Carry a Big Stick

This response may not be quite apropos of the article referenced but I thought I’d offer a few comments on the question of nuclear terrorism and terrorism and WMDs in general. For much of the last decade — I don’t recall when it became a serious issue — the concept of "super-terrorism" has been debated in the US Intelligence and defense communities. It has also occurred in an abbreviated and lamentably sensationalist form in the press and public print. As far as I know the debate goes on, probably without much movement towards consensus among the various camps. My position was not, at least officially, the popular one. There were — and are — sound reasons for this and I’ll not sure I’d base policy on my conclusions, as assessment and policy are different things.

But that said, my conclusion is the concept of "super-terrorism" is not very realistic. While it is undeniable that various psychotic persons or even groups may slaver at the idea of setting off a nuke or releasing a nasty infectious agent, the situation is not that simple. What I believe is often overlooked in the analysis of so-called "super-terrorism" is the process required to obtained and use these weapons; the relationships between terrorists and their sponsors, and the psychology of obtaining WMD, especially nuclear weapons. I will not go into these in detail, for want of space, but try to summarize.

First about the psychology of obtaining nuclear weapons. The key thing to understand is that developing nations do not view nukes as weapons per se — as bigger artillery in the way the Soviets did for some years. They view them as a status symbol — as the necessary ticket to the "Big People’s Table" or as an esteemed co-worker expressed it, the "national phallus". Having nukes means the US has to treat you seriously, so they want them. It does not mean they want to use them. Indeed, some have commented [I think correctly to large extent] that obtaining nukes actually has a calming effect, because they make future crises and provocations very serious indeed. In the nature of things, even if the Supreme Leader is crazy, he needs a substantial number of equally crazy people to launch an unprovoked nuclear strike, and this fact mitigates the overall risk. Indeed, some thoughtful people have suggested that giving every one a few nukes might actually make things a lot more stable. I don’t tend to agree with that position, but the idea behind it is not bogus.

The same kind of restraint operates in terrorists, but n different ways. Genuine political terrorism [the IRA is the oldest example] seeks to force accommodation and so cannot hurt the "oppressor" so badly he decides to exterminated the terrorist and their society no matter the cost. Thus the IRA for a long time didn’t bomb shopping centers at Christmas and tried not to kill children. Clearly "super-terrorism" is a nonstarter for them.

Ideological terrorists are a different matter; they have no such compunctions. But this does not mean they are unrestrained. All such groups while being "non-state actors" in and of themselves, have state sponsors. These state sponsors feed, arm, shelter, and train the terrorists. If the terrorists get out of line, the sponsor can cut off their funds, evict them, even arrest or inform on them. Further, WMDs cannot be obtained without the connivance of at least one, and generally two of more states. States today understand — an understanding reinforced by recent object lessons in Afghanistan and Iraq — that we will hold the states responsible for the actions of their terrorist proxies. Therefore while some may want to bluster about WMDs in the hands of terrorists, they have strong reasons to see that this in fact never happens. The issue of WMDs is so large and so critical that people who will acquiesce to or embrace "standard" terrorism, draw the line well short of "super-terrorism" an there are enough of such people almost anywhere that the chances of "super-terrorism" ever becoming a real threat are very slim.

Very slim is not zero, and I have purposefully ignored N. Korea, which is not properly as state but a religious cult the size of a state. N. Korea is a very special — actually unique — and worrisome case. And the consequences of "super-terrorism" enacted are so great the no responsible threat-conservative policy can ignore it or seriously downplay it. But to a certain extent the conserve is also true: I believe the debate on "super-terrorism" during the 1990s was a small but noticeable distraction from our efforts against terrorism in general. Sand before any one jumps to any conclusions: no, this played no significant role in our failure to stop the 9/11 attacks. Speaking as one with intimate, first-hand knowledge of the situation, I can state categorically the failure to detect and stop those attacks was due solely and completely to the actions of Bill Clinton, but that is another topic.

Very good stuff, thanks a lot! You should think about starting your own blog, I'm sure there are a lot of people who'd be interested in your perspective on national security issues.

I don't suppose you can give me any more detail on where you worked and when?

Thanks Michael

I do think about starting a blog on occassion but I also note how habit forming they seem to become. I may yet give in.

In answer to your other question, from 1981 to 1985 I worked for the DOD. From '85 to 2002, I worked for a small group that did threat analysis, assessment, and projection; a significant number of NIEs were either substantially or almost completely written by us. We worked with a lot of different agencies and services in doing this; I personally worked most closely with the CIA, ONI, the NRO and the Air Force.

