|
|
|
|
CIAO DATE: 05/03
Winter 2002 (Volume 27 Issue 3)
Editor's Note
What motivates terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda? What attracts supporters to these groups? What must the United States and other potential terrorist targets do to defeat them? These are some of the questions explored in the first two articles of this issue.
Michael Mousseau of Koç University in Istanbul begins with a cautionary note: The United States and its friends and allies cannot rely exclusively on a military strategy to defeat terrorists. A political strategy is also necessary—one that must begin with an understanding of the social origins of terrorist support. Mousseau argues that terrorists draw strength from “in-groups” whose values and beliefs “legitimate the use of extreme and indiscriminate violence against the civilian populations of out-groups.” As a result of globalization, the values and beliefs of “in-groups” in the developing world are increasingly clashing with the liberal values and beliefs of “out-groups” in market economies, producing extreme socioeconomic disruption and intense antimarket rage that terrorists have successfully exploited.
“Unless the United States and its allies formulate a comprehensive response to terrorism, better balanced across a range of policy instruments, the results will be increasing international instability and long-term failure.” This is the assessment of Audrey Kurth Cronin of the Congressional Research Service, who traces the current terrorist backlash to the unintended negative consequences of globalization, “inherent weaknesses” in the Arab region, and the failure of the United States to address both. Cronin argues that the U.S. response to the growing terrorist threat has been “reactive and anachronistic,” relying on a state-centric strategy to tackle an essentially nonstate phenomenon. Cronin chides the United States for giving in to its “natural bias” of employing military power to achieve speedy results and recommends instead a forward- looking strategy based on “flexible, multifaceted responses that deliberately and effectively exploit avenues of globalization,” as well as greater reliance on “more subtle tools of domestic and international statecraft.”
Ariel Levite, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University from 2000 to 2002, explains why the “nightmare proliferation scenarios” of the 1960s, which predicted the emergence of dozens of nuclear weapons states, have failed to materialize. Instead many states have engaged in nuclear reversal, nuclear restraint, or “nuclear hedging.” Levite attributes this lack of global nuclear proliferation primarily to the creation by the United States of a political climate that encourages would-be proliferants to forgo nuclear weapons acquisition or re-strain existing nuclear programs. Under certain circumstances, however, some of these states may decide to abandon restraint in favor of renewed nuclear weapons development.
Sensing an urgent need to take action in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the United States government passed the U.S.A. Patriot Act, which according to Jessica Stern of Harvard University, “precluded careful balancing of competing interests.” A consequence of this legislation, warns Stern, could be a growing unwillingness or inability for doctors and scientists to work with select biological agents. Specifically, by classifying some microbiological research and restricting access to certain pathogens and related information, the Patriot Act could inadvertently hinder U.S. preparedness for biological weapons attacks as well as progress in combating infectious disease.
Andrew Stigler of Dartmouth College challenges the conventional wisdom that Slobodan Milosevib surrendered control of Kosovo because of growing concern over the likelihood of a NATO ground assault and punishing defeat. According to Stigler, “the threat of continued and intensifed aerial bombardment was the only necessary military condition for Milosevib’s decision to accept NATO’s terms” of surrender. Only in hindsight, argues Stigler, do signals from the United States and NATO that a ground operation was being planned appear credible.
“War is economics by other means,” writes Ethan Kapstein of the University of Minnesota in his review of The Dark Side of the Force: Economic Foundations of Conflict Theory, by Jack Hirshleifer. Kapstein assesses the contributions of economic theory to the study of conflict and national security since the end of World War II, arguing that scholars failed to appreciate the value of economics as an analytical tool in developing and assessing national defense policy. He concludes with recommendations for further work in this field of inquiry.
Market Civilization and Its Clash with Terror by Michael Mousseau
Clausewitz’s dictum that war is politics by other means is a reminder that the primary goal of the war against terror is not to defeat and eliminate those who aim to attack the United States and its allies. Rather it is to enhance the security of the American people and their allies. These goals are the same only if terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda are isolated groups of criminals that need only be found and dealt with swiftly. But if al-Qaeda and its associated groups represent the values and beliefs of substantial numbers of people, and all signs indicate that this is the case, then defeating these groups will not end the struggle against terror. Only by changing the values and beliefs of supporters of terrorist groups can the United States and its allies expect to achieve this objective.
To win the war against terror, the United States and its allies must have both a military strategy and a political strategy. Achieving political victory requires an understanding of the social basis of terror—that is, the values and beliefs that legitimate the use of extreme and indiscriminate violence against the civilian populations of out-groups. Such understanding will not reveal much about terror groups that seem to lack social support, such as the Basque terrorists in Spain, but it will help to reduce the influence of those groups that appear to enjoy widespread support, such as al-Qaeda. Seeking to understand the motivations of terrorists, however, should not be confused with empathizing with them or acquiescing on issues that terrorists and their supporters claim motivate them.
Some scholars have sought to link poverty with terror. Poverty, they argue, fosters terror because it creates a sense of hopelessness, restricts educational opportunity, and produces frustration over inequality. The direct causal linkages between poverty and terror are more elusive than scholars suggest . . .
