The world is full of challenges to American security and few of them can be met with a traditional “kinetic” military response. Sure, American bombs and missiles can kill individual terrorists, but they cannot eliminate entire terrorist organizations. Nor can they counter the efforts of the Russian FSB, the Iranian Quds Force, the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, and other enemies to spread their propaganda and political influence to the detriment of American interests. This is not an argument for shrinking the American armed forces, which are already too small. It is an argument for expanding and improving our efforts in non-kinetic lines of operation.

There are three areas that are particularly important. We need to get better at state-building, political warfare, and military advising. All three areas are, in fact, closely related—they are different facets of American power that do not require sending lots of troops to occupy foreign countries. There are more subtle and effective ways to operate. Unfortunately, though, all three capabilities are largely MIA as far as the U.S. government is concerned.

Along with some collaborators, I have put forward a couple of ideas to fill these gaps.

In 2013, former Pentagon official Michael Doran and I released a Council on Foreign Relations Policy Innovation Memorandum on how to improve U.S. capabilities for political warfare. In brief, we recommended training specialists in this arcane and lost art and creating a center to coordinate their efforts, probably at the State Department. Political warfare involves promoting U.S. interests through a combination of information warfare and covert operations to support moderate political elements around the world. That’s something that the U.S. did in the early days of the Cold War and has largely stopped doing, ceding the political battleground to our enemies in the process.

This month, career USAID official Michael Miklaucic and I published another Policy Innovation Memorandum advocating that USAID be reconfigured. USAID currently promotes development for its own sake in over 100 countries. We argue that USAID should pare back its efforts to focus on state-building in fewer than 50 strategically important nations, most of them with significant Muslim populations. Only if the U.S. can promote stable governments in such states can we prevent terrorist groups from gaining or maintaining a foothold. That will require retooling how USAID operates so it will be less reliant on contractors. USAID should have more of its own specialists on staff—including, we suggest, many military veterans with service in Iraq or Afghanistan—who can help host countries get basic state functions (such as police forces, courts, and tax collection) working.

One of the best proposals has been put forward by John Nagl, a retired army lieutenant-colonel who was a key counterinsurgency strategist. He suggested creating a dedicated U.S. Army force to train foreign militaries instead of relying on hastily assembled pickup teams, as is typically the case today. The army chief of staff, General Mark Milley, has now announced that he will actually create advise-and-assist brigades along the lines advocated by Nagl.

That’s tremendous progress, but, alas, there has been little movement to enhance U.S. capacity for political warfare and state-building. Indeed “nation-building,” as state-building is more commonly known, remains a third-rail in American politics, denounced by Barack Obama and Donald Trump in equal measure. Yet if we cannot build functional states we can never defeat all of the terrorist groups that find a safe haven in failed states.

These are all areas where the next president must do more if the U.S. is to be able to safeguard and promote its interests.