Talk:Lecture 2

Ok, here we go.

I am not too sure of the perfect way to start this up, but I will just start with throwing out questions that came up for me in lecture.

Go to the last lecture's discussion: Talk:Lecture 1

General Issues

Premise: Something has changed, with the Third Wave of terrorism, so that now terrorists have a new goal of waging war. My first impression is that this still sounds like a tactic to me - the goals should be more concrete, such as gaining concessions from the United States, or Western Nations.

Q: Have the goals of terrorism changed? Under what conditions would Al Qaeda decide to call off the war, negotiate a truce, etc?

SMM: The goal/tactic distinction is fairly definitional. You could call everything in the first lecture (publicity, forcing concessions) a tactic if you wanted also. The reason I don't do that is that we usually think of terrorism as a tactic. Also, I have tried to abstract away from the goals that particular terrorists want -- Rather, the question has been, given some set of goals is terrorism a rational way to proceed? Your way might be more conventional usage, though.

So call mass violence a tactic if that helps. The point of the second lecture is that warfare/mass violence has always been a tactic that nations (but not terrorists) used to attain goals. And what we know about this tactic tends not to work without exceedingly large casualties. This is not to say that casualties are the only variable -- clearly they are not -- but since we lack a good theory of warfare, the only way to proceed is to develop an intuition for the most important variables one at a time.

Of course, you can't ignore the other variables altogether. At some point you have to add them. These variables include the particular conditions under which the parties might call off a war or negotiate a truce. In a full theory (which doesn't exist!), the level of these demands would interact with how many casualties the US is willing to sustain or, equivalently, Al Qaida needs to inflict. The demands would presumably also shift over time depending on how well the war is going for one side or the other. But as I say, we don't have any very good theory of how these things happen.

One really important consideration is to task whether Al Qaida could call a truce even if it wanted to. If they can't, then the struggle becomes bloodier all around.

Premise: There have been changes in the nature of terrorism that now terrorists are more inclined towards causing mass casualties. In the past, perhaps it was constrained by the need to maintain good public support, or the support of the state sponsor.

Q: Does Al Qaeda have anything to protect that would cause it to shy away from total warfare?

• My thoughts: They seem unconcerned with public opinion within the US, besides perhaps creating fear. This may be a mistake since the ability of the U.S. government to wage counter-warfare is dependent upon public support. They certainly need to protect public opinion within the Arab world, whether among the people who are potential recruits, or the people who donate money to the organization. As such, I would expect that they would still be constrained in similar ways as under state sponsorship.

SMM: I think that's right, although sponsors have a return address and are therefore afraid of being bombed. People who send recruits/donors are much less likely to see that kind of incentive, their responsibility is diffuse.

Another angle on the problem is that the terrorists in most of the plots in Europe and North America stayed in those places for months or years or were even born there. In those cases, local Moslem community sympathy (or at least neutrality) plays a significant role in letting terrorists to "stay invisible."

Technology Issues

Complexity/Magic tree idea: One weakness that we have against terrorism is the complexity of our society, the fact that there are interdependent systems that often have hubs and leverage points. Case in point, a single tree falling in the right spot can cause wide-ranging power outages (with resulting problems).

Q: Does engineering systems to be robust against natural disasters (and minor ones like trees) and hooligans provide enough protection against a lot of the things that terrorists would do? Or are there ways in which terrorists might attack a complex system that is very different from nature and the hooligans?

SMM: There's a nice NATURE article (27 July 2000) about the Internet which says that you can imagine two different ways that the network could be connected. In the first, the number of connections that each node has is a Gaussian ("bell curve"). This leads to most nodes having some similar interconnectedness. In that world, system performance diminishes more or less linearly if you take out nodes at random. Furthermore, an intentional attack (picking the most connected nodes) doesn't do much better, because the bell curve guarantees most nodes are pretty average.

On the other hand, you can imagine a "power law" distribution in which a few nodes are hugely connected but the overwhelming majority of nodes have only a few. In this case, the system is enormously resistant to natural disaster but also more vulnerable to terrorism.

