Si chiama “Counterterrorism Partnership Fund” ed è il nome del nuovo programma che il Presidente degli Stati Uniti ha intenzione di far finanziare dal proprio Congresso. Un fondo di circa 5 miliardi di dollari da impiegare per fornire aiuti economici ai partner locali impegnati nel contrasto al terrorismo qaedista.
Lo ha annunciato oggi Obama nel suo discorso a West Point:

[…] So earlier this year I asked my national security team to develop a plan for a network of partnerships from South Asia to the Sahel.
Today, as part of this effort, I am calling on Congress to support a new counterterrorism partnerships fund of up to $5 billion, which will allow us to train, build capacity and facilitate partner countries on the front lines. And these resources will give us flexibility to fulfill different missions, including training security forces in Yemen who’ve gone on the offensive against al-Qaida, supporting a multinational force to keep the peace in Somalia, working with European allies to train a functioning security force and border patrol in Libya and facilitating French operations in Mali.

A critical focus of this effort will be the ongoing crisis in Syria. As frustrating as it is, there are no easy answers there, no military solution that can eliminate the terrible suffering anytime soon. As president, I made a decision that we should not put American troops into the middle of this increasingly sectarian civil war, and I believe that is the right decision. But that does not mean we shouldn’t help the Syrian people stand up against a dictator who bombs and starves his own people. And in helping those who fight for the right of all Syrians to choose their own future, we are also pushing back against the growing number of extremists who find safe haven in the chaos.

So with the additional resources I’m announcing today, we will step up our efforts to support Syria’s neighbors — Jordan and Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq — as they contend with refugees and confront terrorists working across Syria’s borders. I will work with Congress to ramp up support for those in the Syrian opposition who offer the best alternative to terrorists and brutal dictators. And we will continue to coordinate with our friends and allies in Europe and the Arab World to push for a political resolution of this crisis and to make sure that those countries and not just the United States are contributing their fair share of support to the Syrian people.

Let me make one final point about our efforts against terrorism. The partnerships I’ve described do not eliminate the need to take direct action when necessary to protect ourselves. When we have actionable intelligence, that’s what we do, through capture operations, like the one that brought a terrorist involved in the plot to bomb our embassies in 1998 to face justice, or drone strikes, like those we’ve carried out in Yemen and Somalia.

There are times when those actions are necessary and we cannot hesitate to protect our people. But as I said last year, in taking direct action, we must uphold standards that reflect our values. That means taking strikes only when we face a continuing, imminent threat, and only where there is no certainty — there is near certainty of no civilian casualties, for our actions should meet a simple test: We must not create more enemies than we take off the battlefield.

In altri termini sembra che la strategia delineata sia la seguente: gli USA evitano di impegnare le proprie truppe costruendo, invece, una rete globale di partner regionali che vengono appoggiati da Washington con fondi, intelligence, addestramento e che operano direttamente nel contrasto ai gruppi terroristici. Ovviamente gli Stati Uniti mantengono l’opzione di agire in prima persona quando necessario adoperando – deduco – unità speciali su specifiche operazioni.