’s Mukono district, a dramatic reduction of malaria through Peace Corps efforts with Senegal village volunteers, and Seed Global Health’s partnership to scale up medical doctors and nurses to address critical health professional shortages in the developing world. 

U.N. Youth Envoy Ahmad Alhendawi of Jordan energized young leaders from Atlas Corps, Global Citizen Year, America Solidaria, International Young Leaders Academy, and universities, citing U.N. Security Council Resolution 2250 on youth, peace, and security as “a turning point when it comes to the way we engage with young people globally… to recognize their role for who they are, as peacebuilders, not troublemakers… and equal partners on the ground.”

Service Year Alliance Chair General Stanley McChrystal, former Joint Special Operations commander, acclaimed, “The big idea… of a culture where the expectation [and] habit of service has provided young people an opportunity to do a year of funded, full-time service.” 

Civic Enterprises President John Bridgeland and Brookings Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr. led a panel with Seed Global Health’s Vanessa Kerry and Atlas Corps’ Scott Beale on policy ideas for the next administration, including offering Global Service Fellowships in United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programs to grow health service corps, student service year loan forgiveness, and technical support through State Department volunteer exchanges. Former Senator Harris Wofford, Building Bridge Coalition’s senior advisor and a founding Peace Corps architect, shared how the coalition’s new “service quantum leap” furthers the original idea announced by President John F. Kennedy, which called for the Peace Corps and the mobilization of one million global volunteers through NGOs, faith-based groups, and universities.

The multi-stakeholder volunteering model was showcased by Richard Dictus, executive coordinator of U.N. Volunteers; Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet; USAID Counselor Susan Reischle; and Diane Melley, IBM vice president for Global Citizenship. Melley highlighted IBM’s 280,000 skills-based employee volunteers who are building community capacity in 130 countries along with Impact 2030—a consortium of 60 companies collaborating with the U.N.—that is “integrating service into overall citizenship activities” while furthering the SDGs.

The faith and millennial leaders who contributed to the coalition’s action plan included Jim Lindsay of Catholic Volunteer Network; Service Year’s Yasmeen Shaheen-McConnell; C. Eduardo Vargas of USAID’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; and moderator David Eisner of Repair the World, a former CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Jesuit Volunteer Corps President Tim Shriver, grandson of the Peace Corps’ founding director, addressed working sessions on engaging faith-based volunteers, which, according to research, account for an estimated 44 percent of nearly one million U.S. global volunteers

The key role of colleges and universities in the coalition’s action plan—including  linking service year with student learning, impact research, and gap year service—was  outlined by Dean Alan Solomont of Tisch College at Tufts University; Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley; and U.N. Volunteers researcher Ben Lough of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

These panel discussion directed us towards the final goal of the event, which was a multi-stakeholder action campaign calling for ongoing collaboration and policy support to enhance the collective impact of international service in achieving the 2030 goals.

This resolution, which remains a working document, highlighted five major priorities:

1. Engage service abroad programs to more effectively address the 2030 SDGs by mobilizing 10,000 additional service year and short-term volunteers annually and partnerships that leverage local capacity and volunteers in host communities.
2. Promote a new generation of global leaders through global service fellowships promoting service and study abroad.
3. Expand cross-sectorial participation and partnerships.
4. Engage more volunteers of all ages in service abroad.
5. Study and foster best practices across international service programs, measure community impact, and ensure the highest quality of volunteer safety, well-being, and confidence.

Participants agreed that it’s through these types of efforts that volunteer service could become a common strategy throughout the world for meeting pressing challenges. Moreover, the cooperation of individuals and organizations will be vital in laying a foundation on which governments and civil society can build a more prosperous, healthy, and peaceful world.

Volunteerism remains a powerful tool for good around the world. Young people, in particular, are motivated by the prospect of creating real and lasting change, as well as gaining valuable learning experiences that come with volunteering. This energy and optimism among youth can be harnessed and mobilized to help meet challenges facing our world today and accomplish such targets as the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

On June 14, young leaders and development agents from leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs), faith-based organizations, corporations, universities, the Peace Corps, and United Nations Volunteers came together at the Brookings Institution to answer the question on how to achieve impacts on the SDGs through international service.

