Perspective
A Strategic View of Terrorism

Charles P. Neimeyer

By Charles P. Neimeyer

Recently, in my seminar at the Naval War College on world terrorism, we decided to address the problem of terrorism from a strategic point of view. It was immediately clear that, after September 11, the students had been inundated with warnings, threats, and what we might call information overload on the subject of terrorism; it was possible they had lost sight of the larger strategic picture. Perhaps the time had come to take a step back.

I decided to come at the problem a bit differently, though. Rather than look at traditional sources on terrorism, I asked my students to consider world trends as a whole and assigned two books, Robert D. Kaplan's The Coming Anarchy, and Thomas Friedman's Lexus and the Olive Tree. Neither book is specifically about terrorism, but I believe they both contain answers to our problem of drawing a strategic picture of the terrorist threat.

My next class session was extraordinarily lively. Having digested the books, it was evident to the class that violence and savagery are on the rise. Civilians are no longer accidental victims but explicit targets of violence. Indeed, body counts have become part of a new terrorist strategy. There is a rise of failed and failing states and a growth of states that can be labeled "kleptocracies," where political and organized corruption is rampant at all levels of society. There is a growing privatization of security and violence.

Finally, what constituted security under a Cold War frame of reference may no longer be applicable. Rather, arguments and disputes caused by environmental pressures, demographic shifts, water allocation, and other social stresses will more likely lead to violent conflict within states rather than between them and could thereby become causes for terrorism. In the future, human security will be less about procuring territory and more about strengthening the social and/or environmental fabric of societies.

With this sort of strategic picture in mind, I then asked my students what would be the likely course of conflict in the 21st century. We identified some alarming trends. First, the number of nations trying to develop chemical weaponry has grown alarmingly in the past 20 years. During the 1980s, both Iraq and Iran used such weapons against each other in their eight-year struggle, yet the world response to such use was amazingly muted. Thus many governments saw this as an opportunity to expand into this shadowy world with relative impunity. Biological weapons were seen as easier to obtain, but they have the potential of having a universal rather than a targeted effect. Moreover, biological weapons are easy to create and hide and cause the greatest terror factor.

After all was said and done, the class concluded that while the trend toward securing weapons of mass destruction is serious, it is unlikely that these rogue nations would wish to commit national suicide by employing them against the West or its allies. However, with the trend toward globalization and transnationalism, we also saw that ostensibly non-affiliated groups like Al Qaeda will drastically alter the security situation for the United States and the West. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will be a prime national security concern well into the future.

Many students saw the terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway system in March 1995 as a watershed event. In this attack, a group called Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) employed a chemical agent called Sarin gas to kill 12 people and sicken hundreds. The only saving grace for the innocent victims was the crudity of the organization's chemical dispersal system, which helped limit casualties. But what was truly alarming was the level of sophistication Aum Shinrikyo had achieved; they were relatively well financed and used a number of legitimate storefront operations to conduct weapons research in the open. What was more frightening was the sheer ambiguity of the group's demands. They did not ask for political concessions on the part of the Japanese government. Rather, they saw the destruction of society as the their only possible means of redress. Finally, they had crossed a boundary that no other terrorist had dared cross before. The class concluded that it was only a matter of time before other terror organizations would emulate Aum Shinrikyo on a larger and more deadly scale.

So what is to be done about the strategic problem of terrorism? While much ink has been expended on advocating possible avenues for future governmental policy, most have settled on the following courses of action: eliminate the underlying causes of terrorism; stage military counterattacks on terrorism; impose a globally effective rule of law; and encourage international cooperation. Of the four, the class concluded that eliminating underlying causes of terrorism was the least efficacious. It seems that the causes and reasons for terrorism are as old as history itself. This is especially true of "millennialist" organizations like Aum Shinrikyo, which rarely present specific political demands and whose goal is the destruction of society as a whole. In many ways, Osama Bin Laden has a similar goal of redefining Islam and its relations with the outside world. He makes few strictly political demands and appears to be resentful, more than anything else, of a powerful secular state like the U.S. Military counterattacks can be an effective short-term policy but will ultimately result in a balloon effect; terrorists will pop up when and where the pressure relents. Global law and cooperation look promising, but will run into problems of enforcement and resentment from countries who lose sovereignty if they sign on to any international cooperative agreements regarding terrorism.

The consensus of the class, then, was that the best hope for addressing the problem of terrorism was likely a combination of all four approaches listed above. However, until the United States adopts a coherent policy for addressing the strategic problems of terrorism, we will constantly be rushing hither and yon, addressing near-term issues and threats and remaining on the defensive. Further, the United States must address the problem of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as a matter of highest importance. Indeed, as we saw with Aum Shinrikyo, terror organizations are clearly moving in that direction already.

Charles P. Neimeyer, an adjunct instructor at UMUC, serves as civilian professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Neimeyer earned his doctorate in history, with distinction, from Georgetown University. He served previously with the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Naval Academy, and on the military staff of the President of the United States. At the Naval War College, Neimeyer holds the Forrest Sherman Chair of Public Diplomacy and was appointed dean of academics in August 2000.