Even though the article is about the Internet, the same logic fits most complex systems. For example, during the Cold War the military worried about attacks on the phone system that might disrupt the President's ability to authorize a strike during a nuclear attack. The answer in the 1960s was reassuring -- There were so many ways to route a telephone call that destroying a few switches wouldn't matter. The answer in the 1980s was less reassuring -- By then, a large volume of traffic was shuttling through a small number of huge switching centers. Contrary to our usual intuitions, society has become less complex (by some measures) and more vulnerable.

Social Issues

I am just going to pose the question that Maurer asked, so that maybe some people will take a stab at it.

Q: Is outsourcing the most efficient way for Al Qaeda to wage war?

yes, because they want to get the message across with mass publicity. Then they take the blame for a terrorist action, and boom, more publicity...

But heres another question, should US and other democratic nation-states increase security on the 9/11 ann., or should this been happening everyday?

I actually thought that an interesting idea Professor Maurer alluded to was that outsourcing may be a more inefficient way of conducting business for terrorists than keeping things in-house would be. Professor Maurer mentioned the economist Ronald Coase. From what I read on the internet, Coase pointed out that, while outsourcing may traditionally be thought of as the most efficient way to get things done (since the market makes sure that tasks are performed by the firms that can do them at the least cost), transaction costs sometimes make outsourcing more inefficient than doing things in-house. In the case of a terrorist organization, I’m guessing that the most significant transaction costs are “enforcement and policing costs.” That is, when you contract out some part of a terrorist plot, you have to make sure that the party with whom you’re contracting 1) actually does what you’ve paid them to do and 2) doesn’t leak information to the authorities either on purpose or inadvertently. As Professor Maurer mentioned, Bin Laden has gotten burned trying to orchestrate complex plots using outside contractors (e.g. spending millions on unusable uranium, or having hard drives with sensitive information on them found by U.S. authorities). Anyway, I guess I’m wondering if Bin Laden’s outsourcing may make his plots easier to foil since outsourcing must make it harder for him to ensure quality and secrecy. Avi Springer

SEAN WEST (2nd Yr MPP at GSPP): I wanted to respond to the point brought up in class about British intrusiveness in terrorism prevention and response--including surveillance cameras and, I would add, bag inspections on trains under a strict profiling system. While living in London this summer during the attacks I was impressed by how quickly the government was able to locate all suspects of the second failed attacks as well as identify the bombers in the first attacks. Further, it was interesting how the CCTV cameras captured images of the police shooting a mistaken Brazilian citizen thinking he was a suicide bomber (photos of which were leaked to British tabloids three weeks later). In America we have no tolerance for these cameras--they have been piloted in Florida for crime prevention and elsewhere with little support from local citizens (indeed there are even concerns about CCTV cameras set up by lifeguards in Southern California to monitor the beach). But in Britain there is wide-support for CCTV despite similar ideological societal concerns about privacy--one case in point being the row created over whether or not to pilot a national identification card scheme. I think one reason why the British are willing to support CCTV is because these cameras have a proven track record of deterring crime and solving crime. The scheme is not sold as a terrorism prevention system but rather a wide-spread attack on crime which has significant supporting evidence to prove that crime is reduced in the areas where CCTV is located. Perhaps, if an integrated system of CCTV to combat crime and terrorism were properly devised and brought forth for discussion, maybe there would be some support in America now. Any thoughts?

On the second point about bag searches: Directly after the July attacks the government announced that transport police were to inspect bags in the London Underground--but only bags of those who appeared to be Muslim (I believe the police chief said something to the effect of “Of course we won’t be wasting time searching little old white ladies.”). Concurrently, the NYPD began random bag searches on the NY subway, with no corresponding profiling system. The UK has a MUCH larger Muslim community but there has not been any real uproar over the issue. Is this due to more trust in the government (even after the police shot a citizen mistakenly), or a higher tolerance to trade convenience/civil liberties for security in Britain but not in America? Or is this just typical of a large population of those not being targeted who are willing to tolerate anything that yields psychological comfort of increased security even if it does not actually increase security (I would argue that random bag searches at 1/50th of Tube stations does not yield much security anyway--especially when the attacks are being performed by terrorists who are willing to die....we could see checkpoint attacks at the gates of the Tube if terrorists were actually selected to be searched). I look forward to hearing replies to either or these points and continuing discussion. ---Sean

