The Catastrophic Terrorism - Essay Example

CATASTROPHIC TERRORISM: IS IT PREVENTABLE? Customer Inserts His/Her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name Insert Date Here (Day, Month, Year) Throughout the four eras of cold war, the strategy of the American national security was all intended towards curtailing the expansion of Soviet Union building all the while arsenal of nuclear weapons. But after the end of cold war, the threat from Soviet Union virtually disappeared but for United States and rest of the world, more threat was on the way and that’s in the virtually new form of catastrophic terrorism. Traditionally terrorist actions were involved in the methods that were capable to inflict very limited damage and there activities were confined to the acts of hi-jacking, sabotage, abductions and assassinations etc. But now the catastrophe resulting from these terrorist activities has increased manifold talking into its grip not hundreds but thousands of people altogether. The extent of this terrorism is so great that their one act can shake the roots of the ruling powers and weaken the whole nation. And the reason behind is not one but several and concerns on its developments are also many. The failure of the government’s control over the manufacturing of the weapons of mass destruction and also the failure to stop the acquirement of it by the terrorists increased the scale of catastrophic terrorism to a maximum degree. Technological developments in the system of mass communications and transport system have made the actors perpetuating in the sub-state sectors to organize their terrorist operations on an international level and scale. And naturally the end of the cold war also saw the birth of many resurgent groups whose political ideals and beliefs posed challenge to the prevalent international norms regarding economical, social and notwithstanding their use of the weapons. Yet most disturbing is the extent and the depth of the way now terrorists are striking and the character and the dimension at which the attacks are undertaken compounded by the manufacture of the biological and chemical weapons. There are also much concern about the purpose of their attacks, which are more based on their fanatic and religious beliefs. Both the nerve gas attacks in Tokyo in 1995 by the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo and suicide attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 show the reflection of the their interest in killing spree to fulfill their aim. (Gizewski & Geddes 2002: Online) But these attacks are not the end of their activities but there were and are more and more to come as time and again Osama Bin Laden is challenging America as they are striving to acquire more and more of the nuclear weapons against United States and counting the number of dead to be four million. Several documents made it clear the Al Qaeda experiments and intense knowledge of the nuclear materials. (Hoge 2004: 1) As analyzed by Ashton B Carter, John Deutch and Philip Zelikow, “All these terrorists groups have nearly invisible and fragile network for distributing energy and information. Long part of the Hollywood and Tom Clancy repertory of nightmarish scenarios, catastrophic terrorism has moved from far-fetched horror to a contingency that could happen next month”. (Carter, Deutch & Zelikow 1998: Online) Although United States takes conventional terrorism seriously, still it is not fully prepared to face the new threats of catastrophic terrorism. The military superiority of America in the conventional forms of warfare resulted in its adversaries in adopting the unconventional forms of weaponries. United States was able to demolish one area of chemical weapons in Sudan and made Russia, which was considered as a store house of many thousand weapons of mass destruction unstable, yet the dangers of biological weapons, chemical and nuclear alternatives are looming large on the faces of many. Technological and infrastructural development had made easy access to organized criminals, drug traffickers, arms dealers, and money launderers to become the part of the network of terrorist organizations. Any attack by pathogen or any biological or chemical weapon would result in far more loss to life and property as happened in the attacks on World Trade Center. The danger from the weapons of mass destruction is far more than the danger from the Cuban missile crises of 1962. (Carter, Deutch & Zelikow 1998: Online) In response to the attacks, President George W Bush and Senator John Kerry gave importance to the terrorism issue in their foreign policy agenda with the proclamation that it is the biggest security challenge for the nation and at the same time policy analysts are continuously recommending several preventive measures. Harvard Scholar Graham Allison has also evoked his voice raising the warning in his thought provoking report Nuclear Terrorism. It had raised and attempted to provide all the possible answers to the most profound questions like who are the persons behind the attacks and what measures can be adopted to prevent them from further attacks. Allison also posited the argument: is it really very tough and impossible to prevent terrorism as several suggest but he gave very specific answer that it is possible. (Hoge 2004: 1) He appreciated Bush administration to adopt several measures in a bid to control the security of nuclear materials, but he again suggested the necessity to take much more bold steps and induce upon the American leadership to improve on what he termed as lax international cooperation. (Hoge 2004: 1) At the same time he also put blame on both the White House and the Congress for failure to meet the challenges. He cited the Russia’s suitcase sized nuclear bombs that could make the terrorists far easy to smuggle into United States and according to Allison’s estimation it would take more than 13 years on the part of America to acquire fissile materials to develop nuclear weapons in considerably short period of time. He suggested and what became an agenda of Kerry’s campaign was the acquirement of the large amounts of stocks of fissile materials and nuclear weapons. The problems are many fold like ports that are very poorly protected, very limited intelligence reports regarding the plans of the terrorists, and over and above nearly 32 countries are in possession of the fissile materials that could be acquired. Allison recognized 200 areas in the world from where nuclear weapons or fissile materials could be acquired. At the top is Russia followed with Pakistan on owing to its spread of nuclear knowledge and equipments; North Korea due to its history of sales of missile systems and over and above its nuclear development programme and in the last are the research reactors which are around 20 in number with bomb-grade uranium. (Hoge 2004: 1) Allison suggested the other measures too like performing the nuclear plant inspections and imposing sanctions on those nations who violate the norms set for inspections. But Allison suggested this idea is also not without difficulties because of the hostile environment in the world against American government, it would not be able to garner the support from the other nations for the same. (Hoge 2004: 2) Other measures he suggested are the improvements in the intelligence, tight treaties, more and more transparency and intrusions. (Hoge 2004: 2) Further he believed the fact that the more defensive measures are required in the homeland. The measures are both difficult as well as require much more advanced strategic cooperation and moves. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty sanctioned the signatories to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium to create fuel for peaceful purpose and submit the same for periodic inspections. It simply means that countries were capable to make use of this facility to violate the treaty and turn the enriched uranium or plutonium into bombs. This was also the gravest issue of concern for the America that states sponsoring terrorism could make fruitful use of this feature to give reality to their nefarious designs and this loophole both Iran and North Korea took advantage of. Here too Allison suggested that it was not advisable for the United States to dispense with the treaty but should move forward in resolving this issue and the solution lies in the differentiating between the fuel states with the user states. The states, which are already having in abundance fuel-producing facilities, could provide enriched fuel to other states that are willing to generate electricity from nuclear reactors. Along with this, more strict inspections and penalties on the states’ not complying with the treaty could make the nonproliferation treaty an important element in controlling and countering any proliferation activities. (Hoge 2004: 2) Another threat is posed from radiological dispersion bomb also known, as dirty bomb as it is also most accessible nuclear device for any terrorist, which can cause potential loss of life. Wrapped in conventional explosives, it consists of waste by-products from nuclear reactors. Enormous quantities of this waste are found in various sites in USA, Europe, Japan and Russia and tons of waste are transported across the continents. This radioactive waste material is easy to obtain as it is not as well guarded as actual nuclear weapons and it can spew deadly radioactive particles into the environment upon detonation. A terrorist attack on commercial nuclear reactors like that of World Trade Center with jet or heavy munitions can cause extensive casualties as nuclear reactor will be the source of the radiological contamination and the plane or armament would spread the lethal radiation over large areas. Thus it becomes all the more inevitable to adhere to such strategies to prevent the terrorists causing mass-scale destruction. (Blair 2001: Online) President and his senior officials have emphasized repeatedly that the conflict with the terrorism could not be solved militarily as it is a new type of war and that would require all kinds of tools required to run the state like all the rules pertaining to the law, all kinds of diplomatic relations, homeland defense, finance and economics. They also suggested the need to reorganize the foreign policies on the basis of what Washington wanted the world to think, as in Bush’s words, “with us or against us in the fight against terror.” (Fidler 2002: 9) Further President specified the “enemy as terrorism of global reach”, and also distinguished “between the terrorism with local issues and the catastrophic terrorism with ill-defined or apocalyptic objectives of bin Laden and his cohorts”. (Fidler 2002: 9) Many observers pointed to the fact that this policy of Bush was just eyewash and in reality, Bush has been putting all the resources in strengthening the military power and in increasing the defense strength in the homeland. Though Osama Bin Laden was removed from Afghanistan by military power yet military could not demolish the power. Al Qaeda is making its presence felt completely time and again and posing a challenge gravest than before. This ideology for many thinkers constitutes the methodology known as the war model. Why it was failure and the reason was simple: in the conventional type of warfare enemy is known and it is also easy to get the forces and only the problem with it is to find out the best way of its attack. This is not the case with catastrophic terrorism; here the problem is that nobody knows the enemy and its whereabouts.  Secondly is the crime model, in other words to think about terrorism as any crime that could be dealt with criminal justice system; basic idea is that it is the police’s job to make investigations when crime occurs increasing the probability of reducing the crime rate. But in this also there are numerous problems than solutions as both the crimes and terrorists activities can be reduced but cannot be eliminated. In many cases, it is also found that many terrorists are willing to die while themselves performing these dreaded acts. Yet another could be counterinsurgency model. If terrorism is defined as violent attacks on noncombatants with the purpose to induce the opponents and create influence on the third parties, then we would say that the majority of the terrorism activities has taken place neither in the United States, developed countries and nor in Israel but occurred in poor countries who are caught in the civil war. The attacks of terrorists in Northern Ireland, Basque Country, or Israel have killed people in dozens, the attacks in civil wars in Angola, Algeria, Sudan, Indonesia (East Timor and Aceh), Peru, Sri Lanka, and Sierra Leone led to the killing of thousands of people. It is analyzed that the problems faced while responding to the threat of catastrophic terrorism and to run a counterinsurgency are structurally similar. If any wrong person is arrested or killed it would amount to the loss of civil liberties and may worsen the things by increasing the support for the guerrillas. But if the government failed to curtail guerrilla attacks and assassinations, then it would amount to the losing of the power from the control of territory and tax revenue, and also suffer the political consequences of the same. (Fearon & Laitin 2003: 80) Efforts have also been made to cut the finances of the terrorists groups, somewhere around 112 million dollars were seized by November 2002 from 500 bank accounts all over the world but this amount is just a small piece in the ice berg. For terrorists, finance sources are much more than the authorities of all over the world even could imagine. In fact the efforts by the authorities to recover and confiscate money from so-called hawala financing mechanism also could not bear fruit. The efforts on the part of America to create and mould the views of millions of Muslims the world over could not give any concrete results about which America could boast of. Even many inside the Bush administration viewed that the foreign policies adopted on the eve of cold war could also not be pursued, as there were number of complexities or issues that it could not lead American administration in this directions whatsoever. “Counter terrorism is a priority, not an organising principle for American foreign policy.”