It Could Happen Here: Facing the New Terrorism

To the extent that such rational calculations are indeed the reason we have escaped catastrophic terrorism in the past, they should continue to impose restraints in the future on mainstream terrorist groups, those with a known address and somewhat limited objectives. Hoffman's book traces the history of such organizations from the anarchist and leftist terrorism of the late nineteenth century, through the nationalist and separatist terrorism of the colonial and postcolonial era, to the international and state-sponsored terrorism of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In recent years, he notes, religious terrorism has increasingly come to the fore. And while the number of terrorist attacks has declined, the number of casualties per attack has increased.

This is where the story starts to get truly worrisome. All five books warn of the increasing danger of nontraditional terrorists, whose behavior is less predictable and who might seek to maximize bloodshed. Three such types quickly come to mind: religious fanatics who consider violence a sacramental act or believe they are the direct instruments of divine retribution; eschatological cults with a penchant for violence; and disturbed or hate-filled activists who want to inflict pain on a grand scale. The good news is that such groups and individuals are few and far between. The bad news is that all three types do exist -- as the World Trade Center bombing, the Japanese subway attack, and the Oklahoma City bombing testify -- and there is reason to believe their numbers may be growing. (Establishing whether this is indeed the case, and if so why, should be a top priority for future research.)

More bad news is the fact that WMD capability is gradually coming within range of many substate actors through the general diffusion of scientific skills and dual-use technologies. To be sure, terrorists content to cause dozens or hundreds of casualties will probably stick with conventional methods. Yet the more ambitious of them might be tempted by chemical, biological, or nuclear alternatives, whose respective profiles are summarized neatly by Falkenrath et al.:

Chemical weapons suitable for mass casualty attacks can be acquired by virtually any state and by nonstate actors with moderate technical skills. Certain very deadly chemical warfare agents can quite literally be manufactured in a kitchen or basement in quantities sufficient for mass-casualty attacks. . . .

Many states and moderately sophisticated nonstate actors could construct improvised but effective biological weapons. . . . Culturing the required microorganisms, or growing and purifying toxins, is inexpensive and could be accomplished by individuals with college level training in biology and a basic knowledge of laboratory technique. Acquiring the seed stocks for pathogenic microorganisms is also not particularly difficult. . . .

Nuclear weapons are within the reach of tens of states, with the most significant constraint being the ability to produce plutonium or highly enriched uranium. If this obstacle were avoided through the theft or purchase of fissile material, almost any state with a reasonable technical and industrial infrastructure could fabricate a crude nuclear weapon, . . . [as could] some exceptionally capable nonstate actors.

"Weapons of all three classes," they add, "are deliverable against a wide range of targets, and defense is difficult." There seems to be general agreement that of the three, chemical use is the most likely scenario, nuclear use the least likely, and biological use the scariest because it is both relatively easy and highly deadly.

The intersection of the trend involving motive and the trend involving opportunity is what made the Aum Shinrikyo case so disturbing. After all, as Stern points out, this was a group whose members penned ditties such as the following:

It came from Nazi Germany, a dangerous chemical weapon,

Sarin, Sarin!

If you inhale the mysterious vapor, you will fall with bloody vomit from your mouth,

Sarin, sarin, sarin, the chemical weapon!

Song of Sarin the Brave. . . .

Given these trends and the fact that terrorists tend to copy each other's methods, one can understand why all these books consider catastrophic terrorism a seismic event whose probability is low but rising. Weapons of mass destruction will not become the car bombs of the next few decades, they argue, but the situation nevertheless calls for precautionary measures to reduce vulnerability, head off attacks, and manage potential consequences.

PRUDENCE, DEAR

Heymann offers a range of intelligent, if unsurprising, suggestions for handling traditional terrorist threats, from avoiding concessions, cooperating with allies, and prosecuting suspects, to relying on crack hostage-rescue teams or military retaliation where appropriate. He makes a persuasive case for avoiding overreaction, arguing both that it would be tragic for democracies to abandon their cherished freedoms and principles in a quest for absolute security and that there is little reason to believe that a heavy-handed approach to counterterrorism would work. After much hemming and hawing, however, even he seems to favor some increase in domestic intelligence gathering, concluding that "the limited threat to uninhibited discussion posed by even reasonable efforts to monitor organizations preaching violence is a price worth paying to prevent political violence."

The other authors agree that in addition to the standard responses, governments can and should do more to prepare for the worst-case WMD scenarios. They make a number of strikingly similar policy recommendations, among which are the following: