Nuclear Terrorism: Re-Thinking the Unthinkable After 9/11 Sep 26, 2005 – By Barry Zellen
It's now been four years since the Twin Towers collapsed and with it
America's sense of post Cold War invulnerability. While the dramatic scale of
devastation and the high loss of civilian life caught many off guard, there
were two groups closely watching that day's horrific events who were not
surprised at all: the al-Qaeda terror masters who conceived, planned and
executed the 9/11 attacks; and those strategic and military planners who have
long pondered the risk of WMD and mass terror attacks against America's
heartland - but who until that fateful day were largely ignored by the press,
public, and policymaking elites responsible for protecting America from such
external threats.
Interestingly, the 9/11 attacks were not WMD attacks. No radiological,
biological, or chemical weapons were deployed. Indeed, this stands in
contrast to the view, shared by many analysts of the first World Trade Center
(WTC) attack on February 26, 1993 - two years to the day following the
liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. As reported in the online
encyclopedia Wikipedia, the goal of the attack was to "devastate the
foundation of the north tower in such a way in that it would collapse onto
its twin," as the bomber "foresaw Tower One collapsing onto Tower Two after
the blast would occur." The 600 kg truck bomb was built for just three
hundred dollars - using "urea pellets, nitroglycerin, sulfuric acid, aluminum
azide, magnesium azide, and bottled hydrogen," with sodium cyanide added "to
the mix as the vapors could go through the ventilation shafts and elevators
of the towers. WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef "wanted to prevent smoke from escaping
the towers, therefore, catching the public eye by poisoning people inside."
The Age of Mass Casualty Terror
As such, the 1993 WTC attack can be viewed as a dual conventional/chemical
weapons attack whose primary mission was conventional - to topple the towers
- while its secondary mission was to deliver what its al-Qaeda terror masters
hoped would be a horrific and lethal mix of airborne cyanide, to not only
instill terror in the hearts of the thousands of employees working in the
vast and towering office complex, but to also kill and injure as many
innocents as possible. As noted by Laurie Mylroie in "The World Trade Center
Bomb: Who is Ramzi Yousef? And Why It Matters" (published in The National
Interest, Winter 1995/96) "according to the presiding judge in last year's
trial, the bombing of New York's World Trade Center on February 26, 1993 was
meant to topple the city's tallest tower onto its twin, amid a cloud of
cyanide gas." She adds that "had the attack gone as planned, tens of
thousands of Americans would have died. Instead, as we know, one tower did
not fall on the other, and, rather than vaporizing, the cyanide gas burnt up
in the heat of the explosion. 'Only' six people died." Yet Mylroie observed
how "few Americans are aware of the true scale of the destructive ambition
behind that bomb."
However, not all observers of the 1993 WTC attack agree that the bombers
intended to deliver a deadly chemical payload. As written by John V.
Parachini, in "The World Trade Center Bombers (1993)" (Chapter 11 in Jonathan
B. Tucker, ed., Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and
Biological Weapons (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 185-206), while "the
February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City marked the
beginning of an ugly new phase of terrorism involving the indiscriminate
killing of civilians," he "refutes the claim that the WTC bombing involved
the terrorist use of chemical weapons." But he concedes that "substantial
evidence indicates that Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the attack,
seriously considered employing chemical agents in the WTC bombing and in
subsequent attacks." And even if lacking a chemical weapons component, he
agrees with the consensus view that 'the World Trade Center bombing was
motivated by the desire to kill as many people as possible." However, the
terrorists were thwarted from their goal to inflict mass casualties, and in
the end "the explosion killed six people and injured more than 1,000." More
worrisome than this relatively modest level of casualties was the
undisputable fact that "the consequences could have been far worse."
In his January/February 1998 Foreign Affairs article, "The New Threat of Mass
Destruction," Richard K. Betts observed that "WMD present more and different
things to worry about than during the Cold War," and with the proliferation
of chemical and biological weapons know-how, "there is less danger of
complete annihilation, but more danger of mass destruction." So even though
there's now "less chance of an apocalyptic exchange of many thousands of
weapons," Betts believes "the probability that some smaller number of WMD
will be used is growing." As WMD "no longer represent the technological
frontier of warfare," he suggests they will inevitably become more readily
accessible to smaller states and non-state entities, and thus "will be
weapons of the weak-states or groups that militarily are at best
second-class."
The 1993 WTC attack was but a hint of the emerging dangers of the post Cold
War era, and along with the more sophisticated coordinated attacks of 9/11
reveal both the destructive capabilities as well as the relatively
inexpensive operational costs of conducting mass casualty terror attacks. And
yet both WTC attacks were relatively benign when compared to both the
anticipated casualty figures that the bombers sought as well as to what can
now be readily imagined should more destructive WMD devices be employed.
Indeed, the fact that the number of casualties of both attacks combined was
less than 5,000 dead and injured, is much less significant than the fact that
the planners of those two WTC attacks audaciously plotted to attack America's
heartland using an improvised WMD/mass casualty device.
America was now on notice that its enemies would try to offset their
strategic inferiority in terms of conventional military power with their own
force-de-frappe. But unlike France's minimally sufficient nuclear stockpile
whose primary mission has been to deter a future military attack of its
territory, the terror planners of al-Qaeda viewed their coveted WMD
capabilities first and foremost as warfighting tools, an extension of their
traditional terror tactics - though on a much more destructive scale. Tools,
they hope, that will prove capable of breaking the will of the world's sole
remaining superpower, forcing a withdrawal of American military power from
Middle East just as the relentless guerrilla warfare of the anti-Soviet jihad
drove the defeated Red Army out of Afghanistan, contributing to the
liberation of Central Asia from Soviet domination.
When al-Qaeda's second strike against the WTC took place eight years after
its first, the attackers struck from the air, using improvised cruise
missiles (commandeered jumbo passenger jets) whose full fuel tanks provided
the incendiary agent, and whose massive, high-velocity impact would - they
hoped - convey the necessary momentum to either knock the towers over (as
originally planned by the 1993 attackers), or set them on fire - killing as
many people as possible, cutting off the means of escape for those civilians
on the upper floors.
There is no evidence to suggest that al-Qaeda sought to induce an implosion
of the Twin Towers, and thus their hauntingly graceful vertical collapse that
day no doubt struck its planners as an unexpected - though in no way
disappointing -surprise. Likely unaware of the building's unique
architectural attributes, including its innovative dampening shock-absorbers
designed to absorb the energy of the tower's natural swaying movements, the
9/11 architects could not have foreseen that the momentum transferred by the
commandeered jets' impact would initially be absorbed. However, having
learned in 1993 that the towers were harder to knock over than they had at
first imagined, the terror planners no doubt suspected they could again fail
to topple the towers laterally. As such, one can deduce that their "plan B"
was to watch the towers burn, with those on higher floors trapped, doomed -
awaiting certain death. As such, the implosive collapse of the Twin Towers
was likely an unexpected bonus - a powerful and symbolic articulation of
al-Qaeda's desire to foster what they hope to be a collapse of American
military and economic power, much like the Soviet empire did a decade earlier
(and for which many al-Qaeda members, veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad, take
credit.)
Preparing for the Unthinkable
America thus had eight years to plan for al-Qaeda's second WTC strike - and
to digest the lessons of 1993, which revealed al-Qaeda's unambiguous
strategic objective to deal a potentially decisive strategic coup d'oeuil
against its enemy. Some of America's strategic thinkers used this time well,
as illustrated by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, more
commonly known as the Hart-Rudman Commission, named for the two U.S. Senators
who chaired the commission, Gary Hart and Warren B. Rudman.
In the preface to their Phase 1 report (their first of three to be released
over the next two years), New World Coming: American Security in the 21st
Century, issued on September 15th, 1999, they observe that "the world has
changed dramatically in the last fifty years, and particularly in the last
decade," and that "institutions designed in another age may or may not be
appropriate for the future." They note "the mandate of the United States
Commission on National Security/21st Century to examine precisely that
question," which id did in three distinct phases: "the first to describe the
world emerging in the first quarter of the next century, the second to design
a national security strategy appropriate to that world, and the third to
propose necessary changes to the national security structure in order to
implement that strategy effectively."
Among the 14 conclusions of the Hart-Rudman Commission's Phase I report,
their very first - and in the wake of 9/11, eerily prophetic - conclusion is:
"America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our
homeland, and our military superiority will not entirely protect us." They
explain that "American influence will increasingly be both embraced and
resented abroad, as U.S. cultural, economic, and political power persists and
perhaps spreads. States, terrorists, and other disaffected groups will
acquire weapons of mass destruction and mass disruption, and some will use
them. Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers."
As noted on the website of the New York Times Company Foundation, which
hosted a five-day immersion course for a dozen journalists in July 2002 at
the Homeland Security Institute - a joint program of the New York Times
Company Foundation and the Council of Foreign Relations to "explore in-depth
complicated issues surrounding current proposals to create a more secure
homeland" - the Hart-Rudman Commission was created to "re-examine the world
today and to analyze the implications of this world for future U.S. national
security," and recognized that "national security strategies and institutions
that existed at the time of the commission were created before the fall of
the Berlin wall and during communism." The Commission "believed a new global
environment existed - and American institutions and strategies needed to be
altered." With a budget of $10.4 million, the Commission's research took
three years to complete, incorporating the ideas of "a diverse group of
prominent Americans: southern democrats; republicans; captains of industry;
retired military officers; Ambassadors; the press; academics; and foreign and
intelligence officers," who "represented a spread of individuals with a basic
understanding of national security and with experience in government."
Laying a foundation for much of the national security debate that took place
in the anxious months following 9/11, the Hart-Rudman Commission aimed to
"describe the world emerging in the first quarter of this next century," to
"propose a national security strategy that reflects this world," and to
"examine the nature and structure in which the nation executes its national
security strategy and suggest reforms." Its work stretched from July 1998
until February 2001 - but ironically, it was not until after the 9/11 attacks
that the Commission's findings found a widespread audience - helping to guide
the post 9/11 security debate, including the movement to create a new
Department of Homeland Security. As Charles Graham Boyd, USAF (Ret.) and CEO
and President, Business Executives for National Security observed, America's
"security for the twenty first century does not lie in great armies and
navies, but with changes at home." Ironically, he added, "most of the
recommendations made by the commission were taken seriously" but while "many
have been put into practice, some before 9/11," most were implemented after
the Twin Towers fell.
Having decided during its first of three phases that "the world was a
dangerous place and that the U.S. was not secure," the Hart-Rudman Commission
"made fifty recommendations," the very first of which was "developing a
Homeland Security Department that consolidates and refines the missions of
nearly two dozen agencies and departments that play a role in securing the
nation," and which would "be responsible not only for protecting the lives of
Americans, but also overseeing the protection of the nation's critical
infrastructure, including information technology."
The Fog of Peace
While America's strategic thinkers began to prepare for the unthinkable
between the 1993 WTC attack and 9/11, their efforts proceeded slowly - driven
by subsequent al-Qaeda orchestrated terror attacks against U.S. military and
diplomatic targets around the world. As former White House counterterrorism
advisor Richard Clarke testified on March 24, 2004 to the National Commission
on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, "the 1993 attacks and then the
terrorism in the Tokyo subway and the Oklahoma City bombing caused the
Clinton Administration to increase its focus on terrorism and to expand
funding for counter-terrorism programs" - with the 1996 attack on U.S.
military barracks in the Kohbar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia, the 1998
near-simultaneous U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2000
attack of the USS Cole in Yemen adding greater impetus to the
Administration's counter-terror activities. In 1998, Clarke recalls he was
"appointed by the President to a newly created position of National
Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism,"
though even then - after years in al-Qaeda's crosshairs, he still "had no
budget, only a dozen staff, and no ability to direct actions by the
departments or agencies."
He told Congress - and the family members of the 9/11 victims, that "we tried
to stop those attacks," and "some people tried very hard." But while "there
were people in the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, State Department, and White
House who worked very hard to destroy al-Qaeda before it did catastrophic
damage to the US," Clarke commented that "there were many others who found
the prospect of significant al-Qaeda attacks remote" - and in "both CIA and
the military there was reluctance at senior career levels to fully utilize
all of the capabilities available." Indeed, Clarke believes the "FBI was,
throughout much of this period, organized, staffed, and equipped in such a
way that it was ineffective in dealing with the domestic terrorist threat
from al-Qaeda." Clarke explained that "at the senior policy levels in the
Clinton Administration, there was an acute understanding of the terrorist
threat, particularly al-Qaeda" and this understanding "resulted in a vigorous
program to counter al-Qaeda including lethal covert action," but he notes
this understanding among top levels of the Administration "did not include a
willingness to resume bombing of Afghanistan," and that "events in the
Balkans, Iraq, the Peace Process, and domestic politics occurring at the same
time as the anti-terrorism effort played a role" in limiting America's
response to the threat al-Qaeda posed.
