9/11

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, killed nearly three thousand Americans, led to two major wars, and redefined the contours of U.S. foreign policy. 

 

CFR continues to examine the legacy of 9/11, and offers selections from its archive of coverage. 

Terrorism and Counterterrorism
Guantanamo Bay: Twenty Years of Counterterrorism and Controversy

Article by Jonathan Masters

The U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has generated intense debate for two decades, raising enduring questions about national security, human rights, and justice.
Sep 9, 2022
The U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has generated intense debate for two decades, raising enduring questions about national security, human rights, and justice.
Sep 9, 2022
How 9/11 Reshaped Foreign Policy
This timeline traces three pivotal years following the September 11th attacks.

Timeline by James McBride Aug 31, 2021

How the Terrorism Threat Changed
CFR’s Bruce Hoffman assesses the successes and failures of the U.S. counterterrorism response after 9/11 and explains how the threat has shifted in the past two decades.

In Brief by Bruce Hoffman Aug 12, 2021

The World 9/11 Made
For Project Syndicate, Richard Haass examines the ways in which the 9/11 attacks changed history.

Article by Richard Haass Sep 10, 2021

Seven Resources Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
Even as the smoke was still rising from the ruins of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, conspiracy theories sprang up blaming the attacks on anyone but al-Qaeda.

Blog Post by James M. Lindsay Sep 1, 2021

  • Iraq
    IRAQ: America’s Rationale for War
    This publication is now archived. Before the war started, did the U.S. have a "smoking gun" that proved Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? No. United Nations weapons inspectors discovered that Iraq had built ballistic missiles whose range exceeded U.N. limits. But they didn’t turn up conclusive proof that Iraq possessed large stocks of banned chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. What was the U.S. case for war against Iraq? The Bush administration argued that, in the 12 years since the end of the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein defied the will of the United Nations by failing to fully disclose his suspected arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and cooperate with U.N. weapons inspections. The administration also said Saddam had formed alliances with terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, that could use Iraqi weapons against U.S. targets. What did the administration base its claim on? Previous weapons inspections, information from Iraqi defectors, and other intelligence sources. Are the defectors’ accounts credible? That is a judgment call officials and others have to make. The accounts usually can’t be confirmed and often are out-of-date. What were the intelligence sources? Intercepted communications, surveillance photographs, and reports from Iraqi informers. In a February 5 address to the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell displayed photos taken by spy satellites and played recordings of taped conversations between Iraqi officials. What evidence did U.S. officials offer of Iraq’s banned weapon programs? Because they lacked an overwhelming amount of hard proof, U.S. officials and others tried to establish Iraq’s guilt indirectly. They cited several instances in the past when Iraq was known to have possessed banned weapons or the materials to make them, and then pointed out that Iraq has failed to offer credible explanations to account for them. They said that if the weapons were destroyed, there would be physical evidence, records, or eyewitness accounts to back up Baghdad’s claims. Iraq did not supply the information. What chemical and biological weapons did Iraq fail to account for? In various speeches, statements, and briefings, President Bush, Secretary Powell, and Hans Blix, head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), cited several examples: Anthrax. The U.N. in 1999 concluded Iraq had the ability to produce more than 25,000 liters of the biological warfare agent; Bush has said that amount is "enough doses to kill several million people." VX. Blix said Iraq had not adequately addressed UNMOVIC’s questions about a suspected program to produce the deadly chemical agent and whether it had been weaponized. Bush said U.S. intelligence reports indicated Iraq could produce as much as 500 tons of "sarin,mustard, and VX nerve agent." Botulinum. The president said the U.N. reported in 1999 that Iraq could produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum nerve toxin, the single most toxic substance known to science. Munitions. Bush has said U.S. intelligence shows Iraq has more than 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Powell, in his February 5 presentation, said Iraq hasn’t accounted for 500 mustard gas artillery shells. Weapons inspectors found 16 122-millimeter chemical rocket warheads in mid-January. Iraq said they were part of a group of 2,000 rockets dating from the 1991 Gulf War; Iraqi officials said the 16 had been misplaced. Blix has said 6,500 Iraqi bombs are missing; together, he said, they could deliver 1,000 tons of chemical agents. Growth medium. Blix said approximately 650 kilograms of bacterial growth medium were missing. Iraqi officials conceded in 1999 they had imported the medium, which can be used to cultivate germs, but an Iraqi weapons declaration issued December 7 failed to mention it. Blix said the amount of missing growth medium could produce "about 5,000 liters of concentrated anthrax." Did officials cite other weapons programs that violate U.N. resolutions? Yes. Among them: Missiles. In a December 7 declaration of its weapons programs, Iraq noted that it was producing a ballistic missile, the al-Samoud II. Weapons inspectors concluded the missiles violated the 150-kilometer range dictated by U.N. resolutions. Iraq has also imported 380 SA-2 rocket engines, material prohibited by U.N. resolutions. On February 21, UNMOVIC ordered Iraq to destroy the missiles and engines. Unmanned aircraft. U.S. officials said Iraq had developed pilot-less aircraft that could be used to disperse biological and chemical weapons. Mobile laboratories. U.S. officials said they learned from Iraqi defectors that Iraq had built several mobile laboratories to produce biological weapons. Did Iraq have a nuclear weapons program? According to U.N. weapons inspectors, there was no evidence in 2003 that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA), said in January 2003 that if inspectors were able to continue their work for "the next few months," they could "provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapons program." Weapons experts note that Iraqi scientists retained the technical know-how to build nuclear weaponry. What was the U.S. view? Officials said Iraq lacks only the necessary fissile material to produce a nuclear bomb. As a result, they said, Baghdad tried to import high-strength aluminum tubes that could be used in gas centrifuges to make weapons-grade uranium. The IAEA disputed that interpretation of the tubes’ use. Powell also told the Security Council that Iraq tried to acquire "magnets and high-speed balancing machines" that could be used to enrich uranium. Britain released a report in September that said Iraq had tried to buy large amounts of uranium in Niger; the documents that accusation was based on were later proved to have been forged. Did Iraq once have a nuclear arms program? Yes. After the 1991 Gulf War, IAEA inspectors dismantled Iraq’s nuclear arms program and removed stores of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. Some weapons experts believe a covert program continued after that. Does Iraq have links to al-Qaeda? That’s been debated— inconclusively— since September 11, 2001. In his January 28 State of the Union speech, Bush raised the specter of Iraq sharing weapons of mass destruction with terrorists, and he said that U.S. intelligence data has linked Saddam and Osama bin Laden’s extremist network. Powell said February 5 that Baghdad is harboring "al-Qaeda affiliates." What were the reputed al-Qaeda-Iraq connections? Powell said that Abu Musab Zarqawi, a chemical and biological weapons expert who is affiliated with al-Qaeda, was in Baghdad in 2002 to receive medical care and established a cell of operatives there. Powell also said that Iraq has contacts with Ansar al-Islam, an extremist group in northern Iraq that has been linked to al-Qaeda. Officials hoped to find conclusive evidence at the war’s end. What’s the source of information about al-Qaeda-Iraq links? Much of the information before the 2003 war was pieced together from interviews with suspects detained in the post-September 11 worldwide roundup of extremists. What was Iraq’s response? Iraq denied all the U.S. allegations. Its leaders long maintained Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction; they claimed that all unaccounted-for banned weapons and materials had been destroyed. Saddam had also denied an alliance with al-Qaeda.
