Despite a jump in violence and continued arguing from Iraqi politicians over who will lead the country, Vice President Joe Biden is managing the departure and says the US military will reduce troop levels to 50,000 this summer, even if no new Iraqi government takes shape.

The overarching goal of Obama’s National Security Strategy, intended to guide US military and diplomatic policy for years, is to eliminate the need for the US to strike first or take unilateral military action.

In the president’s first formal declaration of his national security strategy, Obama breaks with some of his predecessors in putting heavy emphasis on the value of global cooperation, developing wider security partnerships and helping other nations defend themselves.

The White House also said it will uphold a strategy that will distinguish between Al-Qaeda terrorists and Islam.

Implicitly rejecting the anti-terrorist rhetoric of the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration will no longer tolerate use of the terms “Islamist” and “jihadist” because “jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purity oneself or one’s community,” said John Brennan, the National Security Council’s Counterterrorism and Homeland Security adviser, in a speech at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday.

Brennan said, “We do not describe our enemy as jihadists or Islamists,” because use of these religious terms “play into the false perception” that Al-Qaeda and its affiliates are “religious leaders and defending a holy cause, when in fact, they are nothing more than murderers.”

Stepping back from President George W. Bush’s “go it alone” directives, Obama has made sure that his top staff will reiterate this new direction. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed the diplomatic elements of the doctrine in a speech Thursday, while Gen. James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, explained the strategy to reporters at the Foreign Press Center.

Meanwhile, over at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has directed the US military services to adopt a set of counterinsurgency tools modeled after ones instituted in Afghanistan by Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

Gates this week signed a directive ordering the services to “take McChrystal’s COIN training and proficiency standards ... and adapt those for the whole force,” Garry Reid, deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combat terrorism, told Defense News.

The idea is to take the kinds of COIN training and “proficiency” standards that McChrystal, the top American general in Afghanistan, implemented there with his “AfPak Hands” program.

The “Hands” effort was formally launched last fall with the endorsement of Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen.

A joint staff fact sheet calls it a language and cultural immersion effort under which US forces gain skills to help them carry out counterinsurgency missions. Military officials have made gaining the trust and support of local populations in Afghanistan a cornerstone of the ongoing allied mission there.

Gates wants the new military-wide training and proficiency standards to be “in line” with those used in McChrystal’s “Hands” program.

“Every service member needs some understanding” of the local population, culture and language “when they’re going to be on the ground,” he said during prepared remarks at an industry conference in Arlington, Va.