And after the Democrats lost the White House in 2000, Clarke observes that
"the Bush Administration saw terrorism policy as important - but not urgent -
prior to 9/11." Indeed, his own "difficulty in obtaining the first Cabinet
level (Principals) policy meeting on terrorism and the limited Principals'
involvement sent unfortunate signals to the bureaucracy about the
Administration's attitude toward the al-Qaeda threat." Such official
indifference to the gathering mass casualty terror threat against America
came to a sudden, albeit belated, end on 9/11 with that day's unforgettable
glimpse of the potent lethality of mass casualty terrorism.
The Gathering Threat - Al Qaeda's Nuclear Ambition
In "Current WMD Challenges in the Middle East," published in the March 2002
edition of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School's Strategic Insights
e-newsletter (Volume I, Issue 1 (March 2002), authors Peter Lavoy, Jack
Boureston, and James Russell examine al-Qaeda's WMD potential, and observes
that "Osama in Laden and his network al-Qaeda have been seeking to develop
chemical, biological, and perhaps nuclear weapons capabilities for at least a
decade," citing "evidence that they have considered developing biological
agents such as anthrax, botulinum toxin and ricin." Indeed, they point out
that "U.S. troops inspecting terrorist training camps in Afghanistan have
uncovered rudimentary laboratories for developing biological weapons," and
that "at the abu-Khabab terrorist camp, al-Qaeda elements may have conducted
tests on animals to investigate the effects of these agents." However, "in
terms of a nuclear weapons capability, there is little evidence to suggest
that al-Qaeda ever developed a nuclear explosive device," though there are
"several known instances in which al-Qaeda members attempted to acquire
uranium." The authors observe that "troops investigating one camp close to
the Kandahar airport found a substance in jars that is suspected to be
depleted uranium" and if so, this could indicate that "al-Qaeda was
attempting to develop a so-called 'dirty bomb' intended to expose a large
area to radiation."
The authors conclude that while it's "difficult to assess al-Qaeda's capacity
to develop biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons, it seems probable that
the group would direct its efforts toward biological and chemical weapons -
since these are easier to develop and simpler to deploy." And while "it
remains to be seen how successful U.S. efforts to stop al-Qaeda from creating
a WMD capability will be," they note that ongoing and vigilant "intelligence
collection and analysis, and the cooperation of the international community,
will be essential in this endeavor."
David Albright, a physicist and the President of the Institute for Science
and International Security in Washington, D.C. examines al-Qaeda's efforts to
acquire weapons of mass destruction in "Al Qaeda's Nuclear Program: Through
the Window of Seized Documents," published by the Nautilus Institute (get
date!) He observes that al-Qaeda developed "only limited technological
capabilities in Afghanistan to produce WMD," but he believes that had
al-Qaeda "had remained in Afghanistan, it would have likely acquired nuclear
weapons eventually."
He recalls how after the Taliban fell in late 2001, "intelligence agencies
and the media scrambled to find documents and other information about
al-Qaeda and its next potential targets," and a top priority "was uncovering
information about al-Qaeda's progress on acquiring weapons of mass
destruction (WMD), including nuclear weapons." According to Albright,
"al-Qaeda views the acquisition of WMD as a religious obligation," and while
al-Qaeda only developed "limited technological capabilities in Afghanistan to
produce WMD," he believes that "al-Qaeda's determination to get nuclear
weapons along with its increased ability to obtain outside technical
assistance, lead to the conclusion that if al-Qaeda had remained in
Afghanistan, it would have likely acquired nuclear weapons eventually." And
while al-Qaeda's WMD efforts appear to now be "in disarray, it remains
determined to get WMD." As such, Albright believes that "preventing al-Qaeda
and other terrorist groups from getting nuclear weapons or other WMD must be
an overarching goal of the United States and the international community."
After the Taliban fell, Albright recalls that "Western and Northern Alliance
intelligence officers scoured houses, caves, and training camps for
documents, booklets, personnel records, videos, equipment, materials, and
other evidence of WMD programs." As well, "many members of the media, who
arrived in Kabul soon after the fall of the Taliban in mid-November 2001,
uncovered many al-Qaeda and Taliban records." According to Albright,
"captured documents reinforce assessments that al-Qaeda is highly determined
to obtain nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction," and he
cites U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said, during a January 16,
2001 Defense Department briefing, "We have found a number of things that show
an appetite for WMD." CNN reported on December 4, 2001 that authorities found
a "hand drawn diagram found either in a Taliban or al-Qaeda facility [that]
showed a design for a 'dirty bomb,'" and "U.S. officials also saw evidence
that al-Qaeda was also seeking to acquire or develop a nuclear explosive
device." Albright also reports that former CIA chief George Tenet informed
the U.S. Congress in late January 2002 "that the United States uncovered
rudimentary diagrams of nuclear weapons in a suspected al-Qaeda house in
Kabul" which, "while crude, describe the essential components-uranium and
high explosives-common to nuclear weapons."