    Backgrounder by Sharon Otterman February 3, 2005
  • Iraq
    IRAQ: Justifying the War
    This publication is now archived. Was the war in Iraq justified? There is broad agreement that removing Saddam Hussein from power neutralized a ruthless tyrant. But the debate over why the United States went to war has grown increasingly bitter. The Bush administration continues vigorously to defend its case for removing Saddam. Its critics say the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or links between Saddam and al Qaeda--two key elements in the pro-war argument--is evidence that the administration may have misled Americans about the threat Iraq posed. And ongoing attacks in Iraq, as well as the rapidly mounting cost of the occupation--well over $100 billion so far--have caused many who initially backed the war to reconsider. What is the level of public support for the president’s Iraq policy? While still substantial, increasingly Americans are starting to question the war and its aftermath. A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in September showed that 58 percent of those surveyed approved of the way President Bush was handling Iraq, down from 71 percent in March. A poll in the September 13, 2003, Newsweek found that 51 percent of Americans opposed the president’s request for $87 billion in additional funding for U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan; 46 percent said the United States should reduce the number of troops in Iraq; and 48 percent said the administration’s postwar plan wasn’t carefully thought out. The government’s rationale for war and its administration of Iraq have become political issues. Bush’s spending request is under tough scrutiny on Capitol Hill, and many of the Democratic presidential candidates regularly criticize Bush’s handling of Iraq. What were the main arguments for going to war? The Bush administration’s rationale was built around six main themes: Saddam’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD); the threat Saddam posed to the Middle East; Iraq’s links to al Qaeda; Saddam’s harsh treatment of the Iraqi people; Iraq’s lack of democracy; and the example a free and democratic Iraq would set for authoritarian regimes in the region. What did administration officials say about Saddam’s arsenal of WMD? In the run-up to the war, various officials and U.S. allies repeatedly asserted that Iraq had WMD that represented a threat to the United States and other targets. President Bush, in a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 7, 2002, said, "[Iraq] possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.... Members of Congress of both political parties, and members of the United Nations Security Council, agree that Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace and must disarm. We agree that the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons." Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, on September 24, 2002, presented a United Kingdom Intelligence Services dossier that claimed Iraq had biological and chemical weapons, some of which could be deployed immediately. "[Saddam] has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population," Blair said. Disputes about the veracity of this claim were at the heart of an official inquiry into the apparent suicide of scientist David Kelly after he was publicly identified as an anonymous source who expressed doubts about the claim in a BBC report. The Blair government was cleared of wrongdoing in the probe, but Alastair Campbell, Blair’s director of communications, resigned. Vice President Dick Cheney, in an August 26, 2002, speech and to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations on February 5, 2003, that U.S. intelligence knew of at least seven and perhaps 18 mobile biological research laboratories mounted on trucks that were being driven around Iraq in order to conceal them from inspectors. Powell also told the United Nations that Saddam "is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries." These tubes are controlled by the Nuclear Suppliers Group specifically because they can be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium." CIA director George Tenet told Congress on February 11, 2003, that Saddam had both biological and chemical weapons, and that unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs] could potentially deliver such weapons against other countries, including the United States. What has been discovered about Iraq’s WMD program? U.N. inspectors in Iraq failed to find stockpiles of WMD before the war; they did discover and ordered the destruction of several missiles whose range exceeded U.N. limits. David Kay, a former chief U.N. nuclear weapons inspector, was appointed head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Iraq Survey Group (ISG) in June 2003 and charged with investigating allegations of WMD in Iraq. His 1,400-member group is the only weapons search team currently working in Iraq. Kay before Congress on October 2, 2003, about the group’s initial findings. While cautioning that his investigation is still under way, he said ISG had not yet found stocks of weapons, but he didn’t rule out the possibility that they still might exist. Kay also said: On chemical weapons (CW): "Multiple sources" have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW program after 1991. Information found to date suggests that Iraq’s large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced--if not entirely destroyed--during Operation Desert Storm [the 1991 Gulf War] and Desert Fox [a four-day bomb and cruise missile assault on Iraq in December 1998], 13 years of U.N. sanctions and U.N. inspections."We have not yet found evidence to confirm prewar reporting that Iraqi military units were prepared to use CW against coalition forces." On nuclear weapons: "Despite evidence of Saddam’s continued ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, to date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material." On mobile biological agent laboratories: "We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile [biological weapons] production effort." On aluminum tubes: "the evidence does not tie any activity directly to centrifuge research or development." On UAVs: "Given Iraq’s interest before the Gulf War in attempting to convert a MIG-21 [combat jet] into an unmanned aerial vehicle to carry spray tanks capable of dispensing chemical or biological agents, attention is being paid to whether any of the newer generation of UAVs were intended to have a similar purpose. This remains an open question." Other experts have disputed the claim that Iraq had WMD, both before the war started and since Bush declared the end of major combat operations May 1, 2003. Kenneth Katzman, senior expert on Iraq affairs for the Congressional Research Service, says of the allegation that Saddam had produced weapons that were ready to use: "I have seen no evidence presented on that at all." Darryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said in an interview with Bernard Gwertzman of the Council on Foreign Relations on October 6, 2003, that the Kay report "raises a significant question about whether these programs, while they clearly existed at some level, actually posed the urgent or imminent threat that the administration said they posed before the war." What was the administration’s case linking Iraq to al Qaeda? In a speech on January 30, 2003, Cheney said that Saddam’s regime "aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. [Saddam] could decide secretly to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against us. And as the president said on Tuesday night [in the January 28 State of the Union address], it would take just one vial, one canister, one crate to bring a day of horror to our nation unlike any we have ever known." In his U.N. speech, Powell said: "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda operatives.... Al Qaeda affiliates based in Baghdad now coordinate the movement of people, money, and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they have now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months." Other administration officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, talked frequently about Saddam’s links to al Qaeda. Were those links confirmed? That remains an open question. Many Americans believed that Saddam was involved in the Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001; a Washington Post poll in early September 2003 showed that more than 70 percent of Americans believed that Saddam was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. When asked about this on September 17, 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "I’ve not seen any indication that would lead me to believe I could say that." The next day, President Bush was more direct. "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 attacks," he told reporters on September 18, 2003. Investigations of possible Saddam-Qaeda links continue. Some critics say the administration exaggerated possible links between Saddam and al Qaeda in order to shape public opinion to support the war. Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, said in July 2003 that the administration’s argument was unfounded. "That he [Saddam] was promoting al Qaeda is absurd," he told the Associated Press. Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence official, called the administration’s argument "faith-based intelligence," saying senior officials had a clear idea of what they wanted the intelligence to show and resisted reports to the contrary from the intelligence community. "There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist operation," he said in July. What did the administration say about Saddam’s relationship with neighboring countries? In his October 2002 speech, Bush described Saddam as a "tyrant [who] has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States." Was Hussein seen as such a threat in the region? Saddam was not a friendly neighbor, and leaders in many of the countries bordering Iraq were glad to see him go. Still, some experts say the administration overplayed the idea that he posed a serious threat. "In Syria, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, [there was] no sense of shared threat among the neighbors of Saddam," says Omer Taspinar, foreign policy research fellow and co-director of the Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution. "Even in Europe, no one felt threatened to the extent that the United States did. They believed he could be contained," he says. Experts do agree that Saddam had long flouted multiple U.N. resolutions, ignoring their requirements to, among other responsibilities, abide by the demands of U.N. weapons inspectors, return property seized when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, account for missing Kuwaitis, sign international WMD conventions, and pay reparations. "From an international legal standpoint, he did not verifiably comply" with the resolutions, Katzman says. What was the administration’s argument about liberating Iraqis from Saddam’s rule? In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute on February 26, 2003, Bush said, "The first to benefit from a free Iraq would be the Iraqi people themselves. Today they live in scarcity and fear, under a dictator who has brought them nothing but war, and misery, and torture. Their lives and their freedom matter little to Saddam Hussein--but Iraqi lives and freedom matter greatly to us." In his October speech Bush said, "Freed from the weight of oppression, Iraq’s people will be able to share in the progress and prosperity of our time." Did this happen? Yes, to a degree. Saddam is out of power, and the fear and oppression of his rule have ended. The recent discovery of mass graves and the abolition of Saddam government practices such as torture and murder are unquestionably positive developments for Iraqis. But day-to-day life for average Iraqis is difficult; street crimes are common and the economy is in collapse. "They’re freer," says Taspinar, "and they have access to more TV channels and a freer press, and maybe soon political parties, but their quality of life has drastically declined." Administration officials say conditions are slowly improving and will continue to do so. What did the administration say about making Iraq a democracy? Bush said in the October speech: "America believes that all people are entitled to hope and human rights, to the non-negotiable demands of human dignity…America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us.… The long captivity of Iraq will end, and an era of new hope will begin." Has this happened? Not yet, though the foundations are being laid. The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) appointed an Iraqi Governing Council in July, whose members reflect most of the country’s constituencies— Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians, and Turkomen. The governing council, in turn, appointed an interim cabinet in September, whose members reflect the same ethnic and religious mix. But the council faces significant challenges to establishing a functional representative democracy, and political activity exposes participants to personal danger: A female member of the governing council, Akila al-Hashimi, was shot on September 20, 2003, and later died of her wounds. Many experts say the administration’s idea of a flourishing democracy being installed in Iraq was too hopeful. "It was taken for granted that democracy in Iraq would come easily," says Taspinar, who calls this attitude "naïve optimism." What was the administration’s case for democracy in Iraq as an example for other Middle Eastern regimes? In his February speech, Bush said, "A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region…. Success in Iraq could also begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace, and set in motion progress towards a fully democratic Palestinian state." Administration officials throughout the summer continued to promote the "democratic domino" theory: that democracy in Iraq would spread to other Middle Eastern nations. Is this plausible? Possibly, but it will take a very long time to, first, establish a functioning democracy in Iraq and, second, to judge its effectiveness on the region’s politics. Administration critics say the expectation that democracy will spread from Iraq throughout the Middle East is highly optimistic. And, many point out, the Middle East peace process has not benefited from the Iraq war; in fact, Israeli-Palestinian tensions are dangerously high.