This was also the 10th anniversary gathering of the Building Bridges Coalition—a multi-stakeholder consortium of development volunteers— and included the announcement of a new Service Year Alliance partnership with the coalition to step up international volunteers and village-based volunteering capacity around the world.

Brookings Senior Fellow Homi Kharas, who served as the lead author supporting the high-level panel advising the U.N. secretary-general on the post-2015 development agenda, noted the imperative of engaging community volunteers to scale up effective initiatives, build political awareness, and generate “partnerships with citizens at every level” to achieve the 2030 goals.  

Kharas’ call was echoed in reports on effective grassroots initiatives, including Omnimed’s mobilization of 1,200 village health workers in Uganda’s Mukono district, a dramatic reduction of malaria through Peace Corps efforts with Senegal village volunteers, and Seed Global Health’s partnership to scale up medical doctors and nurses to address critical health professional shortages in the developing world. 

U.N. Youth Envoy Ahmad Alhendawi of Jordan energized young leaders from Atlas Corps, Global Citizen Year, America Solidaria, International Young Leaders Academy, and universities, citing U.N. Security Council Resolution 2250 on youth, peace, and security as “a turning point when it comes to the way we engage with young people globally… to recognize their role for who they are, as peacebuilders, not troublemakers… and equal partners on the ground.”

Service Year Alliance Chair General Stanley McChrystal, former Joint Special Operations commander, acclaimed, “The big idea… of a culture where the expectation [and] habit of service has provided young people an opportunity to do a year of funded, full-time service.” 

Civic Enterprises President John Bridgeland and Brookings Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr. led a panel with Seed Global Health’s Vanessa Kerry and Atlas Corps’ Scott Beale on policy ideas for the next administration, including offering Global Service Fellowships in United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programs to grow health service corps, student service year loan forgiveness, and technical support through State Department volunteer exchanges. Former Senator Harris Wofford, Building Bridge Coalition’s senior advisor and a founding Peace Corps architect, shared how the coalition’s new “service quantum leap” furthers the original idea announced by President John F. Kennedy, which called for the Peace Corps and the mobilization of one million global volunteers through NGOs, faith-based groups, and universities.

The multi-stakeholder volunteering model was showcased by Richard Dictus, executive coordinator of U.N. Volunteers; Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet; USAID Counselor Susan Reischle; and Diane Melley, IBM vice president for Global Citizenship. Melley highlighted IBM’s 280,000 skills-based employee volunteers who are building community capacity in 130 countries along with Impact 2030—a consortium of 60 companies collaborating with the U.N.—that is “integrating service into overall citizenship activities” while furthering the SDGs.

The faith and millennial leaders who contributed to the coalition’s action plan included Jim Lindsay of Catholic Volunteer Network; Service Year’s Yasmeen Shaheen-McConnell; C. Eduardo Vargas of USAID’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; and moderator David Eisner of Repair the World, a former CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Jesuit Volunteer Corps President Tim Shriver, grandson of the Peace Corps’ founding director, addressed working sessions on engaging faith-based volunteers, which, according to research, account for an estimated 44 percent of nearly one million U.S. global volunteers

The key role of colleges and universities in the coalition’s action plan—including  linking service year with student learning, impact research, and gap year service—was  outlined by Dean Alan Solomont of Tisch College at Tufts University; Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley; and U.N. Volunteers researcher Ben Lough of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

These panel discussion directed us towards the final goal of the event, which was a multi-stakeholder action campaign calling for ongoing collaboration and policy support to enhance the collective impact of international service in achieving the 2030 goals.

This resolution, which remains a working document, highlighted five major priorities:

1. Engage service abroad programs to more effectively address the 2030 SDGs by mobilizing 10,000 additional service year and short-term volunteers annually and partnerships that leverage local capacity and volunteers in host communities.
2. Promote a new generation of global leaders through global service fellowships promoting service and study abroad.
3. Expand cross-sectorial participation and partnerships.
4. Engage more volunteers of all ages in service abroad.
5. Study and foster best practices across international service programs, measure community impact, and ensure the highest quality of volunteer safety, well-being, and confidence.

