George Friedman - The Next Decade

In conventional warfare, terror is delivered by massed force. But terror also can be delivered through a covert operation by a very small number of individuals: a commando attack. These operations were once generally confined to assassinations, but after the invention of high explosives—and force multipliers for high explosives, such as airliners—commando terrorism focused on civilian targets with the goal of producing casualties as an end in itself.

It is important here to distinguish carefully between commandos whose goals are military and those whose targets are civilian and whose purpose is terror. The French Resistance in 1944 attacked German transport facilities in an attempt to undermine their invader’s ability to wage war directly. The terror commando’s goal, however, is not to harm the enemy’s military but to undermine enemy morale by generating a sense of vulnerability. Sometimes the audience isn’t even the target country but public opinion elsewhere, as with the attacks of September 11.

By generating fear, helplessness, and rage, terrorism transforms public opinion, which then demands that the government provide protection from terrorists and punish such people for their actions. The more effective the terrorist attack is, the more frightened the population is, and the more compelled the government is to respond aggressively and visibly. Once again, in the face of terror, the president must convince the public that he shares their sentiments while taking actions that appear to satisfy their cravings both for security and for revenge.

One such largely symbolic action taken since September 11 has been the attempt to bolster the airport security system. Despite billions of dollars and untold measures of passenger frustration, a terrorist with training can still devise any number of ways to get explosives or other devices through the system. Some terrorists might be deterred, and the system will find others. But while increased airport security can decrease the threat, it cannot stop it.

There is simply no security system that is both granular enough to detect terrorists reliably and efficient enough to allow the air transport system to function. El Al, Israel’s airline, is frequently held up as an example, but El Al has thirty-five planes. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the combined American air fleet has nearly eight thousand planes and over twenty-six thousand takeoffs per day. The Transportation Security Administration says it screened 1.8 million passengers per day on average in 2009. These are staggering numbers.

What the limitations of airport screening tell us is that if al Qaeda failed to strike the United States again during the first decade of the twenty-first century, it was not because of security precautions per se. It is even doubtful that the people who design the airport security system expect it to work. Their real objective is to calm the public by ostentatiously demonstrating that steps are being taken. The greater the ostentation and inconvenience, the more comforting the system appears.

But the increasing sophistication of explosives makes it possible to kill dozens of people with a device carried by an individual, hundreds of people with a device hidden in a car or truck, and thousands of people with an aircraft that acts as an explosive. The world is awash in such explosives, and the borders of the continental United States are about nine thousand miles long. The United States is also a trading country, and ships and planes and trucks arrive daily. Any one of those conveyances could contain people and explosives prepared to kill other people. It is also true that among 300 million Americans, there could be any number of homegrown terrorists preparing to strike at any time.

For these reasons, true homeland security in a country like the United States is impossible, and the task will remain impossible in the next decade. There are no silver bullets. Eliminating Islamist terrorism is similarly impossible. It is possible to reduce the threat, but the greater the reduction we hope to achieve, the greater the cost. Given unlimited possibilities and limited resources, it is safe to say that there will continue to be terrorist attacks on the United States, regardless of the efforts being made.

The president of the United States must know this with crystal clarity, and he must always act on the basis of what he knows, but he must never admit these limits to the public. He must constantly demonstrate that he is doing all he can to destroy the enemy and to protect the homeland, and he must always convey a sense that the elimination of Islamist terrorism is possible, all the while knowing that it is not.

As we embark on the policy decisions of the next decade, the larger point is that turning all American resources to an end that is unobtainable, against a threat that can and will have to be endured, is not only pointless but something that can create windows of opportunity for other enemies and other assaults.

While terrorism can kill Americans and can create a profound sense of insecurity, the obsessive desire to destroy terrorism can undermine—as it already has undermined—the United States strategically. This is an important point for the leaders of the next decade to consider. This is why even though thousands of Americans might be killed by terrorists—myself and my loved ones among them—terrorism should not be elevated to the status of an issue towering above all others. At all times, strategy must remain proportional to the threat.

Another unpleasant reality that will loom over the next ten years, which needs to be considered separately, is weapons of mass destruction. The existence of such weapons will occasionally prompt severe responses from the presidents who lead us. The damage that a nuclear device might do would dwarf that of conventional terrorism. Whereas conventional terrorism is rarely strategic, weapons of mass destruction can have a profound effect on the material condition of the country.

To turn our attention back to Bush, there was in fact more to his response to September 11 than simply stopping conventional terrorism. After that day, the Bush administration received intelligence that a nuclear device—a Soviet-era suitcase bomb, to be specific—had been stolen and might be in the hands of al Qaeda. Thus the specter that haunted the administration in the closing months of 2001 was that at any moment an American city might be destroyed by a nuclear weapon.

It was this threat that defined the Bush administration’s initial efforts. The president and vice president were never in the same city at the same time, and all intelligence and security services were directed to find the weapon. It would appear that they never found it, or it may never have existed. After years of mishandling, it may have malfunctioned, or it may have been intercepted and the government chose not to reveal its existence.

Regardless, weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear devices, represent a class of threat that cannot be tolerated. It would take many nuclear weapons to actually destroy the infrastructure and population of the United States, but a single attack by a nuclear weapon could destabilize public morale to such an extent that it would paralyze the country for an extended period of time.

In a small terrorist attack in which dozens die, like the suicide bombings in Israel, the probability that any one individual out of a population of 300 million will be a victim is small. The probability of dying from an ordinary accident or from disease in the next year is far higher than that of being killed in a suicide bombing. The events of September 11 distorted the perception of danger for a while, and people avoided flying, and perhaps avoided crowded places and landmark buildings. But as time passed, the sense of being subject to attack declined. The danger was on most people’s minds when they went to the airport, and perhaps when they entered the Sears Tower or the Empire State Building or the Capitol. But over time, the perceived risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time was assimilated into the general background noise. As this happened, for many people the demand that all steps be taken to guard against terror turned to dismay at what they regarded as excesses, inconveniences, and intrusions.