    Backgrounder by Esther Pan February 2, 2005
  • United States
    Cordesman: 9/11 Commission Report Lacks Specifics
    Anthony H. Cordesman, a leading expert on intelligence, says President Bush wisely declined to embrace all of the 9/11 Commission’s proposals for intelligence reform. Bush’s call for a new director of national intelligence (DNI) was “a compromise between taking the kind of action that would show that intelligence reform was under way and overreacting to the 9/11 report, which provides almost no detail, no specific plans, and no rationale for most of its recommendations.” Cordesman says it is “irresponsible” for politicians like Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry to call for quick approval of all the commission’s recommendations without proper study by Congress. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He was interviewed on August 3, 2004, by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor of cfr.org. President Bush said on Monday that he supports the idea of a new director of national intelligence, a new intelligence “czar”... Let me interrupt. Nobody has said this new intelligence director is going to be an intelligence “czar,” in terms of defining any of the powers he is going to have. This is particularly true in terms of tasking and budget control. So until you see a presidential directive, I would be very careful about using the word “czar.” What then has the president proposed? He compromised between taking the kind of action that would show that intelligence reform was under way and overreacting to the 9/11 report, which provides almost no detail, no specific plans, and no rationale for most of its recommendations. What Bush did, effectively, was to say that there would be a new national intelligence director and that this new person would be his principal adviser and would be separate from the director of the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]. He talked about an office that would combine domestic and foreign intelligence in terms of coordination, but he did not really go beyond that to try to define specific roles. He talked about creating a national counterterrorism center in this office, but he also talked about building on the work done since 9/11 within the CIA. Much of this would presumably consist of transferring a component of the CIA to the new DNI. But he was careful to note something the 9/11 Commission did not consider at all— that there are many, many more uses of intelligence than just counterterrorism. So he pointed out that it might well be necessary to have a similar center to deal with issues like proliferation. He also wisely, I think, talked about endorsing the recommendations of the commission in some areas, but provided no details as to which he would endorse, the timing, or how [the recommendations] would be implemented. Given the fact that the commission report basically provides no details as to what these recommendations mean in terms of staffing, costs, procedures, information technology, or any of the other steps necessary to implement them, the president has effectively left most issues open. Is this good or bad? Is this now open for discussion with Congress? It will take some time to put together a plan. That is one of the key issues. Nothing could have been worse or more impractical than calling Congress back to essentially try to vote on legislation to implement recommendations that have no details and no specifics. I think one of the great problems people face is that politicians rushed to join the bandwagon, effectively endorsing chapters 12 and 13 of this report. But they could not possibly have bothered to read what they were endorsing. Nobody in Congress with any experience is going to endorse a generalized recommendation for organizational change without any specifics, without any knowledge of the cost or the effectiveness, or even, because this is the major failing of the report, any knowledge of what has been done since 9/11 to try to fix the problems exposed in the commission report. Are you implying that Senator John F. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, was premature in endorsing the report’s recommendations? In fairness to Senator Kerry, there were many people in both parties who rushed out to gain political visibility and do the same thing. But it isn’t a matter of being premature; it is a matter of being totally irresponsible to think that you can rush Congress back to pass legislation when you haven’t the faintest idea of what it means, when most of the recommendations have never been reviewed or commented on by the intelligence community, and nobody has any idea of the staffing requirements or costs. There has been some criticism that the president, by declining to give the DNI control over the government’s intelligence budget, has made the job meaningless. Is this criticism premature? I think it is. The president has to consider some very real problems. Most of the intelligence budget goes to what are called “national technical means” [such as photo and communications satellites]. These are extremely sophisticated high-technology systems. Almost all of the planning and development of these systems occurs in the Defense Department [DOD]. They are designed to be integrated into an overall command-and-control system for military crisis management and war fighting. Now, when you reach budget decisions you have to have a budget structure where both the new DNI and the DOD can play the proper roles in budget review, and where there is programming authority and a programming staff to look beyond the current annual requirement to the overall needs for intelligence and how they fit into our command-and-control and communications systems. Again, one of the great problems in the commission report is that it looked at exactly one issue— counterterrorism— and none of the others. But [U.S.] intelligence users consist of more than 1 million people, many of them in uniform, and when you talk about budgeting and programming authority, you have to consider that. The other difficulty is that at some point— and it will have to be very quick, if the new DNI is given budget authority— the [current] archaic and outdated budget system, which has many different elements and information systems, is going to have to be integrated and converted into a more modern system. You cannot simply wave a magic wand and tell somebody how to create a system that can manage what is certainly more than $20 billion a year. I’m not quite sure where you come out on this. Do you think the new DNI should have overall budget authority, or should he just be a coordinator with the existing agencies? I think, like almost every recommendation in the commission report, that is something that requires study and the creation of some clear planning system. I think the DNI has to have programming capabilities, budget review, and budget authority. But he is not the only person who has to be involved in the process. And the DOD is still going to be the primary office in charge of integrating, developing, and reviewing most of this budget. In fact, if you look at the commission report, one of the problems— which is typical— is there is no description of any of these issues. The president is going to have to study this and reach a decision. All of the people who talk about how this should be implemented instantly, without any study or planning, have absolutely no idea of what they are talking about or what they mean when they say it. You are not happy with the overall conclusions of the report? One needs to be very careful. Many of these conclusions are probably very valuable. But this is a 13-chapter report. Eleven chapters are a masterful description of what happened and what went wrong that led to the 9/11 attack. There is no chapter that explains what people did after 9/11. There is no chapter that qualifies that this is only one of many problems in intelligence and intelligence reform. The last two chapters effectively describe changes in an organizational chart and make very broad recommendations. Anybody who bothers to read them, which tends to be a remarkably few people who are commenting on the report, realizes that you can’t solve problems when you don’t know what you are saying in terms of staff, costs, operating systems, and other details. This is critical because, among other things, when you look through that report, you see vague recommendations about getting rid of the causes of terrorism or about dealing with issues like Islamic extremism or improving the quality of the CIA, which are among the most important recommendations you could make. And then you suddenly realize that this is a paragraph of generalities or cliches with absolutely no operating content at all. To do its job properly, the commission needed at least several more months. It needed to actually create useful plans. And at some point, there needs to be a commission, or somebody, who looks at the overall needs of the intelligence community and doesn’t make counterterrorism effectively the only function of the intelligence community. Who would be the ideal DNI? The answer to that is no one. You are asking who is the perfect person to tie together collection and analysis for the entire world, looking at today’s issues and indefinitely into the future, and then communicate them perfectly to all the possible users, from the president on down. That person clearly does not exist. But whoever does do it has to have vast experience in actually managing the intelligence community, in knowing how to allocate resources, looking at the overall complexity of this issue. One of the great weaknesses in the new system is the same weakness of the old system: The same person is supposed to create an effective structure to manage a global intelligence system, which costs more than $20 billion a year, and then be the ideal personal intelligence adviser to the president. I’m not sure that, quite apart from the perfect person, one person can do those functions. But again, that question is not addressed in the 9/11 report.
    Interview with Bernard Gwertzman and Anthony H. Cordesman August 3, 2004
  • Homeland Security
    America the Vulnerable
    Three years after September 11, the United States is still dangerously unprepared to prevent or respond to another attack on its soil. Faced with this threat, the United States should be operating on a wartime footing at home. But despite the many new security precautions that have been proposed, America's most serious vulnerabilities remain ominously exposed. The United States still offers its enemies a vast menu of soft targets: water and food supplies; chemical plants; energy grids and pipelines; bridges, tunnels, and ports; and the millions of cargo containers that carry most of the goods U.S. consumers depend on. A leading expert on homeland security, Stephen E. Flynn, says the measures cobbled together to protect these vital systems are hardly fit to deter amateur thieves, vandals, and smugglers, let alone determined terrorists. Worse still, small improvements are often oversold as giant steps forward, lowering the guard of the average citizen and building an unwarranted sense of confidence. The book describes a frightening scenario of what the next major terrorist attack might look like, revealing the tragic loss of life and economic havoc it would leave in its wake, as well as the seismic political consequences it would have in Washington and across the country. In a new world of heightened risk and fear, America the Vulnerable delivers a timely, forceful message that cannot be ignored. A Council on Foreign Relations Book
    Book by Stephen E. Flynn June 1, 2004 National Security and Defense Program
  • United States
    Rethinking the Role of the U.S. Mexican Border in the Post-9/11 World