Participants agreed that it’s through these types of efforts that volunteer service could become a common strategy throughout the world for meeting pressing challenges. Moreover, the cooperation of individuals and organizations will be vital in laying a foundation on which governments and civil society can build a more prosperous, healthy, and peaceful world.

Editors' Note: Al-Shabab’s operational capacities and intimidation power have grown in the past year, writes Vanda Felbab-Brown. Many of Kenya’s counterterrorism policies have been counterproductive, and counterinsurgency efforts by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) have at best stagnated. This piece was originally published by The Cipher Brief.

April 2 marked one year since the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab attacked the Garissa University in Kenya and killed 148 people, galvanizing Kenya to intensify its counterterrorism efforts. Yet al-Shabab’s operational capacities and intimidation power have grown in the past year. Many of Kenya’s counterterrorism policies have been counterproductive, and counterinsurgency efforts by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) have at best stagnated. State building in Somalia is only creeping, with service-delivery by the federal government and newly formed states mostly lacking. Politics continues to be clan-based, rapacious, and discriminatory, with the forthcoming 2016 elections in Somalia thus far merely intensifying political infighting.

Al-Shabab: A rejuvenation

Despite internal and external threats to its effective functioning, al-Shabab is on the upswing again. It has carried out dozens of terrorist attacks within Somalia, including against hotels used by government officials as workspaces and housing, and on beaches and in markets throughout the country. It has raised fear among the population and hampers the basic government functionality and civil society mobilization.

In February 2016, al-Shabab, for the first time, succeeded in smuggling a bomb onboard a flight from Mogadishu. Disturbingly, it has been retaking cities in southern Somalia, including the important port of Merka. It has also overrun AMISOM bases and seized weapons and humvees: one such attack on a Kenyan forward-operating base was likely the deadliest ever suffered by the Kenyan military. Al-Shabab’s operational capacity has also recovered from the internal rifts between its anti-foreign-jihadi, pro-al-Qaida, pro-ISIS, and Somalia-focused factions.

Not all the power jockeying has been settled, and not all leadership succession struggles have been resolved. Moreover, an ISIS branch independent of and antagonistic to al-Shabab is trying to grow in Somalia and has been battling al-Shabab (in a way that parallels the ISIS-Taliban tangles in Afghanistan). Nonetheless, al-Shabab is once more on the rise and has recovered its financing from charcoal, sugar, and other smuggling in southern Somalia, and from taxing traffic and businesses throughout its area of operation, including in Mogadishu.

Although the terrorist violence is almost always claimed by al-Shabab, many of the attacks and assassinations are the work of politicians, businessmen, and clans, intimidating rivals or seeking revenge in their disputes over land and contracts. Indeed, with the clock ticking down to the expected 2016 national elections in Somalia, much of the current violence also reflects political prepositioning for the elections and desire to eliminate political rivals.

Kenya and AMISOM: Don’t sugarcoat it

In contrast to the upbeat mood among al-Shabab, AMISOM efforts have at best been stalled. With the training of Somali national forces going slowly and the force still torn by clan rivalries and shackled by a lack of military enablers, the 22,000-strong AMISOM continues to be the principal counterinsurgency force. Counterterrorism attacks by U.S. drone and special operations forces complicate al-Shabab’s operations, but do not alter the balance of power on the ground. In its ninth year now, and having cost more than U.S.$1 billion, AMISOM continues to be barricaded in its bases, and many of Somalia’s roads, even in areas that are supposedly cleared, are continually controlled by al-Shabab. In cities where AMISOM is nominally in charge, al-Shabab often rules more than the night as AMISOM conducts little active patrolling or fresh anti-Shabab operations even during the day. Rarely are there formal Somali forces or government offices to whom to hand over the post-clearing “holding and building” efforts. There is little coordination, intelligence sharing, or joint planning among the countries folded under the AMISOM heading, with capabilities vastly uneven. The principle benefit of the Burundi forces in Somalia, for example, is that they are not joining the ethnic infighting developing in their home country.