(Fidler 2002: 8) As said by Richard Hass, the head of policy planning at the State Department, spoke to the audience in London, “It will influence the focus of attention and resources and will require that we address other foreign policy challenges, such as state failure and nation building. But counter-terrorism cannot be a doctrine.”(Fidler, 2002: 9) As said by Daniel Goure, “Regrettably there is no way to win the war or to make your homeland 100 percent secure”. (Goure 2004: 279) The effectiveness of any strategy implemented to prevent such an attack is limited. The studies and analysis have defined the limit of effectiveness in the sense that effective homeland security strategy is not possible without putting the country on a wartime footing. It is impossible to keep surveillance or adequate monitoring control over the entire length of the borders of the country. No doubt better intelligence collection and information can enhance the efforts to protect critically set targets and could prevent the damage as long as terrorist choose to target specific location and refrain from using means that could result in catastrophic destruction. But the threat from using weapons of mass destruction (WMD) poses challenge to security strategy of any country as these weapons can be easily transported and deployed, and there detection and neutralization by preincident programs are not successful. It is hoped that in future the technological advancements might be able to detect even small amount of nuclear material at a distance but such technologies will not be able to detect biological agents or weapons. Now there are several kinds of groups who fall into various categories like religious terrorists, ideological terrorists and terrorists who have apocalyptic vision. These groups are not taking any direct responsibilities for their actions with no motives and no missions whatsoever and though their ways are same yet they are so widely spread with their networks so strong that no technological developments could break it. If there are number of questions regarding the policies of the governments concerned and on the causes of catastrophic terrorism and so are its answers and number of complexities involved also are manifold. Above all the logistical, technical, strategic and diplomatic efforts, we must first build the case before the world that catastrophic terrorism is not a problem of American alone, each country of the world has its own share of problems and yet share a common platform against their enemy terrorism. The nations developing as well as developed have to open their respective doors to form the strategic alliances to put combined efforts to put an end to terrorism. Security of the twenty-first century fundamentally needed to share a common bond with each other and mutual interdependence, which can only be gained by global coalition with each other to offer their effective defense mechanism to fight against catastrophic terrorism. There were also efforts for the policy of “cultural pre-emption”, following the peaceful dialogues with the Islamists in Turkey, Indonesia and many other countries in order to break the wall of mutual in-comprehension that divides the West with the Muslim nations. This idea of dialogue form could not make them pursue separate solution on security issues. The dialogue and conversation could enable the West in better understanding of the Muslims and how well they could see and perceive their place in the world. (Fidler, 2002: 18) There is no problem, which does not have its possible solutions. The same is true with catastrophic terrorism. If world has emerged with the dangers of the terrorism the same world has also given with the possible solutions but the requirement is strong strategic moves at the international level, collaborative efforts of several nations of the world and strong political will. Reference List Blair, G.B 2001. What If The Terrorists Go Nuclear? . [Online] Available: http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/nuclear.cfm [October 16, 2008] Carter, A.B., Deutch, J. & Zelikow, P. 1998. Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger in Foreign Affairs. [Online] Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19981101faessay1434/ashton-b-carter-john-deutch-philip-zelikow/catastrophic-terrorism-tackling-the-new-danger.html [October 16, 2008] Fearon, J.D. & Laitin, D.D. 2003. Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War in American Political Science Review, 97(1): 75-90. Fidler, Stephen. 2002. Catastrophic Terrorism in Report of the Meeting organised by the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge, November 18–19, 2002. [Online] Available: http://www.nti.org/c_press/catastrophic_terrorism.pdf [October 16, 2008] Gizewski, P & Geddes, A.C. 2002. Catastrophic Terrorism: Challenges and Responses. [Online] Available: http://www.international.gc.ca/arms-armes/isrop-prisi/research-recherche/intl_security-securite_int/gizewski_geddes2002/section1.aspx?lang=en [October 16, 2008] Goure, D. 2004. Homeland Security in Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy edited by Audrey Kurth Cronin and James M. Ludes. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press: 261-284. Heymann, P.B. 2001-02. Dealing with Terrorism in International Security 26(2): 24-38 Hoge, J. 2004. 'Nuclear Terrorism': Counting Down to the New Armageddon. [Online] Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/books/review/05HOGEL.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin [October 16, 2008] Howard R. D. & Sawyer, R .L. 2002. Terrorism and Counterterrorism. New York:  McGraw Hill. Howitt, A.M. & Pangi, R.L. 2003. Countering Terrorism: Dimensions of Preparedness Massachusetts: Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs. Read More