      Written Testimony before a hearing of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate on “U.S.-Mexico: Immigration Policy & The Bilateral Relationship” Stephen E. Flynn, Ph.D. Commander, U.S. Coast Guard (ret.) Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies March 23, 2004   Chairman Lugar, Senator Biden, and distinguished members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. I am the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations where I recently directed the Independent Task Force on Homeland Security, co-chaired by former Senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart. In June 2002, I retired as a Commander in the U.S. Coast Guard after 20 years of active duty service. I am honored to be appearing before you this morning to discuss the issue of border control as an element of the bilateral relationship between the United States and Mexico. North America finds itself in paradoxical times. On the one hand, the hemisphere’s economic prosperity depends on an open continental system that facilitates the free movement of people and goods. On the other, worries over America’s exposure to catastrophic terrorist attacks have transformed homeland security into one of Washington’s leading preoccupations. The result is that while the NAFTA imperative of a more open border was gathering steam prior to 9/11, since that fateful day, controlling the southwest border in an effort to prevent illegal immigration and smuggling has been advanced as essential to combating the terrorist threat against the United States. Security has trumped cross-border facilitation as our abiding interest. This is a mistake since it wrongly presumes that there is an automatic tradeoff between advancing greater degrees of openness to support the movement of legitimate people and goods and the need for more rigorous border controls. The experience over the past decade of stepped-up enforcement along the Mexican border suggests that U.S. efforts aimed at hardening its borders can have the unintended consequence of creating precisely the kind of an environment that is conducive to terrorists and criminals. Draconian measures to police the border invariably provide incentives for informal arrangements and criminal conspiracies to overcome cross-border barriers to commerce and labor movements. In addition, unilateral measures pursued on one side of the border create political impediments for enforcement cooperation on the other. The result is that the border region becomes more chaotic which makes it ideal for exploitation by criminals and terrorists. Terrorists and the tools of terrorism do not spring up at the border. Instead, they arrive via hemispheric and international trade and travel networks. Advancing a continental approach to deterring, detecting, and intercepting illicit actors seeking to exploit those networks would accomplish two things. First, it would provide some strategic depth for responding to a threat before it arrived at a critical and congested border crossing. Second, it would allow the ability to segment risk so that the cross-border movements of people and cargo deemed to present a low-risk could be facilitated. Then limited enforcement resources could be targeted more effectively at those that present a high risk. The shared risks of loss of life and massive economic disruption presented by the catastrophic terrorist threat should provide the basis for greater levels of bilateral cooperation that can remove many longstanding barriers to continental commerce precisely because those barriers themselves can elevate security risks. For example, the longstanding neglect of the border in terms of limited infrastructure investment and tepid efforts at customs and immigration modernization and harmonization made no sense in purely economic terms. But the resultant inefficiencies that carry substantial commercial costs also create opportunities that thugs and terrorists can exploit. Thus, there is a national security rationale to redress those inefficiencies. The agendas for both promoting security and greater continental commerce can be and must be mutual reinforcing. The Hardened Border Paradox Great powers have been building great walls throughout history. The Great Wall of China, the Maginot Line, and the Berlin Wall went up at considerable expense in sweat and treasure and all ultimately failed to block or contain the forces that prompted their construction. The recent efforts by the United States to “protect” the southwest border including installing a 26-mile long fence between San Diego and Tijuana, has had a similar fate. Take the case of illegal migration. Stepped-up patrolling and policing of the border may raise the costs of getting to the United States, but it also creates a demand for those who are in the business of arranging the illegal crossings. Migrants who once simply strolled across the border to seek work on the other side, now need “professional” help. That help is provided by guides known as “coyotes” who take migrants to remote border locations or put together increasingly sophisticated smuggling operations at the land border entries. As the coyote business becomes more lucrative, criminal gangs are better positioned to invest in pay-offs of front-line agents.[1] The prevalence of corruption, in turn, undermines information sharing and operational coordination between U.S. authorities and their Mexican counterparts. Enforcement driven-delays at the border also ironically contribute to creating opportunities for smuggling narcotics as well. In Laredo, Texas for instance, truck crossings were at 2.8 million in 1999, up from 1.3 million in 1993.[2] Many of these trucks operating at the border are old and poorly maintained and owned by small mom-and-pop trucking companies. The turnover-rate among drivers is extremely high. These conditions are prevalent because waiting hours at a border crossing in order to make a 20-mile round trip, with an empty trailer on the return, is not a lucrative business. Moving intercontinental freight is, so the trucks and drivers who make long-haul journeys tend to be of a higher quality. Since it is uneconomical to run a state-of-the-art rig near the border, trailers are usually offloaded at depots near the border. In the case of south-bound traffic, a short-haul truck is then contracted to move the freight to a customs broker who will then order another short-haul truck to transport the freight to another depot across the border. A long-haul truck will then pick up the load and carry it into the interior. The drivers of these short-haul rigs tend to be younger, less skilled, and are paid only nominal wages— as little as $7 to $10 per trip. As a result, the potential payoff for carrying contraband through a congested border crossing is all the more tempting.[3] The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates that more than half of the cocaine that arrives in the United States comes via the southwest border.[4] Even with the rise in the number of inspectors and investigators assigned to the 28 border-entry points in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, given both the volume and the nature of the trucking sector that services the border, the U.S. government clearly is facing “needle-in-a-haystack” odds as it strives to detect and intercept illicit drugs. The pure cocaine to feed America’s annual coke habit could be transported in just fifteen of the more than 20 million 40-foot containers that arrived at America’s land and sea borders each year. And in addition to looking for drugs, the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection is charged with monitoring compliance with more than 400 laws and 34 international treaties, statutes, agreements, and conventions on behalf of 40 federal agencies.[5] So while the prevalence of migrant and narcotics smuggling seems to provide a compelling rationale for tightening up controls along U.S. borders, aggressive border inspections in turn, confront improbable odds while fostering the kinds of conditions that generate ample time and opportunity within a Mexican and US border city for these illicit transfers to occur. Hardened borders also transform the cost-reward structure so amateur crooks are replaced by sophisticated criminal enterprises and corruption issues become more pronounced. In short, the experience of the southwest border suggests that aggressive border security measures end up contributing to problems that inspired them in the first place. The Open Border Paradox The United States has enjoyed the remarkable good fortune of having the oft-heralded “longest undefended border in the world” with it Canadian neighbor to the north. For much of the two nation’s history, to the extent that there was a government presence along the 49th parallel, it was only to collect customs duties. As a result, the 5,525 mile border can be summed up as a national boundary with no fences and a few toll gates. In recent years, those toll gates have come under increasing pressure as cross border trade has flourished. Take the automotive industry, for example. General Motors, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler manufacture many of the parts to build their cars and trucks from plants in the Canadian province of Ontario. Several times each day these parts are delivered to the assembly plants in the United States. Delivery trucks are loaded so that parts meant for specific vehicles can be unloaded and placed directly on the appropriate chassis as it moves down the assembly line. This “just-in-time” delivery system has given the Big Three a more cost-effective and efficient production process. It has also generated a great deal of truck traffic. For example, up to 9000 trucks a day transit the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario. At these rates, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials must clear one truck every 18 seconds. If they fall behind, the parking lot can accommodate only 90 tractor-trailers at a time. Once the parking lot fills, trucks back up onto the bridge. The resulting pileup virtually closes the border, generating roadway chaos throughout metropolitan Windsor and Detroit, and costs the average automotive assembly plant an average of $1 million per hour in lost production. Over the past two decades, the episodic attention directed at the northern border was primarily centered around efforts to minimize any source of administrative friction that added to cost and delay of legitimate commerce. The notion of the 49th parallel as a security issue is a recent phenomenon that burst into the limelight just prior to the millennium. The catalyst was the December 1999 arrest of an Algerian terrorist with ties to Osama bin Laden in Port Angeles, Washington. Ahmed Ressam had arrived onboard a ferry from Vancouver in a passenger car with a trunk full of bomb-making materials. Only a U.S. Customs Service official’s unease with the way Ressam answered her questions prevented him from driving onto American soil. The jitters surrounding the Ressam arrest turned into near panic immediately following the September 11 attacks. Worries about the possibility of additional attacks led to the effective sealing of the border as every truck, car, driver, and passenger came under close examination. Within a day there was a 16-hour queue at the major border crossings in Michigan and New York.[6] By September 13, Damiler-Chrysler announced they would have to close an assembling plant on the following day because their supplies were stuck on the north side of the border.[7] On September 14, Ford announced they would be closing 5 plants the following week.[8] Washington quickly reconsidered its initial response and within a week, the border inspection wait times returned close to normal. On its face, the open and very limited controls exercised at the U.S.-Canada border would suggest that it was ripe for exploitation by criminals and terrorists. The reality is that the imperative to manage cross-border threats without disrupting trade that amounts to more than $1 billion a day and the travel of 220 million people each year, has led to an extraordinary degree of cross-border cooperation. On the Vermont-Quebec border, for instance, Canadian and U.S. law enforcement officers at the federal, state, provincial, and local levels have been meeting for 18 years to discuss their criminal cases without any formal charter. The relationships are such that participants sit together and share information in much the same way they might at a roll call if they all belonged to the same police precinct.[9] The resultant collegiality spills over into their daily police work. In fact, local agents in Vermont or New Hampshire who are frustrated on occasion by bureaucratic obstacles to getting information or assistance from U.S. federal agencies have found a successful end-run to be to seek out their Canadian counterparts and ask them to serve as intermediaries for their requests! In Washington state and British Colombia, U.S. and Canadian police, immigration and customs officials, stood up a bi-national team in 1996 to work on cross-border crimes with local, state, and provincial enforcement agencies. The team was called the “Integrated Border Enforcement Team (IBET)” and initially focused on drug smuggling, but the portfolio later expanded to include terrorism. Following the September 11 attacks, Washington and Ottawa agreed to establish a total of 8 of these IBETs along the border.[10] The movement towards emphasizing a broader framework of bi-national cooperation versus focusing on the physical borderline gained impetus in 1999 when Prime Minister Jean Chretien and President Bill Clinton formed a process of consultation labeled the “Canada-U.S. Partnership (CUSP).” The process had as its objective the reinvention of border management to support the seamless passage of legitimate flows of people and goods between the two countries.[11] Progress towards this end was somewhat halting until after September 11. With 40 percent of its GDP tied to trade with the United States[12] , the post-9-11 closing of the border transformed the CUSP agenda into Ottawa’s top priority. The then Canadian foreign minister, John Manley, was dispatched to Washington to meet with the new White House Director of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge. Manley found a sympathetic audience in Ridge who had just stepped down as Governor of Pennsylvania (Canada was that state’s number 1 trade partner.) Together they hammered out a 30 point “Smart Border Action Plan” which they announced on December 10, 2001. The preamble of the declaration declared:   Public Security and economic security are mutually reinforcing. By working together to develop a zone of confidence against terrorist activity, we create a unique opportunity to build a smart border for the 21st century; a border that securely facilitates the free flow of people and commerce; a border that reflects the largest trading relationship in the world.