This article suggests that the War on Terrorism is actually a campaign against a globalized Islamist 1 insurgency. Therefore, counterinsurgency approaches are more relevant to the present conflict than traditional terrorism theory. Indeed, a counterinsurgency approach would generate subtly, but substantially different, policy choices in prosecuting the war against Al Qaeda. Based on this analysis, the article proposes a strategy of 'disaggregation' that seeks to dismantle, or break, the links in the global jihad.2 Like containment in the Cold War, disaggregation would provide a unifying strategic conception for the war - a conception that has been somewhat lacking to date.