In November 2001, Albright notes, "CNN found an Arabic document titled
'Superbomb' in the home of Abu Khabbab, the code-name of a senior al-Qaeda
official," which in "over 25 neatly hand-written pages, the author discusses
various types of nuclear weapons, the physics of nuclear explosions,
properties of nuclear materials needed to make them, and the effects of
nuclear weapons." And though the document's accuracy revealed incomplete
knowledge about nuclear weapons, Albright writes "this documents shows that
al-Qaeda was interested in developing a deeper understanding of nuclear
weapons," and that "some of the information in the document suggests that the
author understood short cuts to making crude nuclear explosives." More
ominously, Albright observes that "other records imply that al-Qaeda had a
more sophisticated understanding of atomic bombs than what is suggested by
the Superbomb document," and "several documents reportedly described the
manufacture of nuclear weapons and their effects." Albright cites other
documents that "support the view that al-Qaeda's leadership understood its
limitations and was taking steps to improve its ability to create an
industrial infrastructure to make WMD," and that "foreign assistance would
allow it to overcome its weaknesses and be more efficient and economical in
making WMD."
Albright explains that "documents found in Afghanistan show that al-Qaeda
members are neither supermen nor morons," and while "their efforts in making
nuclear weapons were far less sophisticated than known state programs," he
believes "their determination to get nuclear weapons is astounding and their
apparent willingness to use them is terrifying." And "because many of these
terrorist groups will never give up in their quest for nuclear weapons and
other WMD, the world cannot let down its guard either."
Preventing the Unthinkable
In November 2003, Jack Boureston, Managing Director of FirstWatch
International, a private WMD proliferation research group, and Charles
Mahaffey, a graduate student pursuing a degree in International Policy
Studies and Nonproliferation at the Monterey Institute of International
Studies, authored "Countering the al-Qaeda WMD Threat," published by the U.S.
Naval Postgraduate School's Strategic Insight e-newsletter (Strategic
Insights, Volume II, Issue 11 (November 2003).) They argue that "the threat
of al-Qaeda's use of weapons of mass destruction is real," noting how "during
the 1990s, al-Qaeda used its significant financial resources and global
support network to pursue the acquisition of nuclear, biological, chemical
and radiological weapons." Indeed, "as the terrible events of September 11,
2001 demonstrated," the authors point out that "the attacks on New York and
Washington DC also reveal the group's ability to use the infrastructure of
the target country as a weapon," and an attack of America's vulnerable
critical infrastructure "could result in casualties even beyond what the
world witnessed on September 11, with or without weapons of mass
destruction."
However, the authors argues that "no matter how much work goes into making an
area more secure, it can never be made invulnerable," as "the sheer volume of
radioactive, biological, and chemical material transported and stored in the
United States alone makes it nearly impossible to ensure the security of such
shipments at all times." Hence, in order for America to prevent a future
attack, the authors believe - as put forth by Dr. Joshua Sinai, in "How to
Forecast and Preempt al-Qaeda's Catastrophic Terrorist Warfare," in The
Journal of Homeland Security (August 2003) - that "we need to begin thinking
like the enemy-always anticipating and preparing to counteract new types of
attacks and targeting." And as the authors conclude, "this can only be done
through greater intelligence, analysis, preemption, and protection."
Once the smoke and debris of 9/11 cleared, America's strategic planners
realized the futility of depending upon deterrence theory and its associated
Cold War-incubated doctrine to protect America from the emerging mass
casualty terror threat, and decided that the most effective defense against
such a foe would be the offense. America thus felt compelled to regain the
strategic initiative, and to use force to pre-empt future attacks. However,
this shift toward more aggressive, pre-emptive action was, at least in part,
designed enhance America's capacity to deter future mass casualty terror
attacks - something it failed to do prior to 9/11 - and as such suggests that
deterrence is not yet obsolete. Pre-emption became America's strategy by
default - and to formalize this strategic shift, America put forth its new
doctrine of pre-emption in The National Security Strategy of the United
States of America, issued by the White House in September 2002 - one full
year after the 9/11 attacks and nearly a decade after the 1993 WTC attack.