Government Knowledge and the Effect of Specific Terrorist Acts

Professor Maurer, you mentioned the recent London bombings and also the manner in which the citizens of Great Britain continued to soldier on perhaps more accustomed to dealing with such things given their experience with the IRA and during the Battle of Britain. I was in London this summer during the bombings and for a few weeks following. I think your discussion of London’s World War II experience as putting things in perspective was spot on. As an anecdote, I was in the City Point building the morning of the first bombings – about five blocks away from the Liverpool Street Station. About two hours after the bombings I was walking with a friend to another building and we took a couple of random turns and ended up on a small street across from the Barbican complex. Etched in the stone of one of the buildings on that street was (paraphrase) “At this spot, on August 24, 1940, at approximately 12am, the first bomb of WWII was dropped on the City of London.” It was a rather powerful chance find that day and really put things in perspective for me.

I should also add that, in the moments immediately following the blasts, the security authorities in London acting swiftly and expertly. Within less than ten minutes of the blast between the Liverpool and Aldersgate Stations, the police had cordoned off the City Point building up to a block away and were checking vehicles in the area for explosives. At about the same time two helicopters took to the air over Canary Wharf, where London’s newest and tallest office buildings are (headquarters of City Bank, HSBC, etc.). People were very concerned but there was never an air of panic. I would say that resilience, pride, and steadfastness are apt characterizations of the pulse of London in the first couple of weeks following the bombings.

On a different note, there was talk of a “covenant of security” that had existed prior to the bombings between British intelligence and security forces and Islamic terrorists. Evidently, there was an unspoken arrangement whereby the authorities would not harass, crack down on, arrest, or expel known Islamic terrorists (people known to be advocating or to have taken part in violence outside of the UK) so long as they did not commit acts on UK soil. Professor Maurer, have you heard anything about the “covenant of security”? Any thoughts?

SMM: It's logical for all governments to want a quiet life. The Europeans have been accused of having this sort of pact since the '70s, though the phrase "covenant" sounds like journalistic invention. The speed with which Germany cracked down in Hamburg suggests that the cops knew a lot about the radical community. But before 9/11 they were either politically constrained or had no desire to stir things up.

There was a major change of attitude amongst the authorities following the bombings too. Individuals who looked as if they might be of Middle or South Asian descent were frequently stopped, questioned, and carted off by authorities if they could not identify themselves with official or valid documentation or explain there presence adequately. In the UK, that was a huge change of policy. I had witnessed the Italian authorities do the same around Easter of 2001 in Rome and Venice but was a bit surprised to see the British implement much the same policy; from what I understand, the Italians and French are notorious for doing so.

Did the French actually kill Carlos the Jackal?

SMM: No, he's in jail.

Can you discuss the bombings that took place in France during the 1990s? Were they carried out by North African Islamists? If so, should they have been taken as a warning for what might be brewing and what might occur in other Western societies? How did the French react to the bombings, what sort of countermeasures did they take?

Professor Maurer, you discussed the internationalization of terror in the 1960s and 70s, could you discuss the recent, I believe in the last three years, existence of ties between the IRA and Columbian paramilitary groups?

Did the British ever directly fund the Unionist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland as an anti-terrorism tactic?

SMM: I very much doubt it.

Should the violence involving Islamic groups in and around Achaea and in the Southern Philippines be viewed as emanating from struggles for independence and nationalism (similar to your categorization of IRA activity within the 32 counties) or acts of terrorism? Does it matter?

Would you count the SAS operation on the Iranian Embassy, in London, as the key turning point for Western specialized anti-terror units – was that the operation that was primarily responsible for showing the terrorists what they were now up against or was that just one of many such successful counter-terrorism actions (i.e. Germans in Mogadishu)?

