Non-Conventional Terrorism - Essay Example

Al-Qaeda was able to avoid this tradeoff to some extent, having both a relatively high lethality and survivability. But this tradeoff has come back to haunt them in non-conventional warfare. In essence, CBRNE/WMD attacks by terrorists could be highly deadly but are not likely to be very frequent; meanwhile, cyber-attacks are likely to be frequent but are not likely to cascade to do very much damage.
One first has to note that we are not talking about highly state-sponsored or direct state terrorism or aggression. It is possible to call many US actions state terrorism, and certainly, the appellation has also been applied to actions performed by Saddam Hussein or Russia (Ahmed, 2001). The US government would face no serious difficulties coordinating a major NBC or cyber-attack to do major damage to an adversary. Instead, we are implicitly talking about primarily non-state organizations like al Qaeda, the IRA, the Red Army Factions, etc., who might receive backing and sanctuary from some states but are not wings of state policy and have limited resources.
Successfully launching a WMD attack by non-state actors is very difficult (ISDTS, 2005). Difficulties include access, sufficient funding, technical limitations in constructing the devices, successful detonation in a damaging location, etc. Chemical and biological weapons in particular are highly difficult to use (Loeb, 2001). Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese terrorist group responsible for a major subway chemical bombing, succeeded with sarin gas in a subway but failed with anthrax spores that they sprayed all over Tokyo with no casualties. The failure to do any real damage with the anthrax letter attacks is another sign of how hard it can be to deploy weapons even when one has them (Mahan and Griest, 2008). While it is difficult to prevent these kinds of attacks, once performed, it's not too likely that a major response by intelligence agencies wouldn't decisively undermine massive portions of the terrorist structure. Therefore, the likelihood of a major attack is low, but the potential lethality is high: The sarin attack on the subway killed a dozen people.
Meanwhile, cyber-terrorism is hypothetically very dangerous, but practically not much so (Mahan and Griest, 2008). The risks are obvious: Money could be siphoned from banks and into terrorist bank accounts, a double whammy; infrastructure could be harmed; etc. Read More