Talk:Lecture 5

Decentralization of Terrorism and Implications on CBRN Weapons

Chris Fleizach - Jeffrey Bale noted at the end of his talk that he was certain a terrorist group would obtain and deploy a CBRN weapon within a reasonable time frame. The evidence that is generally accepted assumes that Al-Qaeda will be the group to perpetrate such an act due to their relative experience and ability in the pre-requisite areas mentioned (organization, logistics, finances, etc..). An issue that I didn't think was addressed is how has the "splintering" of Al-Qaeda (or any terrorist group) affected their chances of success. In Dr. Maurer's talks on the history of terrorism there was mention that after time ideological differences, changes in tactics and setbacks usually drew groups in opposite directions. Added to this governmental crack-downs, loss of popular support and the addition of "thugs" to its ranks would all diminish the potency of most terrorist organizations.

Certainly Al-Qaeda has begun to experience many of these symptoms. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been described as becoming the "new face of terrorism," although as a previous drug-dealer and possible rapist, his credentials seem to point towards thuggery instead of ideology. NY Times (9/18/05) His violent tactics, including beheadings and constant attacks on Shi'ites, have certainly turned away some of the popular support he may have enjoyed before.

The July 7th bombings in London, which Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for (as well as two separate groups) showed that acts did not need to originate from overseas. Only two of the bombers had been to Pakistan and initially Al-Qaeda leaders only said they supported the actions, indicating that direction may not have come from bin Laden BBC News (9/19/05). Indeed, Dr. Maurer's and Michael Nacht's lectures point to the possibility that Al-Qaeda is becoming more of a transnational movement based on an idea than a highly centralized organization. Bin Laden's isolation in remote Afghanistan or Pakistan certainly means the previous freedoms of communication and centralization he enjoyed with the Taliban have been restricted. (Pakistan claimed recently that Bin Laden's communications have been destroyed ChicagoSunTimes (9/26/05)).

This evidence seems to indicate a decline in the ability of, at least Al-Qaeda, to orchestrate and instigate an attack with CBRN weapons, an action which requires centralizing of finances, skills, logistics and organization, especially if communication has been limited. Although the frequency of small, individualized attacks may increase (as Iraq and Afghanistan has demonstrated), the ability to enact larger, more destructive, plans may remain out of the reach of an Al-Qaeda that is no longer orchestrated from one point.

I would be interested to see how the Center for Non-proliferation Studies monitors this "splintering" or decentralization, whether it can be modeled on historical trends and finally, how it has affected the ability of groups to use CBRN to cause mass destruction/disruption.

SMM: This is a provocative and interesting application that combines several lectures. If you buy the logic, then you should also ask the further policy question: What should the US be doing to help the unraveling process along?

Suppose the Zarqawi background material is true (I have no reason to think it isn't). Given that it seems like an important fact, why don't you hear it repeated every day? Is the US press falling down on the job when it comes to telling the full story? Is the Arab press telling this story at all? What is the disconnect -- Is the US press so focused on America and Americans that it simply isn't interested about who we're fighting? [This was clearly true in World War II -- Polls showed that nobody knew anything about the Japanese government beyond, say, Tojo.] Do they think that criticizing terrorists is bad form? Or are reporters physically intimidated by fear of reprisals -- notice that press organizations hardly ever call people "terrorists," it's always "militants"?

If the US media aren't doing their job, should the US government's media outlets (Voice of America, etc.) push the story harder? People usually argue that no one believes government outlets, but that's clearly untrue in countries where the population's domestic media are controlled -- Think how many people listened to BBC broadcasts in Nazi Germany, Radio Free Europe broadcasts the the USSR, or Western web pages in China today. No matter the source, true statements have a way of demanding answers. And there really isn't an answer to Zarqawi's background.

More generally, why don't US media (and US government media) say more about the Muslim majority who despise terrorism? My sense of the coverage is that we only notice the majority when they get killed and in that case we treat them as victims rather than heroes. That's terribly condescending. When the Germans bombed London, the story line was civic bravery -- In Edward R. Murrow's phrase, "London can take it." That was another time, of course, but these were people like us and my guess is that we'd say something similar today. Shouldn't we say the same thing when Iraqis and Afghans are murdered because they want to vote?

People talk a lot about the US should do more "hearts and minds," but that advice is pretty empty unless you can make specific offers about how to actually do it.

How probable is a CBRN attack?

Jeff Bilger - I would argue that it is not in Al-Qaeda's best interests to use CBRN weapons because such an attack would surely result in a swift and decisive response. Global political pressure or fallout would cease to deter the U.S. from pursuing all options.

Moreover, Al-Qaeda does not need any more significant, high profile successes in order to keep the recruits coming in. This may have been their goal prior to 9/11 but the Iraq War has given rise to a steady supply of people ready and willing to fight. If their goal is to form a global caliphate, then their best option is to attempt to cripple our economy by directed, small scale attacks, and not to wage war directly with the U.S.

If CBRN weapons were to be used, then a splinter group or some other terrorist organization would be the likely perpetrator. But do they really have the capabilities to pull it off? Even if they could pull it off, Al-Qaeda would get the blame, and this must make Al-Qaeda very nervous.

Responses

Altin Dastmalchi, UCB I agree that it is unlikely that Al Qaeda might attack us with a CBRN, however i do beleive that another future attack is inevitable, because of our foreign policy agenda and outcast. We have played a "lets scare them" card and this has pissed many outsiders off.

If however, Al Qaeda, a splinter group, or any terrorist group for that matter does get there hands on CBRN's then i dont agree that they would be scared to use them because of retaliation issues. I think what the guest lecture stated about media attention and kudos for their organization would encourage this type of action...

Thats my theory, anyone wish to reply?

Chris Fleizach - If we are to believe Al Qaeda's stated intentions, then we must assume the group will use CBRN if possible. Bin Laden has procliamed his goal is to kill millions of Americans, not just to tangentally establish a caliphate but also as retribution (CBS News (11/15/04). Fatwas from various mullahs and radical Islamicists all seem to concur. But in terms of being fearful of retribution, I believe their previous attacks have only emboldened them. After destroying three symbols of American power in 9/11 the end result was an Iraq that only Al Qaeda could love, while their leaders remain nominally free, although severally restricted in their movemement and communication. The anthrax attacks further proved that biological weapons could be used with impunity.

Jeff Bilger - My premise is based on the fact that we are currently waging asymmetric warfare against Al-Qaeda. This puts us at a distinct disadvantage in regards to locating and eliminating the Al-Qaeda leadership and Al-Qaeda has to recognize this. If a CBRN attack did occur on U.S. soil, I believe that our government would radically change its tactics/policy with regards to terrorist threats. If people think that the U.S. has been acting unilaterally, just wait and watch. For example, would the U.S. recognize the sovereignty of states that harbor terrorists (with our without the blessing of that government) such as Yemen and Pakistan? or would we shrug off any possible political fallout or global condemnation and go in and eliminate the threat?

--Chris DuPuis 15:31, 30 Sep 2005 (PDT) - Jeff, you bring up an interesting point. Undoubtedly, given a nuclear attack, the U.S. would pursue the perpetrators without regard to any national borders. Could this be seen as an attempt to get the U.S. to give a disproportionate response, as discussed in class, and thereby further alienate our allies? "Divide and conquer" is a time-tested strategy.

Chris Fleizach - Clearly, the US would attack any country that harbored terrorists perperating a CBRN attack, (much like what occurred in Afghanistan), but what if the terrorists came from within the US, or from a US ally such as Britain or India. It is within these countries that terrorists would have greater opportunity of gaining necessary skills and even equipment that could be used. So much of the US's terrorism initiatives have been directed towards places on the fringe of the its collective imagination, while terrorists are now firmly implanted as foreign agents. What kind of reaction would America have if our own borders harbored people with CBRN ambitions.

Altin Dastmalchi, UCB To answer the question above, i imagine that the U.S. does harbor sleepers that are working for foreign terrorist. However,through the Patriot Act, we are trying to find more of these CBRN ambitionist. For example, the Lodi situation, that has two suspected terrorist facing charges. Although this seems to be effective, i believe that our DHS needs to become more strict, meaning color coded alerate levels might keep us on alert, but more effective measures is a most...

"Richter Scale" of terrorist attacks

--Parvez Anandam 00:17, 30 Sep 2005 (PDT): Gary Ackerman makes a most interesting point: one often neglects the psychological effects of a terrorist attack. While the number of people who were, in fact, physically affected in the Oklahoma City bombing is far greater than that in the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack, the number of people who _thought_ they were affected is greater in the latter.

To make comparisons of vastly different terrorist attacks possible, it may be worthwhile to quantify their magnitudes. From a cold economic perspective, a human life has a price. The payout of a typical life insurance policy provides an order-of-magnitude estimate of that price.

Answers to questions of the type "which is worse for a society, 10 people dead or 10,000 people not going to work for a month?" must naturally be factored into policy decisions. Is there a well-established method of measuring and normalizing the impact of a terrorist attack?

SMM: This is an excellent point which we will return to in lecture. Intellectually, the basis for valuing lives is poorly worked out -- the basic problem is that asking people "how much do I have to pay you to accept an extra 1-in-5 million risk" doesn't extrapolate well to "how much would I have to pay you to accept a 1-in-1 risk."

More importantly, we and our politicians try to pretend that each life is infinitely valuable which is clearly untenable: Refusing to name a price does not mean that no price exists. What ends up happening is that our actions reveal the price even if we won't name it. For instance, it turns out that the EPA acts as if your life is worth $2m but FAA thinks it's worth $600K or so. Clearly, at least one of these numbers is wrong; also, the existence of two numbers suggests that a rational society could do arbitrage -- i.e., rearrange our regulation (less EPA, more FDA) to save more lives within existing budgets.

Finally, there fear actually has two distinct costs of fear. One is lost work & is measurably economic. It gets into questions like the snow day problem -- The fact that a city shuts down today actually doesn't do much to annual GDP, people just do the transactions a day or two later. The other, harder question is psychic fear. Lawsuits routinely try to recover for "fear of cancer." I won't comment on that, but the fact that something is hard to measure doesn't mean it doesn't exist. One oddity is that such fears aren't primarily science driven. They depend on our own prejudices at least as much as what happens in the world.

Weaponization of chemical agents, among other things

--Chris DuPuis 15:17, 30 Sep 2005 (PDT) It seems incongruous to lump all chemical agents into the same category as nuclear devices and infectious diseases. While the "weaponization" of something like anthrax spores may take a fair amount of technical knowledge, and the construction of a nuclear device may be beyond the grasp of any current terrorist group, creating deadly chemical agents is quite simple.

For example, everyone has (hopefully) heard of the danger of mixing household bleach and ammonia cleaners. When mixed, they produce chlorine gas (among other nasty poisons), which has caused a number of serious injuries and deaths to people exposed to the products of accidentally mixing these chemicals. (Incidentally, chlorine was the first chemical warfare agent (if memory serves), and it was used by the Germans in World War I.)

If mixing a couple of easily obtained chemicals can produce such a potent poison gas, then the task of weaponization is just a matter of getting the chemicals to the target.

The fact that such simple methods are not widely used seems to indicate that, rather than being deterred by technical difficulty, terrorists have other reasons for not using chemical weapons. --