SMM: What is a turning point?

Is residual tension over the handling of Aquila Lauro hijacking at all to blame for the Italian government’s intense condemnation (and insistence that CIA officers involved be tried as war criminals) of the recent US rendition of a terror suspect from Italy and its foot dragging with respect to handing over a suspect wanted in connection with the second/attempted London bombings?

General Comments & Questions Fisher

Professor Maurer, you mentioned the recent London bombings and also the manner in which the citizens of Great Britain continued to soldier on perhaps more accustomed to dealing with such things given their experience with the IRA and during the Battle of Britain. I was in London this summer during the bombings and for a few weeks following. I think your discussion of London’s World War II experience as putting things in perspective was spot on. As an anecdote, I was in the City Point building the morning of the first bombings – about five blocks away from the Liverpool Street Station. About two hours after the bombings I was walking with a friend to another building and we took a couple of random turns and ended up on a small street across from the Barbican complex. Etched in the stone of one of the buildings on that street was (paraphrase) “At this spot, on August 24, 1940, at approximately 12am, the first bomb of WWII was dropped on the City of London.” It was a rather powerful chance find that day and really put things in perspective for me.

I should also add that, in the moments immediately following the blasts, the security authorities in London acting swiftly and expertly. Within less than ten minutes of the blast between the Liverpool and Aldersgate Stations, the police had cordoned off the City Point building up to a block away and were checking vehicles in the area for explosives. At about the same time two helicopters took to the air over Canary Wharf, where London’s newest and tallest office buildings are (headquarters of City Bank, HSBC, etc.). People were very concerned but there was never an air of panic. I would say that resilience, pride, and steadfastness are apt characterizations of the pulse of London in the first couple of weeks following the bombings.

On a different note, there was talk of a “covenant of security” that had existed prior to the bombings between British intelligence and security forces and Islamic terrorists. Evidently, there was an unspoken arrangement whereby the authorities would not harass, crack down on, arrest, or expel known Islamic terrorists (people known to be advocating or to have taken part in violence outside of the UK) so long as they did not commit acts on UK soil. Professor Maurer, have you heard anything about the “covenant of security”? Any thoughts?

There was a major change of attitude amongst the authorities following the bombings too. Individuals who looked as if they might be of Middle or South Asian descent were frequently stopped, questioned, and carted off by authorities if they could not identify themselves with official or valid documentation or explain there presence adequately. In the UK, that was a huge change of policy. I had witnessed the Italian authorities do the same around Easter of 2001 in Rome and Venice but was a bit surprised to see the British implement much the same policy; from what I understand, the Italians and French are notorious for doing so.

Did the French actually kill Carlos the Jackal?

Can you discuss the bombings that took place in France during the 1990s? Were they carried out by North African Islamists? If so, should they have been taken as a warning for what might be brewing and what might occur in other Western societies? How did the French react to the bombings, what sort of countermeasures did they take?

Professor Maurer, you discussed the internationalization of terror in the 1960s and 70s, could you discuss the recent, I believe in the last three years, existence of ties between the IRA and Columbian paramilitary groups?

Did the British ever directly fund the Unionist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland as an anti-terrorism tactic?

Should the violence involving Islamic groups in and around Achaea and in the Southern Philippines be viewed as emanating from struggles for independence and nationalism (similar to your categorization of IRA activity within the 32 counties) or acts of terrorism? Does it matter?

Would you count the SAS operation on the Iranian Embassy, in London, as the key turning point for Western specialized anti-terror units – was that the operation that was primarily responsible for showing the terrorists what they were now up against or was that just one of many such successful counter-terrorism actions (i.e. Germans in Mogadishu)?

Is residual tension over the handling of Aquila Lauro hijacking at all to blame for the Italian government’s intense condemnation (and insistence that CIA officers involved be tried as war criminals) of the recent US rendition of a terror suspect from Italy and its foot dragging with respect to handing over a suspect wanted in connection with the second/attempted London bombings?