[13]   In short, in dramatic contrast to the approach the United States had pursued on its southern border throughout the 1990s, with respect to its northern border Washington has concluded that its security is optimized by striving to keep the border as open as possible, while working to improve cooperative bi-national arrangements. Indeed, efforts to harden the border along the 49th parallel have been assessed to be self-defeating not just in economic terms, but in security terms. Closing the border in the wake of a terrorist attack only reinforces the military value of engaging in such attacks. This is because it means the U.S. government ends up doing something to itself that no other world power could aspire to accomplish— it imposes a blockade on its own economy. The result is to convert a small investment in terror into massive disruption of daily life that has a clear and adverse effect on the U.S. and overall global economy. America’s adversaries would undoubtedly take solace in this and recognize that the potential benefits of this kind of warfare warrants consideration. Beyond Border Control Embracing openness and advancing homeland security need not be an "either-or" proposition if Washington is willing to apply the lessons it has drawn from its northern border to Mexico and the broader global community. The end game must not be about defending a line on a map, but advancing greater bilateral integration while managing important safety, security, and other public policy interests. This balancing act can be accomplished by: (1) developing the means to validate in advance the overwhelming majority of the people and goods that cross the border as law abiding and low risk; and (2) enhancing the means of federal agents to target and intercept inbound high risk people and goods. Accomplishing the first is key to succeeding at the second since there will always be limits on the time and resources available for agents to conduct investigations and inspections. The goal must be to limit the size of the haystack in which there are most likely to be illicit needles. Verifying legitimate cross border flows as truly legitimate is not as fearsome task as it might first appear. This is because aggregate border crossing numbers are somewhat misleading since so many of the vehicles, drivers, and people are regular customers. For instance, while there were 4.2 million recorded southwest border truck crossings in 1999, these crossings were made by roughly 80,000 trucks.[14] If we are willing to make the investment, the technologies are certainly available to identify frequent travelers as such. After undergoing a pre-screening application and inspection process, vehicles can be equipped with an electronic transponder and the driver can be provided with a NAFTA transportation identity card with encoded biometric information to confirm that they are in fact who they profess to be. Quickly clearing these vehicles and their drivers allows inspectors to focus more of their time and energy on examining unfamiliar or suspicious traffic. Similarly, the vast majority of the daily pedestrian border crossings are made by day laborers who return to their homes south of the border each evening. These individuals can be recognized as such by inspectors who are assigned to the border. Well-designed border crossings that are adequately staffed with inspectors who are well-trained in behavior pattern recognition can be more effective than reliance on high-technology when dealing with this foot traffic. An inspector does not need a machine to tell her if she is looking at a face she has never seen before. And a biometric devise is useless in detecting behaviors such as excessive anxiety that should arouse suspicion. There is no substitute for human judgment when making these kinds of calls. Manufacturers, carriers, shippers, importers or exporters could be encouraged to adopt stringent internal security practices that reduce their exposure to internal criminal conspiracies and which deter criminal elements from targeting their vehicles and goods once they leave a factory, warehouse, or transshipment facility. They should also be encouraged to invest in information and tracking technologies to maintain near real-time accountability of their drivers, vehicles, and cargo from the point of origin through the final destination. Finally, they should transmit in advance, the electronic information border agents need to assess their compliance with the applicable laws and regulations. Theft-resistant transportation networks are more difficult for criminals and terrorists to compromise. Should there be advance intelligence of such a compromise, these information systems will make it easier to locate and interdict shipments that might contain illegal migrants or contraband before it enters a crowded port or land border inspection facility; alternatively, authorities can put together a “controlled-delivery” sting operation, where the contraband is allowed to reach the intended recipient so that the appropriate arrests can be made. Given the value this has for security, the U.S. government should work to create every incentive for expanding participation in these frequent-traveler programs including providing adequate staff to quickly process applications and eliminating or substantially reducing or waiving of the fees for receiving these biometric cards and transponders. Since these programs advance our national security, making an appropriate investment in federal resources to them is appropriate. Still, bringing about the kind of transformation that makes the private sector a willing and able partner in supporting a reinvented border control mission requires strong market incentives. Happily such incentives exists if the U.S. government is thoughtful about how new investments in transportation infrastructure are made at and near the border. Specifically, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century has targeted substantial funding for major roadway improvements under the Coordinated Border Infrastructure Program.[15] As development and management plans for such projects as the “Ports-to-Plain” Corridor and the I-69 NAFTA highway are drawn-up, the development of a “dedicated trade lane” should be incorporated. That is, like commuter “High Occupancy Vehicle” (HOV) lanes found around many metropolitan areas, access to a dedicated trade lane would be restricted to only those vehicles and drivers and that cargo that participates in the new border management regime. An additional incentive could come by moving many of the border entry inspection processes away from the physical border itself and instead consolidate them into a single trilateral “NAFTA inspection facility” and locate it on a dedicated traffic lane that leads to the border. For instance there is an 18-mile new toll road leading from I-39 to the Mexican state of Nueva Leon via the recently constructed Colombia Bridge on the outskirts of Laredo, Texas. Why not have the United States, Mexico, and Canada agree to grant extraterritorial legal authority within a NAFTA inspection facility placed at the start of that toll road where trucks, drivers, and cargo could be examined by inspectors from all three countries and where each agency is allowed to enforce their respective national laws and regulations for goods and conveyances bound for their jurisdiction. Statutes governing the development of border crossing facilities and infrastructure should be examined to identify legal barriers which prevent or slow the investment of federal monies in these projects. Specifically, there should be a fast track for completing environmental impact studies that can delay border infrastructure projects up to ten years. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection has already embraced this approach in sea ports under a program Commissioner Robert Bonner has called the “Container Security Initiative.” An important element of that initiative is stationing U.S. Customs inspectors overseas in loading and transshipment ports to inspect suspicious cargo before it is even loaded on a ship. Nations who agree to participate are given reciprocal privileges in U.S. ports.[16] In the North American context, the end-state, ideally, should be to develop a single zone conducting “one-stop” arrival and departure inspections. In the case of northbound trucks from Mexico City and Monterey and southbound trucks bound for the Mexican interior, operators would have to stop just once at a location where there is plenty of space to conduct inspections so there is no risk of hours-long backups that now routinely plague the bridges. Once the trucks are cleared, the flow of traffic could be closely monitored by use of “intelligent transportation systems” (ITS) radio frequency or GPS technologies. But simply relocating where inspections take place is not enough. Border control agencies need to fundamentally change the way they are doing business as well. The days of random, tedious, administrative and labor-intensive border inspection systems— the bane of every legitimate international traveler and business— must be numbered. The manpower constraints inherent in traditional border-control practices guarantee their continuing inability to adequately police the surge in continental and global commerce. What is the alternative? The answer lies in placing greater emphasis on developing the means to enhance “domain awareness” and the capacity to perform “anomaly detection.” In the computer industry, “anomaly detection” represents the most promising means for detecting hackers intent on stealing data or transmitting computer viruses.[17] The process involves monitoring the cascading flows of computer traffic with an eye towards discerning what is “normal” traffic; i.e., that which moves by way of the most technologically rational route. Once this baseline is established, software is written to detect that which is aberrant. A good computer hacker will try to look as close as possible to a legitimate user. But, since he is not, he inevitably must do some things differently and good cyber-security software will detect that variation, and deny access. For those hackers who manage to get through, their breach is identified and shared so that this abnormal behavior can be removed from the guidance of what is “normal” and acceptable. In much the same way, the overwhelming majority of the vehicles, people, and cargo that move across the U.S. borders move in predictable patterns. If inspectors have the means to analyze and keep track of these flows, they will have the means to detect “aberrant” behavior. In short, “anomaly detection” of cross-border flows is possible, if the regulatory and enforcement agencies whose daily tasks is to police those flows: (1) are given access to intelligence about real or suspected threats, and (2) are provided the means to gather, share, and mine private sector data that provides a comprehensive picture of “normal” cross border traffic so as to enhance their odds of detecting threats when they materialize. If the public sector undertakes these changes, the private-sector must also change its attitude about engaging in self-policing and sharing anything but the minimum amounts of relevant data with government agencies. Border control agencies have important and legitimate jobs to perform. The general public wants restrictions on the flows of contraband such as weapons, drugs, and child pornography. Immigration policies require that who enters and who leaves their jurisdictions be monitored and controlled. Many public-health strategies aimed at managing the spread of disease require the identification and isolation of people, livestock, and agricultural products that could place the general population at risk. Safety and environmental threats connected with unsafe shipping and trucking mandate that the transportation sector be monitored. And trade rules must be enforced for trade agreements to be sustainable. Barriers to continental progress The approach to border management outlined above has started to gain some currency with respect to the U.S.-Canada border. Just prior to the first anniversary of the tragic attacks on New York and Washington, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien met on the Detroit-side of the Ambassador Bridge to launch an initiative dubbed “the Free and Secure Trade (FAST)” program whose purpose is to move pre-approved goods across the border quickly. The two leaders also announced the expansion of program designed to speed the flow of pre-screened “low-risk” travelers across the border known as NEXUS along with a number of actions they are taking in support of the Ridge-Manley Smart Border agreement.[18] Against the backdrop of the world’s busiest commercial border crossing, President Bush declared:   With these two initiatives, we'll ensure faster movement of legal, low-risk goods, and faster travel for people cross our borders, and we'll be able to better enhance security. Our inspectors will spend less time inspecting law-abiding citizens and more time inspecting those who may harm us.[19]   For his part, the former Prime Minister Chrétien asserted:   We recognized that we could create a ‘smart border’-- one that was not only more secure, but more efficient for trade, to permit our businesses to get back to business, to allow our nurses, engineers and computer technicians to provide their services, and our students to attend classes. To let our communities continue planning a shared future together, secure in the knowledge that the border welcomes legitimate trade and travelers.[20]   While ample challenges remain with regard to adequate staffing, infrastructure, data management, and intelligence issues to make this “risk management” approach more capable and credible, there is clearly a consensus that measures that would have the net effect of hardening the border between Canada and the United States would be counterproductive. Meanwhile, the situation on U.S.-Mexican border stands in marked contrast. This is not for the want of any willingness on Mexico’s part. President Vincente Fox has repeatedly offered to have a no-holds bar conversation on the future of its shared border with the United States. But, there has been little enthusiasm in the post 9-11 Washington to reciprocate. While the new homeland security imperative is cited as the rationale for change to the north, to the south it is being proffered up to explain why the U.S.