I'd concur with Owen's analysis, but have one reservation that neither of you nor SDB mentioned: our current stock of nuclear weapons are inappropriate for use in deterrance of state sponsored terrorism which may well employ NBC weapons at some point in time. The current US inventory and targeting system is designed to be a second strike system against a known group of static targets in one of two countries: the USSR or PRC. What has the US in knots over the PRC today is their deployment of mobile MRBMs in the vicinity of Taiwan, and the same holds true for the Indians and Pakistanis. The US has little capacity to intervene in Indo-Pakistanti wars which might go nuclear because of the mobile and dispersed nature of the real targets. So what would we use, city busters to punish the governments involved?

Same holds for the NK case. Nuke Pyongyang and so what? So we end up using scarce conventional assets to do anything realistic because the SDB line about handling 8 out of 10 other crises with nukes is a hollow threat. Neither the threat nor the realistic target list's nature merits using the strategic weapons we have now, and our tactical nuclear capacities were always tied to Central European Cold War intelligence and targeting methods even when they were operational. Now tactical nukes are almost a dead issue which is why DoE is seeking money to investigate new small scale nuke warheads.

In short, I'm not very confident that we'd escalate as rapidly as SDB and yourselves seem to imply by your analysis, and not because we don't want to, but rather because we wouldn't have the requisite assets to deal with the issues appropriately.

Tom, you raise a good point about the feasibility of using our nuclear arsenal, but I did not mean to imply a nuclear escalation in my comments. What I meant was a serious and devastating response, with the details of such a response being left the imagination of the perpetrator. Almost no one in any foreign military I’m familiar with thinks the US will go nuclear under almost any conceivable provocation, but what we would do is a matter of extreme concern to them.

To give one concrete example of this concern, I was privy the transcripts of the classified negotiations between us and the Soviets at the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik in 1986. What the Soviets kept bringing up time and time again was one particular [conventional] military capability they were worried we had deployed. Our guys simply made some vague diplomatic denials and then smiled. The Soviets left the meetings utterly freaked out [to use the present argot.] Based on subsequent analysis of Soviet actions, a good argument can be made that this particular exchange was a critical factor in pushing the USSR over the edge.

Such are the fears that impose the constraint I mentioned on the state sponsors of non-state actors. They don’t know what exactly we will do to them, but they are well convinced, especially now, that we will do it. They understand that our military constraints are political and ethical, not technical or operational, and they don’t wish to see those constraints removed, or even severely weakened. [Note that our "economic" constraints are mainly a political unwillingness to spend more than a certain amount on security and defense.] They worry what would happen if we spent on defense the same percentage of our GNP that they spend; if we harnessed the same relative manpower for our military that they do; if we were willing to risk the kinds of costs and casualties that they have dealt with; we tend to find this unthinkable, but they do not — it is their reality. Whatever their public statements, they do not want it to be ours.

BTW: please do not understand my comment above to imply we were necessarily bluffing at Reykjavik. Also, note that [as mentioned in my first post] N. Korea is a special case. A military response to the N. Korean problem is not in my opinion feasible at this time.

Sooooooooo... what was the conventional weapon system they were afraid we had? It wasn't SDI?

And what makes NK unfeasible? If we leave the ground combat to the South Koreans and support them from the air and sea, couldn't we win with relatively minor civilian losses? Not that it's the option we should be pursuing right now, but if it goes down would we really be in big trouble? It seems like a war in Korea would use different resources than our ongoing efforts in the Mid-East (ships and planes vs. ground troops and spec ops), but would we still be stretched too thin?

The issue with Korea is that there are the perceptions:
a. that losing Seoul isn't worth gaining Pyongyang. Despite the oozing sore that the North represents on the Korean people, raison d'etat for the South demands a continuation of the status quo. This is partially due to cultural issues, see b. below, but also due to economic concerns which can be best represented in noting that the South has invested tremendously in areas under direct threat of conventional and possibly nuclear artillery attack. This presents the South's regime with the unappetizing choice between appeasing the North or putting on the table as just an ante some of the choice assets of its prime supporters.
b. The Korean people seem to be sincerely ambivalent about the fate of the North. We Americans see this now in the same light as we think of the moral stance of the French Third Republic before June 1940. But this appreciation does nothing to aid the US in trying to get the South off of the fence and into a more active stance WRT solving the North's threats to long term stability in Korea. Fortunately for the South, the DPRK-Nazi Germany analog isn't exact, despite the similarities in their totalitarian politics.

Both a and b make US assertiveness difficult. More apt is the threat of Japanese remilitarization if the South cannot solve the Korean situation with its own means.

Yeah, but China won't be keen on Japan remilitarizing (especially with possible nuclear weapons), so it seems to me that China should have plenty of incentive to deal with North Korea. As for South Korea, I think their apathy is disgusting, but maybe they feel they just have too much to risk. Still, that's the price to be paid for letting this problem go on as long as it has.