Symbolic of the lack of support for Al Qaeda’s mission is the fact that newer Islamist groups with supposed Al Qaeda links haven’t adopted the Al Qaeda name. Even groups that formerly took the Al Qaeda name, such as AQAP and AQI (long before being disavowed by Al Qaeda Central), have dropped Al Qaeda from their names.

Instead of Al Qaeda’s ideology spreading, then, what we are seeing is Islamist groups revert back to the domestic-jihad model that was prevalent in the Cold War but had lost steam in the 1990s. Al Qaeda had always considered itself an ideological competitor to these domestic jihadists. Increasingly, it is becoming one of them.

None of this should be surprising for at least two reasons. First, the Arab Spring unequivocally refuted Al Qaeda’s central premise that the U.S. would never allow one of its local allies to be toppled by domestic uprisings. Al Qaeda leaders trying to make this argument today would sound absurd and gain few followers. The larger implication of this, however, is that it makes little sense for terrorist groups seeking to govern Muslim states to attack the U.S. Far from being necessary to achieve their ultimate objective, it is almost certainly counterproductive given that it attracts the attention of the formidable counterterrorism capabilities the U.S. has amassed since 9/11. This may explain why AQAP hasn’t attempted to attack the U.S. homeland since the Arab Spring began.

The other reason it is not surprising that Al Qaeda has increasingly adopted the domestic jihadist ideology is because al-Zawahiri is now the leader of Al Qaeda Central. According to many accounts, even during the pre-9/11 years al-Zawahiri was always far more interested in trying to seize control of his native Egypt than attacking the United States, which was bin Laden’s main preoccupation. Reportedly, al-Zawahiri only joined bin Laden’s global jihad out of desperation after the group he was running at the time, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, had run out of resources to fight the Egyptian government. With bin Laden no longer in charge, al-Zawahiri can now use Al Qaeda’s resources to focus on what was always his true ambition in life, overthrowing local regimes.

Zachary Keck is associate editor of The Diplomat where he authorsThe Pacific Realist blog. Follow him on Twitter:@ZacharyKeck.

Image: Flickr/Surian Soosay. CC BY 2.0.