-Mexican border reform agenda has move from the political fast track to the breakdown lane. The persistent incidence of crime, narcotics and migrant trafficking, and corruption are rallying points for advocates of “tightening-up” border enforcement. The generally unchallenged assumption is that, now more than ever, the United States needs to be committed to vigilance along the southern border. But, the case for fundamental reform should be even more compelling. Presumably, the combination of the new high security stakes and the acknowledgement in the Ridge-Manley agreement that hardening the 49th parallel is self-defeating, should create fertile ground for a thoughtful reexamination of the prevailing approach to managing the southern border. So why hasn’t this logic been the prevailing one? The answer lies with the fact that the southern border is imprisoned in a legacy of immigration and drug enforcement efforts. Despite two decades of evidence to the contrary, Washington continues to see interdiction at the border as the key to successfully combating the northbound flow of illicit drugs and migrants. To adopt the “smart border” agenda throughout North America will require that Washington countenance an alternative approach to dealing with the issues of illicit drugs and immigration. It will require the federal agencies for whom border enforcement has been a growth business to acknowledge the unintended consequence of their collective effort has been to actually make the border region more difficult to police and secure. And it will require those within the U.S. Congress who oppose NAFTA to stop exploiting America’s newfound homeland security imperative as a means for advancing their protectionist agenda. Conclusion The most important reason to get border management right is to satisfy what is arguably the most critical homeland security imperative of our time: to reduce the risk that hemispheric and global trade lanes will be exploited to smuggle a weapons of mass destruction into the United States. Without a committed effort to advance a bilateral approach to border management, terrorists will continue to have ample opportunity to bring their battles to American streets. It is in the collective interest of the United States and Mexico to work together to mitigate that risk. But the impetus for challenging conventional notions of border control owes it source not just to a transformed post-9/11 threat environment. It is also a long overdue response to the evolution of commercial and social patterns of interaction throughout North America that have made continental relationships more dynamic, organic, and integrated. As such, the case against traditional border management practices such as those pursued along the southwest border had been already made by the close of the last century for anyone willing to look at objectively at the yawning gap between enforcement rhetoric and reality. Stepped-up efforts to harden the border are a flawed, even counterproductive, approach to advancing important security and public policy interests. By contrast, the kind of “smart border” initiatives being embraced on the northern border hold out real promise. The outline for transformed border management is clear. It requires a risk management approach to policing cross-border flows which includes the close collaboration of the major beneficiaries of an increasingly open North American continent— the United States’ neighbors to the North and the South, and the private sector. The stakes of getting this right are also clear. Transforming how the border is managed is an essential step towards assuring the long-term sustainability of hemispheric economic integration within the context of the transformed security environment of the post-9-11 world. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I look forward to responding to your questions. [1] Peter Andreas, Border Games: Policing the U.S.- Mexico Divide (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000). [2] Keith Philips and Carlos Manzanares, “Transportation Infrastructure and the Border Economy,” in The Border Economy (Dallas: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, June 2001), 11. [3] Field visit by the author to Laredo, Texas Aug 20-21, 2001. [4] Office of National Drug Control Policy, National Drug Control Strategy: 2001 Annual Report, Shielding U.S. Borders from the Drug Threat (Washington: USGPO, 2001). [5] U.S. Customs Service, “About U.S. Customs,” accessed on September 6, 2002 at http://www.customs.gov/about/about.htm. [6] U.S. Customs Service, Border Wait Times at major northern and southern border crossings. Current border wait-times information is available at http://www.customs.gov/travel/travel.htm. [7] Steve Erwin, Automakers forced to shut down: Parts shortage suspends production,” Edmonton Journal, September 14, 2001, F4. [8] “Parts Shortages Cause Ford Shutdown,” Associated Press, September 14, 2001. [9] The Committee is informally known as the “Leene Committee,” named for its founder, James Leene, a former policeman who serve’s in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Burlington, VT. [10] 6th Annual Canada-U.S Cross-Border Crime Forum Press Release, July 6, 2002, accessed on September 6, 2002 at http://www.sgc.gc.ca/Releases/e20020722.htm [11] George Haynal, “Interdependence, Globalization, and North American Borders,” in Governance and Public Security (Syracuse: Maxwell School, 2002), 55. [12] Authors calculations based on statistics available at Statistics Canada, www.statcan.ca [13] The Whitehouse Office of Homeland Security, “Action Plan for Creating a Secure and Smart Border,” Dec 12, 2001, accessed on September 5, 2002 at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/12/20011212-6.html [14] Office of the Inspector General, “Interim Report on Status of Implementing the North American Free Trade Agreement’s Cross Border Trucking Provisions,” Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, MH-2001-059, (May 8, 2001), 7. Also, Statement of the Honorable Kenneth M. Mead, Inspector General, USDOT, “Motor Carrier Safety at the U.S. – Mexican Border,” July 18, 2001 before the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, United States Senate. [15] TEA-21 [1119(a)] [16] Robert C. Bonner, “Pushing Borders Outwards: Rethinking Customs Border Enforcement,” A speech presented at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., Jan 17, 2002.
    Testimony by Stephen E. Flynn March 23, 2004
  • Terrorism and Counterterrorism
    Terrorism Expert Says Chances of New Attack in U.S. ’Very High’
    Jessica Stern, a leading expert on terror who was the National Security Council director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs in the Clinton administration, says the United States cannot let its guard down against terrorism because the chances for a second 9/11 attack remain “very high.” The author of “The Ultimate Terrorists” (1999), the forthcoming “Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill” (August 2003), and "The Protean Enemy" in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, Stern adds that “the prospect for terrorist groups to get access to nuclear and biological weapons is a very, very grave threat.” Stern is currently a lecturer in public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor at cfr.org, on July 29, 2003.   Other Interviews   Now that American forces seem to be closing in on Saddam Hussein, what have we learned or not learned about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction [WMD] or its links to terrorist groups? From what I read, it doesn’t appear that we have learned very much about the WMD program. The fact that apparently nothing has been found doesn’t yet mean that nothing’s there. There are so many different possibilities: that WMD are there, and we haven’t found them; that they were destroyed immediately before the invasion; or that parts of the program were moved. In regard to biological weapons, the most important technology is intellectual, really. It is possible to produce those weapons fairly rapidly if the expertise exists. It is not necessary to harbor a large stockpile to still have a capability. In regard to connections to terrorist groups, there is very little coming out in the press about that. But I did hear more than I wrote about in the Foreign Affairs article [“The Protean Enemy”] from Osama bin Laden’s biographer, Hamid Mir, who has seen Hezbollah quite active in Iraq. [Mir] reported that many people felt that the only way to fight U.S. troops [in Iraq] was through terrorism, that clearly that was the only way to resist. The notion of serving as a terrorist seemed to have quite a broad appeal, according to Mir. But isn’t the fighting in Iraq going on now better described as guerrilla action, rather than as terrorism? You’re right. One of the reasons to call it guerrilla rather than terrorist tactics is that [Iraqi attackers] are fighting U.S. troops rather than civilians. But I was fascinated to hear early on that a group claiming to be part of al Qaeda took responsibility for some of those attacks, while the Pentagon is claiming the attacks are coming from troops who were loyal to Saddam Hussein. Who knows? Do you think Osama bin Laden is dead? My guess is that he is still alive. Some people have said that, if he were alive, we would have heard more from him. What do you think? I’ve heard reports from Pakistan about reported sightings of bin Laden in Afghanistan for some time. This is an area rife with rumor, so you really don’t know. You write in your Foreign Affairs article that you have been interviewing terrorists for five years. What got you interested in interviewing them? I had been working on a book on the prospects of terrorists using weapons of mass destruction. I just got an idea that maybe I could talk to some of the individuals who had acquired or attempted to acquire chemical or biological agents, and I realized that these guys liked to talk to me. When I started talking to individuals who claimed to be fighting in the name of God, I found it irresistible to try and understand how it was that someone who seemed to be quite religious, observant, or spiritual could do something so evil. I just had to understand this. I got a bug and had to go and interview, and I started traveling around. I began this in 1998, and I first went to Pakistan in February 1999. There wasn’t much attention being paid to the groups in Pakistan then. Now, a number of them have joined bin Laden’s International Islamic Front. I think they were willing to talk to me because they hadn’t received a lot of attention at that point. They wanted to be taken seriously, really, as terrorists, even though they described themselves not as terrorists but as jihadis. Did you ever talk to anyone who worked for al Qaeda? I never went to seek out someone with al Qaeda because I did not think it would be safe for me. Since I had worked for the U.S. government, it was not a good idea. But a number of the Pakistani jihadis whom I knew well had joined bin Laden’s International Islamic Front. At the time, I had heard they had a connection with al Qaeda, but I did not know how close that connection would become. Two years ago, your greatest concern was the possibility that nuclear and other weapons would be made available to terrorist groups. Is that still a very high concern? Yes. I think the prospect for terrorist groups to get access to nuclear and biological weapons is a very, very grave threat. The fact that I have recently been focusing on the terrorists as opposed to the weapons doesn’t mean the latter aren’t a very serious problem. Biological weapons are a particular concern. A lot of people have said that the technical difficulties of delivering biological weapons make them less threatening. Is that not accurate? It is accurate. A high-tech delivery system is quite difficult to put together. But a low-tech delivery system is far less difficult. We saw a very low-tech delivery system using the U.S. Postal Service to spread some anthrax. Only 18 people or so were affected, and several people died, but [the incidents] did have a major impact. In the past, you were very concerned about scientists from the former Soviet Union spreading nuclear weapons. Are you any less concerned about that? Not really. There has been a lot of progress since I left the government when I was working on this issue. Nevertheless, there are still reports coming out of the former Soviet Union about criminal groups trying to acquire [nuclear weapons-grade] materials. There have even been reports of organized criminals working together with terrorist groups. Unfortunately, this is a threat that is going to stay with us for some time. On terrorism in general, if you were going to grade on a level of one to ten, what would be the level of concern that Americans should have about another attack in the United States? Very high. The prospect of other attacks in the United States is quite high but, at the same time, [it should not be a great concern] to individual Americans because the likelihood of any individual falling prey to a terrorist attack is vanishingly small. [Attacks are] a concern mainly for the government. It is imperative that the government take this threat extremely seriously, because the government actually has the capacity to do something about this. There isn’t much that individual Americans can do. Where would your concerns be focused? On ports, for instance? I can’t really say. There are a lot of vulnerabilities. You have identified one of the very major vulnerabilities— ports. We know that al Qaeda has been thinking of transportation systems— trains and bridges, for instance. I would be concerned about shopping malls. So as we near the second anniversary of 9/11, the United States should not let up its guard against terrorism? And no particular reason for believing the war against terrorism is over? No, I don’t think so.