Ethiopia and Kenya still support their favorite Somali proxies. For Kenya, the key ally is Sheik Ahmed “Madobe,” a former high-level al-Shabab commander who defected to create his Ogadeni anti-Shabab militias, Ras Kamboni, and who in 2015 got himself elected president of the newly-formed Jubaland state. Along with Madobe and other Ogadeni powerbrokers, Kenyan Defense Forces control the Kismayo port. Like al-Shabab, they allegedly illegally tax smuggled sugar, charcoal, and other goods through the port and southern Kenya. In addition to these nefarious proceeds on the order of tens to hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars, Kenya’s other interests in Somalia often clash with those of Ethiopia and the Somali national government, including over projecting power off Somali coast and strengthening local warlords and militias who promise to keep Ogadeni mobilization in Kenya down.

At home, Kenya’s counterterrorism activities have been not only parochial, but often outright counterproductive. Post-Garissa dragnets have rounded up countless Kenyan ethnic Somalis and Somali immigrants and refugees. Entire communities have been made scapegoats. For a while, the Kenyan government tried to shut down all Somali hawala services based in Kenya as well as to expel Somali refugees and shut down their camps. Accusations of torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings by Kenyan Defense Forces, the police, and other security agencies are widespread. Meanwhile, despite U.S. counterterrorism training and assistance such as through the Security Governance Initiative, debilitating corruption plagues Kenya’s security forces and agencies.

Somalia’s government: Old and new mires

The Somali federal government and the newly formed state-level administrations mostly falter in delivering services that Somali people crave. Competition over state jobs and whatever meager state-sponsored resources are available continue to be mired in clan rivalries and discrimination. Unfortunately, even newly formed (Jubaland, Southwest, and Galmudug) and still-forming states (Hiraan and Middle Shabelle) have not escaped rapacious clan politics. Dominant clans tend not to share power and resources with less numerous ones, often engaging in outright land theft, such as in Jubaland. Civil society contributions have been marginalized. Such misgovernance and clan-based marginalization, as well as more conservative religious politics, are also creeping into Somaliland and Puntland, the two more stable states. Throughout Somalia and in Northeast Kenya, al-Shabab is skillfully inserting itself into clan rivalries and mobilizing support among those who feel marginalized.

The expected 2016 national elections further intensify these clan and elite political rivalries. The hope that the elections could take the form of one man, one vote was once again dashed, with the promise that such elections will take place in 2020. Instead, the 2016 electoral process will reflect the 4.5 model in practice since 2004, in which the four major clans get to appoint the same proportion of the 275 members of the lower chamber and the minority clans will together be allotted half the MP positions that each major clan gets. This system has promoted discriminatory clan rivalries and elite interests. The 54 members of the upper chamber will be appointed by Somalia’s states, including the newly formed and forming states. This arrangement requires that the state formation process is finished well before the elections, but also problematically increases the immediate stakes in the state formation. Finalizing the provisional constitution and getting it approved by a referendum—another key item of the Vision 2016 agreed to by the Somali government and international donors—is also in question.

Perhaps the greatest progress has been made in devolving power from Mogadishu through the formation of subnational states. But there is a real risk that rather than bonding Somalis with state structures as the international community long hoped for and prescribed, the power devolution to newly formed states will instead devolve discriminatory and rapacious politics.

This week, the richest business leaders and investors from around the world will gather in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. In keeping with tradition, a small portion of the agenda will be devoted to global development and the plight of people living at the other end of the global income distribution.

Philanthropy is one way of linking the fortunes of these disparate communities. What if some of the mega-rich could be persuaded to redistribute their wealth to the extreme poor?

This question may feel hackneyed, but it deserves a fresh hearing in light of a dramatic reduction in the global poverty gap over the past several years (Figure 1). The theoretical cost of transfers required to lift all poor people’s income up to the global poverty line of $1.90 a day stood at approximately $80 billion [1] in 2015, down from over $300 billion in 1980. (Values expressed here are in 2015 market dollars.)

Source: Authors’ calculations based on OECD, World Bank

This reduction can be unpacked into two parts. The first is a steep decline in the number of people living below the global poverty line. This is increasingly recognized as one of the defining features of the era. A U.N. goal to halve the poverty rate in the developing world between 1990 and 2015 was nearly achieved twice over. The second and lesser-known factor is the shrinking average distance of the world’s poor from the poverty line. In 1980, the mean daily income of those living below $1.90 was $1.09. In 2012 it was 25 cents higher at $1.34. (Values expressed here in 2011 purchasing power parity dollars.)   

