Gary Ackerman is a research associate of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Non-proliferation Program at the Center for Non-proliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, California.
The New Face of Terrorism: Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction
by nadine gurr and benjamin cole
London, I. B. Tauris, 2000. 308 pages
Paperback: £14.95
In recent years, and particularly since the devastating terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the prospect of terrorists getting their hands on unconventional weapons has leapt into the popular consciousness. Alarmist media reports and fictional depictions of small groups of evil conspirators perpetrating a nuclear or biological Armageddon have long cluttered our bookshelves and cinema screens. At times, serious analysis of the topic has also seemed cluttered, as hordes of so-called experts lay siege to the topic from every possible angle. While much of this scholarship has fortunately remained unaffected by the public emotionality surrounding the subject, thus yielding a fair amount of useful analysis, the arguments relating to this particular threat are often presented fitfully and outside the context of the broader policy and theoretical framework. However, Nadine Gurr and Benjamin Cole, in their recent offering, The New Face of Terrorism: Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction, have largely succeeded in placing this policy and academic debate within a more organised conceptual edifice.
One of the strengths of this work is that it does not concentrate on either of its constituent subtopics—namely terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD)—at the expense of the other, but manages to integrate these two fields of analysis almost seamlessly throughout the discussion. Despite the ominous title, the book also maintains a wise distinction between nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) agents per se and WMD, which involve the use of NBC agents to cause a large number of casualties. Not all attacks with NBC agents will necessarily cause mass casualties. The authors thus avoid misleading—or worse, terrifying—the uninformed reader when they propose, for instance, that NBC terrorism looks set to rise, but then go on to stress that this does not necessarily include attacks involving true WMD.
The authors preface their discussion by describing the emergence of the academic and public discourse surrounding the intersection between terrorism and WMD. At one point, they cast the threat of WMD terrorism in terms of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilisations” thesis, an astute observation considering that their book was written long before the 11 September attacks, which seem to have been at least partly motivated by enmity towards American culture. The authors trace general trends in terrorist attacks over the past decade, such as their overall increasing lethality, and describe the changes wrought by the end of the Cold War, which include the leakage of WMD materials and expertise from the former Soviet Union. They discuss the significance of high-profile attacks such as the use of sarin gas on the Tokyo subway in March 1995. The authors undertake a thorough exploration of terrorists’ NBC capabilities. They note the obstacles terrorists face in acquiring a significant NBC capability, but in a useful examination of the potential indicators of NBC weapons production conclude that production by non-state actors is difficult to detect, especially for smaller-scale NBC projects.
The New Face of Terrorism then turns to its main focus—the motivations behind NBC terrorism. It begins by looking at the strategic and tactical motivations driving terrorist attacks in general, and then considers how NBC weapons in particular either advance or hinder these goals. While conventional weapons will be the optimal choice for most terrorist attacks, the authors highlight the propaganda value of NBC weapons, with the use of WMD in particular becoming especially attractive if the aim of the terrorist group is to cause massive, indiscriminate casualties. In light of the recent attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., in which up to six thousand people may have lost their lives, there can no longer be any doubt that certain groups aim to cause as many fatalities as possible—making WMD a tantalising option for them.
The authors appraise the ideological characteristics of different types of terrorist groups that could determine whether they seek to acquire and use NBC weapons. The goals and outlook of Islamic fundamentalists and Christian right-wing militants are surveyed. There is also discussion of the specific dangers posed by religious cults, which use mind-control techniques to eliminate political and moral inhibitions against violence, are mostly well financed, and which often embrace an apocalyptic ideology prescribing a “final battle”. The prevailing wisdom among scholars is that religiously based terrorist groups would have the fewest constraints on using NBC weapons since their acts are purportedly motivated by faith and they often do not seek to appeal to any wider political constituency. The fact that the prime suspects in the 11 September attacks are Islamic extremists corroborates this argument, at least when it comes to mass-casualty attacks in general. However, the authors assert that secular, political terrorist groups are also capable of embracing the use of NBC weapons in certain circumstances.
The New Face of Terrorism emphasises the peculiar psychosocial factors that may inhibit or promote the use of NBC agents or WMD. On the one hand, there is the inherent moral and psychological revulsion against using such lethal substances, while on the other, NBC agents hold a special fixation for many terrorists (the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult comes to mind). Organisational factors may also contribute towards the likelihood of NBC weapons being used. The isolation of terrorist groups from moderating social influences, the domination of many groups by a single leader, and the subsuming of individuality within a group morality can all help overcome any individual reticence to use these terrible weapons. The authors stress the importance of these factors, calling psychology a “wild card” in the equation and stating that “[u]ltimately, it could be psychological factors which determine how terrorists balance the conflicting imperatives of political, strategic and tactical motivations and disincentives to using NBC weapons” (p. 185).
Besides such internal considerations, Gurr and Cole also weigh external factors influencing terrorists in deciding whether or not to seek a WMD capability. One potential external facilitator is state sponsorship, in which a state, or even rogue elements within the state apparatus, may assist terrorists in acquiring WMD in order to further the state’s geopolitical aims, even to the point of providing terrorist groups with fully operational chemical, biological or nuclear devices. The “War on Terrorism” declared after the 11 September attacks is intended to negate this variant of state-sponsored terrorism. Strong external disincentives to the terrorist use of NBC agents can also come in the form of the security environment, or more precisely, government countermeasures. In this regard, the authors discuss the efficacy of intelligence and international co-operation in preventing and coping with NBC attacks. The book concludes with an examination of the nature of various government responses to the WMD terrorism threat. The “worst-case scenario” approach of the United States is contrasted with the more moderate measures of Britain and the almost complete lack of preparedness in Russia.
The greatest strength of this work is the balance and objectivity of the authors. They fall prey neither to alarmist exaggeration nor to imprudent dismissal of the threat of WMD terrorism. Ostensibly alarming statistics are considered soberly and placed in proper context. Thus, as noted, Gurr and Cole highlight the danger posed by religious groups (and especially cults). Yet they also admit that the growing lethality of terrorism in general—exemplified by the 11 September attacks—does not automatically imply we are about to see the widespread use of NBC weapons. Indeed, the authors make a convincing case that for most purposes conventional weapons will remain the logical choice for terrorists.
The authors take great pains throughout to portray the difficulties terrorists face in gaining the ability to cause mass casualties with true WMD. They therefore conclude that lower-level NBC attacks, such as the contamination of food and water, most probably using chemical, radiological or poorly developed biological weapons and crude delivery systems, are far more likely than a mass-casualty slaughter that surpasses the lethality of the deadliest conventional attacks. They are careful to say, though, that this does not exclude the possibility that terrorists will perpetrate such a slaughter using WMD.
On the prescriptive side, Gurr and Cole suggest countermeasures should be employed only to the extent that they are cost-effective. While improved intelligence, anti-terrorism legislation, epidemiological surveillance and international co-operation can all play a part in reducing the threat of WMD terrorism, the authors admit that there are no comprehensive or foolproof solutions to the problem. Society, they say, should therefore accept some degree of vulnerability in order to keep expenditure at a feasible level. They also advise that “all counter-terrorism programmes should have a political element and responses to terrorist incidents must not alienate moderate opinion” (p. 260). Another seemingly obvious, yet often overlooked, consideration is that the decision to utilise NBC agents is not static, but can vary between ideologically similar groups, across factions within the same group, and evolve over time. Thus, constant vigilance and continued reappraisal is implied.
One area where The New Face of Terrorism shines is in the structure of its discussion. Concepts are laid out systematically, and the threat is assessed according to the distinct categories of strategy, ideology, psychology and external environment. With each category, both the incentives and the constraints on the terrorist use of NBC and WMD are discussed, thus building a coherent set of determinants for terrorist decision-making in this regard. This is no mean feat, as it entails the integration of a host of disparate concepts from fields of study as different as psychology and international law.
Despite its analytical strengths, The New Face of Terrorism disappoints in a number of areas. The first shortcoming is the almost complete silence on the definition of terrorism. This is admittedly a thorny issue, and the authors do acknowledge that “international conventions dealing with terrorism have always been stymied by the lack of an internationally agreed definition of terrorism” (p. 225). But before labelling a variety of acts and groups as “terrorist”, it would have been far more theoretically sound on their part to acknowledge the lack of a commonly accepted definition and then state the definition they chose to work under in the ensuing discussion.
Another, less consequent, definitional oversight concerns the lethality of NBC attacks. The authors continually draw a distinction between lower-level and mass-casualty attacks, yet fail to assign any numbers to these terms. Is a mass-casualty attack one involving one thousand casualties or more? One hundred casualties? One hundred fatalities? Unless these terms are defined, any distinctions between them are only meaningful at the extremes.
The book contains an abundance of copy-editing errors that mar the continuity of the discussion. The analysis is also sometimes partially based upon factual errors. One example is the case concerning the alleged involvement of Germany’s Red Army Faction with botulinum toxin, which recent scholarship has shown to be apocryphal (p. 156). While the omission of recent revelations is excusable in the light of overlapping publication cycles, there are several more basic errors that reveal a lack of understanding of certain aspects of NBC terrorism. For instance, the United States’ Nuclear Emergency Search Teams (NEST) fall under the Department of Energy and not the Department of Defence, and Aum Shinrikyo’s experiments with anthrax (listed in the appendix) could not possibly have killed plants (p. 269), as anthrax affects only animals.
While the book is generally written in an engaging and easily comprehensible style, points are occasionally made a little too glibly, such as when the authors state that each terrorist group “wants maximum publicity from its actions” (p. 108). This contradicts the observation among scholars of terrorism that some groups now act for no audience besides themselves, seeking to fulfil various objectives (such as annihilating an enemy or achieving personal salvation). The authors provide an extensive list of abbreviations and acronyms, which will no doubt prove useful to newcomers to this topic, yet the lack of an index diminishes the book’s value as a research tool. An appendix does supply the reader with concrete examples and some idea as to the range of historical cases, although inaccuracies and the rather confusing reverse chronological list of incidents grouped by type of agent do not deliver a sufficiently clear picture of the evolution of NBC terrorism.
Does The New Face of Terrorism make any significant contribution to the already extensive literature on the subject? The answer is both yes and no. Its conclusions are hardly novel, and most of its recommendations have been offered elsewhere. Indeed, the book is built upon a host of seminal works in the field—Jessica Stern’s The Ultimate Terrorists (Harvard, 1999), Bruce Hoffmann’s Inside Terrorism (Gollancz, 1998) and Richard Falkenrath’s, Robert D. Newman’s and Bradley Thayer’s America’s Achilles Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (MIT Press, 1998), to name but a few. But what The New Face of Terrorism does valuably provide is a balanced and nuanced overview of the topic. A distinguishing feature is that the book consciously tries to analyse the stance of a number of countries towards NBC terrorism, whereas most previous studies remain focused exclusively on the United States.