    Interview with Bernard Gwertzman and Jessica Stern July 29, 2003
  • Terrorism and Counterterrorism
    Emergency Responders
    Written nearly two years after September 11, 2001, this report concludes that the United States is drastically underfunding local emergency responders and remains dangerously unprepared to handle a catastrophic attack on American soil, particularly one involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-impact conventional weapons. If the nation does not take immediate steps to better identify and address the urgent needs of emergency responders, the next terrorist incident could be even more devastating than 9/11. These are the central findings of the Council-sponsored independent Task Force on Emergency Responders, a blue-ribbon panel of Nobel laureates, U.S. military leaders, former high-level government officials, and other senior experts, led by former Senator Warren B. Rudman and advised by former White House terrorism and cyber-security chief Richard A. Clarke. This report marks the first time that data from emergency responder communities has been brought together to estimate national needs. The Task Force met with U.S. firefighters, police officers, emergency medical workers, public health providers, and other emergency responders—whose lives depend on the adequacy of their preparedness for another terrorist attack—and asked them what additional programs they truly need to establish a minimum effective response to a catastrophic attack. The shockingly high unbudgeted needs they articulated make clear the importance of closing the gap between current levels of emergency preparedness and minimum essential preparedness levels across the United States. This is a must read for anyone interested in how the United States can, and must, better protect itself.
    Task Force Report by Warren B. Rudman, Jamie F. Metzl and Richard A. Clarke June 29, 2003
  • Iraq
    Arms Expert Says Bush Administration Exaggerated Claims of Iraq’s WMD
    Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that promotes arms control, says senior Bush administration officials knew claims about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were exaggerated. “The real controversy now is the difference between the administration’s dire rhetoric and dire warnings about Iraq’s WMD capability and its alleged possession of such weapons, and what we know so far, which is that there is no physical evidence of actual chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons,” Kimball says. “My personal view is that there were those in the administration who wanted to have this war no matter what. They recognized that the charge of Iraqi non-compliance with the U.N. resolutions barring weapons of mass destruction was the strongest possible charge against Iraq and the strongest possible justification for war.” Kimball says, “What is disturbing is that high-ranking administration officials certainly knew” that claims about Iraq’s weapons arsenal “were based on sketchy evidence.” Kimball was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on June 4, 2003.   Other Interviews   It’s been two months since the war effectively ended in Iraq, and there are no signs of any weapons of mass destruction, which had been the administration’s raison d’etre for getting into the war. Were you surprised at this? I was not especially surprised, but my lack of surprise has to do with my views about the situation going into the war. Which were what? If one takes a close look at the evidence, prior to the war, I think it’s fair to say that Iraq had capabilities to make weapons of mass destruction. And it was unclear whether Iraq had destroyed weapons that it might have produced with those capabilities. What the administration did was to make the claim— I think it was an exaggerated claim— that the absence of evidence of disarmament meant that Iraq must therefore have these weapons. [What] we see in fact from the two months of efforts by U.S. [weapons inspection] teams, [is] some evidence, in the form of these two [mobile-laboratory] trailers that have been uncovered, that Iraq had capabilities to produce some biological weapons agents, but we have not seen any actual biological, chemical, and certainly no nuclear weapons. [That] conforms with what very careful analysts thought was and was not there, but the real controversy now is the difference between the administration’s dire rhetoric and dire warnings about Iraq’s WMD capability and its alleged possession of such weapons, and what we know so far, which is that there is no physical evidence of actual chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Do you believe the administration had this dire view because it wanted to have the war and Iraq’s alleged WMD were just a convenient excuse? My personal view is that there were those in the administration who wanted to have this war no matter what. They recognized that Iraqi non-compliance with the U.N. resolutions barring weapons of mass destruction was the strongest possible charge against Iraq and the strongest possible justification for war. So there was a great deal of pressure, there was a high motivation for them to find evidence of such WMD capability and possession. What you see here is perhaps not an outright manipulation of the intelligence-gathering process and the findings, but an expression by administration officials of the worst-case [scenario] put together by the intelligence community. What is disturbing is that high-ranking administration officials certainly knew that these claims were based on sketchy evidence. Does that include Secretary of State Colin Powell? He still claims he’s sure Iraq had chemical weapons. In Powell’s presentation [to the U.N. Security Council on February 5], if you go through it carefully, he was very careful about what he actually charged Iraq was doing. But the way in which it was presented, the manner of speaking, conveyed a sense— partly because of the preponderance of circumstantial evidence he was bringing together, partly because of his phraseology— that the Iraqis must have these weapons, because they’re obfuscating, because they’ve had them in the past, because we see no evidence of their destruction. The conclusion that he wanted the listener to come to was Iraq must therefore have these weapons. In an article you wrote in Arms Control Today, you say that “Powell asserted that ’Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons.’ ” Yes, and that was the strongest claim that he made. It was based, as I recall, on satellite intelligence about the movement of certain containers— believed to be chemical munitions storage facilities— prior to an UNMOVIC [United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission] visit. But still, the evidence he presented did not prove the Iraqis had such chemical weapons. Nevertheless, he asserted that point. In addition, much of this evidence that the administration had of Iraqi WMD capability was coming from human intelligence sources, which are notorious for being unreliable. Sometimes they can be extremely valuable, but sometimes they can be highly unreliable. And we know that many of these human intelligence sources were identified by activist groups such as the Iraqi National Congress [opposition group], which had a strong motivation to see the United States invade Iraq. In 2002, the CIA issued a report which found that only 30 percent of the information the Iraqi National Congress provided to the United States was reliable. If Iraq indeed did not have weapons of mass destruction, why didn’t Saddam Hussein supply evidence to U.N. inspectors to prove he didn’t have them? First of all, let me just correct you on one thing, which is that we know that Iraq had chemical and had biological weapons. We know that from the inspections process that went on in the 1990s. So the question is: Did he destroy all those weapons, and did he reconstitute them after ’98? Why he didn’t provide evidence of the destruction? There may be a couple of possibilities. One might be that Saddam was concerned about what would happen if he did reveal that he continued to possess chem [or] bio weapons or capabilities specifically designed to produce them after 1998. He might have felt he was in a damned-if-I-do, damned-if-I-don’t situation. It may have provided, he thought, greater evidence for the United States to call for a regime change. Another possibility is that, with respect to some of the accounted-for agents necessary to make chemical or biological weapons, they may genuinely have been lost in the system. We know for instance that, in the United States, through the course of the Cold War and the U.S. weapons production process, we have not been able to account for all nuclear-weapons-related agents. We’re still finding, in some of our major weapons facilities, burial pits containing materials that someone knew about in the past but for which records were not preserved. Now this is a much shorter period of time between the first Gulf War and now, but it could very well be that the Iraqis lost track of some of these materials, some of these bomb casings that could have contained some of these weapons. Or they might have, as they claimed, destroyed them in such a way that they could not prove years later that they had been destroyed. Those are some explanations that give them the benefit of the doubt. It still may be possible that Saddam, up until the war and maybe through the war, retained some quantity of chemical or biological munitions. I would not be surprised if United States investigators over the next few months did find some relatively small amounts of such weapons. But what we have to keep in mind is that the rationale for the war was that the Iraqi WMD programs constituted an imminent threat to the United States and its allies. Even if Iraq continued to possess some dozens of chemical weapons shells, did that constitute an imminent threat to the United States and its allies? I would argue no. The only WMD program or capability that really would pose an imminent threat to the United States would have been Iraqi possession of nuclear weapons, and it is quite clear that Iraq after 1998 did not have a viable nuclear weapons program. [U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief] Mohamed ElBaradei, as late as March of this year, when he reported to the United Nations, said that there was no evidence that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. What is your feeling about letting the U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq to continue their work? They certainly should be allowed back in, for two reasons. No. 1, they have a mandate going back to the original U.N. resolutions to finish the task of verifiably disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and other prohibited weapons. They are well-equipped, they’re knowledgeable, they’re trusted by the international community to do that job, and they’re ready to go. And there may still be some WMD capabilities or traces of WMD that require immediate attention. We don’t want these materials to fall into unfriendly hands. The second reason is that the credibility of the U.S. investigation has been compromised by the gap between the prewar claims and the immediate postwar lack of dramatic findings. There is a need for a third-party, objective arbiter of the facts on the ground to resolve the questions about Iraq’s WMD program. It’s hard to understand why the United States has not yet allowed UNMOVIC and the IAEA back into Iraq. I think that part of the motivation is that some elements in the Bush administration are still angry with Hans Blix [the head of UNMOVIC] and ElBaradei for not taking the harder line that they would have liked them to take when they reported to the United Nations. This may be a case of petty pay-back that is getting in the way of allowing very qualified inspectors to get back in there and do their job. Do you have any thoughts about why the American public, if I read it correctly, does not seem overly concerned one way or the other on this question? Part of the problem is this. For many months, the American public had heard about the viciousness of the Saddam Hussein regime. They heard about the importance of protecting the United States from weapons of mass destruction. They heard about the possibility and the— as the Bush people would say— the presence of WMD in Iraq. The administration also connected Iraq with 9/11, I think erroneously, but it did. It’s only now, after the fact, that the media and Congress are beginning to ask the hard questions that are necessary to dissect the administration’s loose logic and rationale for the war. I would predict that the public will become more concerned about the findings or the lack of findings in Iraq, and they will become more concerned about the Bush administration’s credibility on other issues, if the dire prewar assessments are not confirmed by the facts on the ground.