Despite this good news, global poverty still demands attention. Hundreds of millions of people continue to suffer this most acute form of deprivation. In several countries, the prospects for ending poverty over the next generation, in line with a recently endorsed successor U.N. goal, appear challenging at best.

Figure 1 illustrates that in 2006, global aid flows exceeded the cost of the global poverty gap for the first time. This suggests that the elimination of extreme poverty should be possible simply through a more efficient allocation of aid. However, this confuses foreign aid’s goals and functions. The bulk of official foreign aid is used in the provision of public goods, such as physical infrastructure and strengthening institutions. Only 2 percent is directed to social payments and their administration. If the elimination of extreme poverty is to be achieved through targeted transfers, it depends on sources other than foreign aid.

The main source of transfers to the poor is welfare programs run and financed by developing countries themselves. These social safety nets have emerged as an increasingly prominent instrument in the toolkit of developing economy governments. Eighty-three percent of developing economies employ unconditional cash transfer programs, although many are small in scale. Several countries are in the process of building the apparatus for more accurate targeting and authentication through the assembly of beneficiary registries and the rolling out of identity programs. In at least 10 developing countries, social safety nets have succeeded in establishing a social floor by lifting all those people under the poverty line up above the threshold. In the vast majority, however, safety nets are insufficiently targeted or generous for that purpose, reflecting not only resource constraints, but also political choices that can be resistant to change.

A complementary approach is to consider the role of private mechanisms and wealth. NGOs were among the original pioneers of cash transfers in the developing world. More recently, the NGO GiveDirectly has designed a compelling new method of charitable giving that sends money directly to the poor using digital monitoring and payment technology. Its approach has received strong endorsements from independent charity assessors and has been validated by impact evaluations. Yet the scale of its existing donations remains tiny relative to the global poverty gap.

This is where Davos’s global elite could come into play: What difference could a philanthropic donation from the world’s richest people make?

To explore this question, we begin by identifying those developing countries that are home to a least one billionaire. (Our analysis is restricted to billionaires by data, not by the potential largesse of the world’s multi-millionaires. We focus our attention on billionaires in the developing world given the traditional focus of philanthropy on domestic causes.) Let’s assume that the richest billionaire in each country agrees to give away half of his or her current wealth among his or her fellow citizens, disbursed evenly over the next 15 years, roughly in accordance with the Giving Pledge promoted by Bill Gates. That money would be used exclusively to finance transfers to poor people based on their current distance from the poverty line. Transfers would be sustained at the same level for the full 15-year period with the aim of providing a modicum of income security that might allow beneficiaries to sustainably escape from poverty by 2030.

Table 1 summarizes the key results. In each of three countries—Colombia, Georgia, and Swaziland—a single individual's act of philanthropy could be sufficient to end extreme poverty with immediate effect. Swaziland is an especially striking case as it is among the world’s poorest countries with 41 percent of its population living under the poverty line. In Brazil, Peru, and the Philippines, poverty could be more than halved, or eliminated altogether if the billionaires could be convinced to match Mark Zuckerberg’s example and increase their donation to 99 percent of their wealth.

Source: Authors’ calculations based on Forbes, International Monetary Fund, PovcalNet, and the World Bank. Poverty rates post-transfer calculated based on average distance of the poor from the poverty line.  

In other countries—Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Angola—the potential impact on poverty is only modest. A number of factors account for differences between countries, but two factors that penalize African countries are especially noteworthy. First, the depth of poverty in Africa remains high, with 15 percent of the population living on less than $1.00 a day; and second, Africa has relatively high prices compared to other poor regions, which means more dollars are required to deliver the same amount of welfare.  

For those nations that have more than one billionaire, an alternative scenario is that the country’s club of billionaires makes the pledge together and combines resources to tackle domestic poverty. This would end poverty in China, India, and Indonesia—countries that rank first, second, and fifth globally in terms of the absolute size of their poor populations. The last two columns of Table 2 describe the results.

Table 2. The potential impact on poverty of collective billionaire giving pledges

Source: Authors’ calculations based on Forbes, IMF, PovcalNet, and the World Bank. Poverty rates post-transfer calculated based on average distance of the poor from the poverty line.

