Al Qaeda's Operational Center of Gravity: As Hard to Find as The Terrorists Themselves

摘要

The thesis of the paper is: Al Qaeda's Operational Center of Gravity is correctly identifiable by using Operational Warfare's principles and processes. The author uses the terrorist network, Al Qaeda, as an illustration of the process in correctly identifying a center of gravity for a terrorist force, a force not fitting the common definition of a conventional or unconventional operational force. In applying the principles and processes of operational warfare in this analysis, the author first needed to determine the war on terrorism's strategic enemy and that strategic enemy's objective, because it is from the national strategic, or political objective objectives, that operational objectives are derived. In analysis of the strategic enemy, the author postulates that radical Washhabi Islamic terrorist groups, when viewed in holistically, comprise a strategic threat to this nation. Additionally, the author names this strategic threat, 'Adversary', and identifies its strategic center of gravity, as 'will of the people, more precisely defined as, radical Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalism. In conclusion, the author states that it turns out that defining Al Qaeda's center of gravity is 'easy' relatively speaking, but it is the courses of action deriving from that center of gravity which are hard to define, develop, and execute in defeating not only Al Qaeda, but 'Adversary'.