Is the terrorist threat overhyped? -- II

terrorist organization is an old threat, not a new and unprecedented threat.

Friedman analyzes what he says are the two flawed assumptions of the terrorism-is-a-new-and-unprecedented-threat school.

First, jihadist sentiments around the world have not spread, but rather are in decline. In any event, jihadists themselves have always been a miniscule minority of the Islamist movement. Moreover, even where jihadism had gained some popularity, it soon lost it after Muslims realized that al Qaeda and its affiliates consider the vast majority of people on the planet – including most Muslims – as enemies deserving death. The jihadist movement has been irrelevant to the spring uprising in the Arab world. Also, most jihadists do not attack the United States but are rather more occupied with local and parochial issues.

Second, dire predictions to the contrary notwithstanding, terrorist organizations, at least so far, have not acquired weapons of mass destruction. Friedman notes that we should not be cavalier about terrorists obtaining such weapons, but we should not become prisoners of technological determinism: the fact that it is feasible for an organization to acquire certain weapons does not mean that the acquisition of these weapons would serve the political and ideological goals of the organization.

The fact is, terrorists achieve their goals using conventional weapons. Terrorist organizations achieve their aim by creating events with few dead and many watching. Killing on a massive scale has been to domain of state bureaucracies and hierarchical organizations, not the venue rag-tag terrorist organizations have chosen. You need armies to kill many people with small arms – witness the Nazi Einsatzgruppen. More advanced weapons that can kill large number of people – artillery, fighter bombers, nuclear weapons – require an industrial capacity and organizational network that only states possess.

Friedman notes that some terrorist organizations – Hezbollah, Hamas – do have access to more sophisticated weapons, but these organizations, in many ways, are like states: they control territory and people and as such are subject to deterrence calculations. “The near future of terrorism in the United States should then resemble the recent past,” Friedman writes, and adds:

There will be a few conventional attacks, mostly abroad, that will kill a handful of Americans in an average year… In its ability to do harm, al Qaeda is more like the anarchist movement in its heyday, transnational troublemakers, than the Nazis. In most of the United States, the danger of terrorism is statistically nonexistent, or near it. The right amount of homeland security spending in those areas is none.

Friedman then goes on to discuss the psychological reasons leading people to exaggerate the risks of terrorism, and the political reasons leading politicians to hype that threat. These psychological and political tendencies should be countered, he writes. To fashion policies which will allow us to address the true nature of the threat, Friedman suggest we do the following:

  • Enhance the use of cost-benefit analysis at DHS
  • Limit over-reaction to the threat by limiting the number of organizations engaged in counterterrorism
  • Declare that terrorism is not a military problem, thus diminishing the incentive of the military – and the industries dependent on military contracts – to hype the danger
  • Consider counterterrorism and military spending as zero-sum, thus offering even less of an incentive for the military to hype the risk

There are other arguments he makes and other measures he offers.

 

We do not have to agree with everything Friedman says to agree on this: well-argued and well-reasoned articles such as his make a useful contribution to the debate on homeland security. When a government, through taxation, uses people’s hard-earned money to finance governmental policies, the government should make a compelling case why a certain policy is needed and why it should be financed. Friedman argues that a compelling case for spending so many dollars on homeland security is yet to be made.

Ben Frankel is editor of the Homeland Security NewsWire