This exercise is of course laden with simplifying assumptions. [2] It is intended to provoke discussion, not to provide definitive figures. Moreover, it is open to debate whether transfers represent the most cost-effective way of sustainably ending poverty, the extent to which transfers ought to be targeted, the efficacy of building private transfer programs alongside public safety nets, and whether cash transfers represent the most appropriate use of billionaires’ philanthropy.  

What is less contestable is that a falling global poverty gap presents an opportunity for more systematic efforts for poverty reduction. This raises the question: How low does the poverty gap have to fall before we explicitly design programs to bring the remaining poor above the poverty line? We would argue that we are already beyond this point, not least in countries that remain a long way from ending poverty. Were a billionaire at Davos to commit to using his or her wealth in this fashion, it could trigger a powerful demonstration effect of innovative solutions—not just for other billionaires, but for countries that are currently at risk of being left behind.

[1] The cost of the global poverty gap in 2015 is an overestimate compared with the World Bank’s tentative poverty estimate for the same year. This is due to a different treatment of Nigeria. For this exercise, we rely on data from the 2009/10 Harmonized Nigeria Living Standards Survey reported in PovcalNet, despite its well-documented problems, whereas the Bank draws on the 2010/11 General Household Survey.

[2] Simplifying assumptions include: zero administrative costs in identifying the poor, assessing their income, and administering payments with no leakages, or no portion of those costs being borne by billionaires; the efficacy of administering miniscule transfers to those who stand on the margin of the poverty line; and no change in the cost of closing the poverty gap in a country over time, whether due to population growth, an increase or decrease in poverty, or a change in prices relative to the dollar.   

In his wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump stressed the importance of fighting ISIS while declaring “we are going to take care of this country first before we worry about everybody else in the world.” For counterterrorism (and I would argue for security in general), such thinking is dangerously wrong-headed: Fighting ISIS and stopping other foreign terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland requires close alliances and deep engagement abroad.

Allies may also have better access to a terrorist stronghold due to geography or historic ties. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Jordan are within easy bombing range of ISIS’ core: the U.S. homeland is not. Although military action against ISIS’ core in Iraq and Syria is vital, it is often quiet global intelligence cooperation that does much of the day-to-day counterterrorism lifting. Given the geographic span of ISIS operations, it is not realistic for the United States to have strong unilateral capabilities in every possible country where the terrorists might operate and use as a base for anti-U.S. operations. Foreign governments fill this gap, acting as a force multiplier for the United States. Shortly after 9/11, the United States was working with over 100 countries on counterterrorism; several years into the war on terror a senior CIA official testified that virtually every capture or killing of a suspected terrorist outside Iraq involved at least some help from a foreign intelligence service. 

Many allies have skilled intelligence services, and they also use their police and their domestic intelligence services to gather information. These services of course know local languages and are culturally aware. They can also take advantage of the law in their efforts to disrupt terrorism: Terrorism, after all, is a crime. Allies, particularly less savory ones, use a government’s coercive power as well. Although people automatically think torture, governments at times threaten to jail a relative of a suspected terrorist or withhold a business permit or the right to attend university. These seemingly mundane threats are something that the United States cannot do outside its own borders. 

Many of the most basic homeland security tasks do not begin or end with the homeland.

Given these advantages, the primary role of U.S. intelligence is to cajole and strengthen allies, not replace them. The United States might provide technical assistance, as many U.S. allies are far weaker in this area. In addition, U.S. intelligence often acts as a conductor of global liaison services. In 2010, al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula tried to bomb two cargo planes as they approached the United States. Efforts to disrupt the plot involved not only the United States and Yemen, but also the countries in transit, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, and the United Kingdom. And Saudi Arabia provided a key intelligence tip. 

Many of the most basic homeland security tasks do not begin or end with the homeland. Foreign governments provide information on terrorist suspects, and there is considerable cooperation on those who might travel to the United States. Much of the screening to hinder terrorist travel and operations is done “over there,” not in the United States.

Our world is too small, and terrorists too global, to think of U.S. security narrowly. If we want to fight ISIS and other foes, we need allies. That doesn’t mean we should do whatever our allies want or support them unconditionally. But we must recognize that if we expect them to help America fight its enemies, we must stand by them as well.