Indeed, section V of the September 2002 National Security Strategy of the
United States of America, "Prevent Our Enemies from Threatening Us, Our
Allies, and Our Friends with Weapons of Mass Destruction," begins with a
quotation from President Bush, who on June 1st, 2002, told the very first
graduating class at West Point to graduate after 9/11: "The gravest danger to
freedom lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. When the spread
of chemical and biological and nuclear weapons, along with ballistic missile
technology-when that occurs, even weak states and small groups could attain a
catastrophic power to strike great nations. Our enemies have declared this
very intention, and have been caught seeking these terrible weapons. They
want the capability to blackmail us, or to harm us, or to harm our
friends-and we will oppose them with all our power."
As 9/11 proved beyond a doubt, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
end of the Cold War, "America's security environment has undergone profound
transformation" - and "new, deadly challenges have emerged from rogue states
and terrorists." And while "none of these contemporary threats rival the
sheer destructive power that was arrayed against us by the Soviet Union," the
new National Security Strategy explained that "the nature and motivations of
these new adversaries, their determination to obtain destructive powers
hitherto available only to the world's strongest states, and the greater
likelihood that they will use weapons of mass destruction against us, make
today's security environment more complex and dangerous." Henceforth, the
United States would remain committed to being "prepared to stop rogue states
and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons
of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends."
Its strategic response would thus "take full advantage of strengthened
alliances, the establishment of new partnerships with former adversaries,
innovation in the use of military forces, modern technologies, including the
development of an effective missile defense system, and increased emphasis on
intelligence collection and analysis."
America's new strategy promised to take a "comprehensive" approach to combat
WMD threats - including "proactive counterproliferation efforts" to "deter
and defend against the threat before it is unleashed;" "strengthened
nonproliferation efforts to prevent rogue states and terrorists from
acquiring the materials, technologies, and expertise necessary for weapons of
mass destruction;" and "effective consequence management to respond to the
effects of WMD use, whether by terrorists or hostile states."
The new doctrine recognized that "it has taken almost a decade for us to
comprehend the true nature of this new threat" - and acknowledged that "given
the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the United States can no longer
solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past," noting America's
"inability to deter a potential attacker, the immediacy of today's threats,
and the magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by our adversaries'
choice of weapons," which "do not permit that option." Going forward,
American strategy fully digested the implications of 9/11: "We cannot let our
enemies strike first." Indeed, unlike during the Cold War, when "weapons of
mass destruction were considered weapons of last resort whose use risked the
destruction of those who used them," the new American strategy recognized
that "today, our enemies see weapons of mass destruction as weapons of
choice."
In a press release issued on March 9th, 2002, the Pentagon released a
"Statement On Nuclear Posture Review" which confirmed that the Defense
Department was conducting its legally-mandated reviews of U.S. nuclear
strategy, "the latest in a long series of reviews since the development of
nuclear weapons." Reflecting the transformed international milieu of the post
9/11 world, it noted: "This administration is fashioning a more diverse set
of options for deterring the threat of WMD. That is why the Administration is
pursuing missile defense, advanced conventional forces, and improved
intelligence capabilities. A combination of offensive and defensive, and
nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities, is essential to meet the deterrence
requirements of the 21st century." As Secretary Rumsfeld told the media
during a press conference: "The Cold War is over. The whole orientation of
the United States of America for many decades was to the Soviet Union,
properly so... We don't consider them an enemy today, so the orientation of
our nuclear posture is significantly different today than it needed to be
during the Cold War. Other countries are interested in developing nuclear
weapons and engaged in activities that demonstrate their intent and their
purpose. And the United States is perfectly-it's perfectly proper for the
United States to take note of those things and be sensitive to them."
In December 2002, America articulated its National Strategy to Combat Weapons
of Mass Destruction, which blends interdiction, pre-emption, deterrence, and
enhanced intelligence into a multifaceted strategy to secure our homeland
from WMD attack. In the years since, America has waged one war of
pre-emption, overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein, and it has
successfully interdicted at least one high-seas shipment of ballistic missile
technology exported by North Korea under the joint operating mission of the
Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). On the home front, America has
enacted broad legislation to protect its ports and frontiers, setting up the
necessary pieces to both defend America from a WMD attack and - yes - to more
persuasively deter both terror organizations and rogue states from again
attacking our homeland.