Behind the Curve: Globalization and International Terrorism Audrey Kurth Cronin
The coincidence between the evolving changes of globalization, the inherent weaknesses of the Arab region, and the inadequate American response to both ensures that terrorism will continue to be the most serious threat to U.S. and Western interests in the twenty-first century. There has been little creative thinking, however, about how to confront the growing terrorist backlash that has been unleashed. Terrorism is a complicated, eclectic phenomenon, requiring a sophisticated strategy oriented toward influencing its means and ends over the long term. Few members of the U.S. policymaking and academic communities, however, have the political capital, intellectual background, or inclination to work together to forge an effective, sustained response. Instead, the tendency has been to fall back on established bureaucratic mind-sets and prevailing theoretical paradigms that have little relevance for the changes in international security that became obvious after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.
The current wave of international terrorism, characterized by unpredictable and unprecedented threats from nonstate actors, not only is a reaction to globalization but is facilitated by it; the U.S. response to this reality has been reactive and anachronistic. The combined focus of the United States on statecentric threats and its attempt to cast twenty-first-century terrorism into familiar strategic terms avoids and often undermines effective responses to this nonstate phenomenon. The increasing threat of globalized terrorism must be met with flexible, multifaceted responses that deliberately and effectively exploit avenues of globalization in return; this, however, is not happening . . .
Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited by Ariel E. Levite
A serious gap exists in scholarly understanding of nuclear proliferation. The gap derives from inadequate attention to the phenomena of nuclear reversal and nuclear restraint as well as insufficient awareness of the biases and limitations inherent in the empirical data employed to study proliferation. This article identifies “nuclear hedging” as a national strategy lying between nuclear pursuit and nuclear rollback. An understanding of this strategy can help scholars to explain the nuclear behavior of many states; it can also help to explain why the nightmare proliferation scenarios of the 1960s have not materialized. These insights, in turn, cast new light on several prominent proliferation case studies and the unique role of the United States in combating global proliferation. They have profound implications for engaging current or latent nuclear proliferants, underscoring the centrality of buying time as the key component of a nonproliferation strategy.
The article begins with a brief review of contemporary nuclear proliferation concerns. It then takes stock of the surprisingly large documented universe of nuclear reversal cases and the relevant literature. It proceeds to examine the empirical challenges that bedeviled many of the earlier studies, possibly skewing their theoretical findings. Next, it discusses the features of the nuclear reversal and restraint phenomena and the forces that influence them. In this context, it introduces and illustrates an alternative explanation for the nuclear behavior of many states based on the notion of nuclear hedging. It draws on this notion and other inputs to reassess the role that the United States . . .
Dreaded Risks and the Control of Biological Weapons by Jessica Stern
One week after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to the offices of NBC News, the New York Post, and the publisher of the National Enquirer. Contaminated letters were subsequently sent to, among others, then Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). By the end of the year, anthrax- contaminated letters had infected eighteen people, five of whom died. Although the anthrax attacks resulted in relatively few casualties, at least one poll suggested that public concern about biological terrorism had increased. Some 10,000 people, actually or potentially exposed to virulent anthrax spores, were prescribed prophylactic antibiotics with unknown longterm effects on their health or the health of the public at large.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and anthrax mailings, U.S. policymakers scrambled to enact new legislation to address the terrorist threat. The urgency of the effort precluded careful balancing of competing interests, with potential adverse effects on civil liberties, public health, and national security. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed by both Houses of Congress in the space of weeks, was signed by President George W. Bush on October 26. Among its provisions, the act overrides laws in forty-eight states that made library . . .
A Clear Victory for Air Power: NATO's Empty Threat to Invade Kosovo by Andrew L. Stigler
Why did Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic surrender control of Kosovo to NATO on June 9, 1999? Two reasons are most commonly cited: (1) the likelihood of continued and intensified NATO air strikes, and (2) the alliance’s threat to launch a ground war. The distinction between the two is an important one. If NATO’s ground threat did not play a role in Milosevic’s decision to surrender, then Operation Allied Force, launched on March 24, 1999, demonstrates the ability of coercive air power—and air power alone—to achieve a major political goal. If, however, the ground threat factored into Milosevib’s decisionmaking, then the Kosovo conflict serves as an example of the inherent difficulty of relying on air power alone to achieve political goals, even under favorable conditions.
The conventional view of the war in Kosovo holds that the threat of ground invasion was an essential element of NATO’s success. According to Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman, this threat “probably played the largest role in motivating Milosevic’s concessions.” Ivo Daalder and Michael O’Hanlon argue that the turning point occurred when U.S. officials began to threaten a decisive invasion. Benjamin Lambeth contends that “there [was] no question that by the end of May, NATO had yielded to the inevitable and embraced in principle the need for a ground invasion . . . . There is also every reason to believe that awareness of that change in NATO’s position . . . figured importantly in [Milosevic’s] decision to capitulate.” In his memoirs, NATO’s former . . .
Two Dismal Sciences Are Better Than One—Economics and the Study of National Security: A Review Essay by Ethan B. Kapstein
War is economics by other means. States may increase their wealth by developing their own resources and through the promotion of foreign trade, or instead by seizing the economies of other nations. As Jack Hirshleifer puts it in The Dark Side of the Force, “There are two main methods of making a living . . . the way of production and exchange versus the way of predation and conflict.”
Why do states choose one strategy over another? Under what conditions will they threaten other governments, and when will they seek to appease them? Economic theory has played a key role in shaping the way that scholars grapple with these and many other questions in the field of security studies.
Have economic methods and models proved useful in advancing scholarly understanding of strategic interactions among nations? That question provokes a surprising amount of controversy within the academic community. The publication of Hirshleifer’s collected papers on conflict theory provides a fresh opportunity to assess the influence of economics on the study of national security since World War II . . .