In practice, this didn’t go very smoothly. The NATO intervention in Afghanistan began to lose its multilateral character, as various European nations started pulling out their forces in response to domestic opposition. By the end of the first decade of the new millennium, the "hearts and minds" approach and the counterinsurgency strategy had more or less failed. Obama therefore had to return to counterterrorism and say "good-bye to nation building and counter-insurgency operations." The failure of the Bush policies he was pursuing ushered in a new phase in Obama’s imperial strategy.

DEFINE: Distinguishes counterinsurgency/hearts-and-minds strategy from counterterrorism as distinct imperial phases.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 432