The December 2002 National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction
examined the evolution of deterrence theory as part of America's evolving
strategy to counter the proliferation of WMD, stating: "Today's threats are
far more diverse and less predictable than those of the past. States hostile
to the United States and to our friends and allies have demonstrated their
willingness to take high risks to achieve their goals, and are aggressively
pursuing WMD and their means of delivery as critical tools in this effort. As
a consequence, we require new methods of deterrence. A strong declaratory
policy and effective military forces are essential elements of our
contemporary deterrent posture, along with the full range of political tools
to persuade potential adversaries not to seek or use WMD. The United States
will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with
overwhelming force-including through resort to all of our options-to the use
of WMD against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies."
In addition to traditional conventional and nuclear responses, the new WMD
strategy explained that "our overall deterrent posture against WMD threats is
reinforced by effective intelligence, surveillance, interdiction, and
domestic law enforcement capabilities. Such combined capabilities enhance
deterrence both by devaluing an adversary's WMD and missiles, and by posing
the prospect of an overwhelming response to any use of such weapons."
The Continuing WMD Threat
With al-Qaeda on the run since the fall of the Taliban - its training camps
in ruins and its leadership either dead, captured, or dispersed to some of
the world's remotest regions - there has been little chance for the terror
network to develop and articulate a new strategy in response to America's new
national security strategy. One can thus logically conclude that those
remaining terror cells - and new ones that are emerging amidst the current
leadership vacuum - are continuing to operate from the old playbook, hoping
to inflict yet another deadly blow against America, this time achieving true
mass casualties.
Having tried to topple the Twin Towers in 1993, and failed - only to succeed
on 9/11, but with relatively modest casualties (certainly well below the
attackers' best-case scenario after having patiently plotted for nearly a
decade to inflict mass casualties), one can imagine that at least one
al-Qaeda cell, or that of a successor organization, is eager to try again.
And next time, they may succeed in delivering a truly catastrophic blow,
delivering what they can only hope will be the long-awaited strategic coup
d'oeuil that al-Qaeda has long planned to bring to our shores.
With 3,000 dead on 9/11, America was psychologically devastated, and its
economy briefly paralyzed. But that was, in the era of WMD and mass casualty
terror, a mere pin-prick. A single thermonuclear weapon of the sort developed
during the height of the Cold War could incinerate an entire city - the
largest built of which was capable of unleashing a 100 megaton yield, the
explosive equivalent of 100 million tons of TNT - would be vastly more
destructive. A much smaller atomic fission weapon - of the sort used by
America against Hiroshima and Nagasaki - would result in a fraction of the
yield, but would also be quite lethal. For instance, a 20 kiloton atomic
weapon would be just one five-thousandth, or one fiftieth of a percent, as
powerful as a 100 megaton thermonuclear weapon. But as reported by the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, "if a 20-kiloton nuclear fission weapon
exploded on Wall Street at noon on a business day, it could kill an estimated
1 million people. Hydrogen bombs are many times more powerful."
So even if a relatively small atomic weapon were utilized by al-Qaeda, the
fatalities could be as high as one million - nearly 333 times as lethal as on
9/11, and over 166,667 times as lethal as the 1993 WTC attack. No doubt,
al-Qaeda would love to acquire an atomic weapon from the former Soviet
arsenal, or from one of the new nuclear arsenals in South Asia. More
plentiful, of course, are the many thousands of smaller yielding tactical
nuclear weapons and "mini-nukes" that proliferated during the Cold War, which
are more portable and thus easier for a terror cell to deploy. Other
potential WMD weapons exist - in addition to nuclear weapons - including
improvised radiological weapons (dirty bombs), whose explosive yields are
nominal but whose psychological effects and economic costs would be notable,
as well as biological and chemical weapons, which have the potential to kill
many thousands of civilians or more.
In the coming years, America must remain vigilant - knowing that the die is
cast, and that it's only a question of time before we're struck again. Next
time, al-Qaeda may well succeed in its long-term mission to deliver a truly
mass casualty blow - unleashing what was until recently unthinkable
devastation to our homeland.
Nuclear Terrorism: Re-Thinking the Unthinkable After 9/11
