One of the biggest handicaps of U.S. policy is that across administrations, U.S. policymakers expect rogues to conform to Washington’s bureaucratic geography rather than vice versa. After my first trip to the Horn of Africa, the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs sought a debriefing about Fahad Yasin, a former Al Jazeera journalist with close ties to both Qatar and the al Shabaab terrorist group, who appeared to be funding unrest and terrorism in Somalia while working for Somalia’s U.S.-supported intelligence agency. For the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, however, Qatar’s influence was not on the agenda. It politely declined due to lack of interest.

The same pattern has long existed across other bureaucratic fault lines: Turkey’s support for Hamas, the Islamic State, and other terrorist groups flew under the radar for too long because those most concerned about terrorism in the Middle East worked in a different bureaucracy. Azerbaijan’s effort to destabilize New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific, surprised for the same reason.