    Interview with Bernard Gwertzman and Daryl Kimball June 5, 2003
  • Terrorism and Counterterrorism
    America—Still Unprepared, Still in Danger
    America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Yet, only a year after 9/11, there are signs that Americans are already lapsing back into complacency. This comprehensive report seeks to make the nation aware of the dangers it still faces by highlighting the nation’s vulnerabilities and outlining a number of homeland security priorities that should be pursued with urgency and national purpose. The Bush administration deserves credit for the security initiatives it has already implemented in the wake of September 11, 2001. According to this report, however, significant risks still confront the United States. For example, local and state police continue to operate without access to terrorism watch lists produced by the State Department; an attack by a weapon of mass destruction on an unexamined container aboard a ship or truck might lead to a shutdown of America’s global transportation system, with attendant disastrous effects on the world economy; and first responders remain unprepared to handle a chemical or biological attack, which could lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths.  Made up of two former senators, two former secretaries of state, two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other homeland security experts, the independent Task Force recommends several key steps the administration can take in order to improve the nation’s security. They include fostering better links between local and federal law enforcement officials via the establishment of a twenty-four-hour operations center in each state that can provide access to terrorist watch-list information; recalibrating the agenda for transportation security by allocating more funds to protect land and sea networks, which are more vulnerable than commercial aviation; and funding, equipping, and training National Guard units around the country to ensure they can support the new state homeland security plans under development by each governor.   
    Task Force Report by Gary Hart, Stephen E. Flynn and Warren B. Rudman October 31, 2002
  • Budget, Debt, and Deficits
    Reshaping America's Military: Four Alternatives
    Overview In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the ensuing war on terrorism, the United States began a massive buildup in its defense budget. There was little public debate, however, about the possible alternatives to the sweeping budget increases proposed by the Bush administration. Written as presidential speeches, this book lays out the best case for four different options, each of which could serve as the organizing principle for future U.S. defense plans and budgets. The speeches, written by leading national security expert and Council Fellow Lawrence Korb, are preceded by a memo that explains the strengths, weaknesses, and politics of each alternative. A useful guide for teachers, students, and the general reader interested in defense, this book illuminates an issue that will continue to play a prominent role in the national conversation. Download the addendum to this report [PDF].
    Report by Lawrence J. Korb July 1, 2002
  • Saudi Arabia
    Strengthening the U.S.-Saudi Relationship
    Introduction The U.S.-Saudi relationship is based on common interests that are fundamental and critical to both countries. Since September 11, however, many factions on both sides are calling for a divorce. Yet, advocating for a divorce does not take into account the powerful influence a strong U.S.-Saudi relationship has on American strategic interests and regional stability. Rather than a divorce, leaders on both sides must work to strengthen the relationship and reforge common goals. Since the end of the Gulf War, the U.S.-Saudi relationship has been largely neglected. There is no broad engagement of intellectuals, media, foreign affairs experts, and religious figures about the importance or benefit of the relationship. The cultures remain distant and the potential for misunderstanding and misreading is great. Symbols of common purpose have faded. Indeed, September 11 revealed the degree to which the gap had grown. Saudi Arabia is key to U.S. policy and pursuit of interests in the region. The absence of serious dialogue has undercut the fundamental foundations of this relationship. Sustained attention to the relationship is urgently required and serious discussion on numerous levels is painfully necessary. Through consultations on political, economic, and military issues, both sides can work toward addressing the wide gaps dividing the two countries. Now is the time to begin such discussions. The United States has in Crown Prince Abdullah a partner who is committed to positive reform in Saudi Arabia and who understands the benefit of a strong, stable U.S.-Saudi relationship. Abdullah's prominence provides the United States with an opportunity to achieve progress in moving the relationship forward. Within the context of the current escalation of violence among Israelis and Palestinians and the surge of demonstrations in the region, the United States must work with Saudi Arabia as a partner in moving all sides toward peace. Through his initiative, the Crown Prince has demonstrated his willingness and ability to take serious steps and serious risks toward peace in the region. This is an opportunity that the United States should not overlook. As the crisis deepens, Saudi involvement and coordination with the United States is crucial in helping to stop the violence and, eventually, moving the parties toward the peace table. As the United States addresses the critical components of the relationship, it must avoid further deepening the gap between the Saudi public's perceptions of the U.S.-Saudi relationship and the Saudi leadership's perception. A renewed U.S.-Saudi dialogue must work toward sustained communication that enforces the stability and the strength of the relationship. Priorities U.S. Influence The U.S.-Saudi relationship helps further American interests. Given the demands on the relationship, U.S. priorities and leverage must be devoted to primary national security and foreign policy issues. These issues are of pressing importance for the United States and must be dealt with urgently:   Middle East peace negotiations Islamic political radicalism and its export Oil supply and price stability Iraq Internal Saudi issues-i.e., economic advancement and stability-are important to the U.S.-Saudi dialogue but should be pursued with a difference in tone, urgency, and commitment. This is largely because the Crown Prince recognizes the need to undertake domestic reforms. In focusing on issues of social, political, and economic development, the United States will have the greatest chance for breakthrough if it focuses on issues that engage Saudi interests and parallel Crown Prince Abdullah's own priorities-i.e., rule of law, accession to the World Trade Organization, economic opening, and education. This should be a broad, collaborative dialogue going beyond the institutions of government. Dialogue The superficiality of contact between American intellectuals and media and those in the Arab world is serving the interests of neither; the lack of depth and variety of contact is reflected in U.S. policies. This trend will be difficult to reverse because dialogue will immediately focus on "hot button" issues and not proceed to deeper discussion. Creating a dialogue between intellectual and religious elites from the two countries should be a priority for American foundations and institutions, but it needs to be pursued patiently with a long-term view of expanding the discussion. Consultations should include Saudis who have studied at U.S. schools and universities and "next generation" leaders. Saudi Stability Maintaining Saudi stability is a cornerstone of U.S.-Saudi relations. Saudi Arabia has gone through serious change over the past fifty years-some of which is potentially destabilizing. Saudi Arabia faces significant social challenges-demography and galloping population growth, relatively slow growth in economic opportunity, tight social and religious controls, and a volatile region. The pressures on Saudi Arabia will grow over the years. Crown Prince Abdullah's regime provides a window of opportunity for the United States to move the relationship along to accommodate Saudi Arabia's and the U.S. need for change. There is reason for serious concern regarding the Saudi succession and the potential instability that may ensue after the reign of the prominent sons of Abdul Aziz. Uncertainty as a result of the generational shift in leadership from the sons of Abdul Aziz to the grandsons will be an underlying feature of Saudi politics in the future and will thus shape U.S.-Saudi relations. The Arab-Israel Crisis: Abdullah's Initiative Saudi Arabia will be the key to any success the United States has in reducing the violence between the Israelis and Palestinians. If the United States recognizes Saudi Arabia as a key partner, keeps it informed, and consults with it on issues of mutual importance, the U.S. can expect that Saudi Arabia will invest its prestige in the outcome. Abdullah's initiative is more than a vision; it demonstrates the level of concern the Saudi leadership has regarding the situation. It communicated with the Israeli public and addressed their concerns for broader peace in the Arab world. Saudi Arabia rarely takes the high profile, political role, even in Arab councils that it is now taking. The challenge for the Bush administration is to effectively harness the change. Abdullah's initiative will not be effective unless the United States helps the parties move toward a cease-fire and a political process that will connect the end of violence to the Saudi proposal. If the United States can begin a credible peace process and keep Saudi Arabia involved, it should expect Saudi Arabia to work toward reducing the volume of anti-Israel and U.S. rhetoric in the public fora, education, and media, and sell the concept of peace to the Saudi public. The need is underlined by recent experience. The United States has complained of Saudi Arabia's lack of involvement in the peace process since Oslo, and Saudi Arabia is frustrated by what it saw as U.S. disengagement from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially at a time of serious escalation. Military Military Posture The U.S.-Saudi military relationship is longstanding and a centerpiece of the U.S.-Saudi political relationship. Nevertheless, the U.S military presence in Saudi Arabia is not "secure." The absence of serious dialogue and communication has resulted in mutual misunderstanding of goals and purpose of the military relationship at the highest levels of both governments. The United States must work toward restoration of this strategic dialogue. The United States and Saudi Arabia must address, through consultation and dialogue, the growing tensions surrounding the U.S. military presence in the Saudi kingdom. Neither the United States nor Saudi Arabia want a reduction in the level of military cooperation, but U.S. military activities in their current form are increasingly unsatisfactory to both sides. The United States must address its military presence in the region within the context of both U.S.-Saudi and U.S.-Gulf relations. The United States must explore new concepts and ideas with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) about objectives, divisions of labor, risk, and ways to minimize political friction and improve efficiency in U.S. military deployment in the region. Saudi Arabia and the United States see their defense relationship differently. Both agree that the U.S. military is present in Saudi Arabia in the event that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf are invaded. The agreement stops there. The United States wishes Saudi Arabia would extend its cooperation to other missions important to American interests. The Saudis see these interests, notably those related to enforcing the no-fly zones, as not necessarily congruent with their own. The United States should not strive for an explicit set of agreements on military arrangements with Saudi Arabia, rather a consultative dialogue that sets out clearly the goals and continuously reviews the management of the relationship. Consultations on details are important. When possible, the Saudis should be convinced that the United States will operate with their consent. The U.S.-Saudi defense relationship has been a major outlet for American arms sales and defense supplies. Saudi cooperation has helped defer the cost of U.S. operations in Saudi Arabia. While this arrangement has been a cornerstone of the military and political relationship, Saudi Arabia sees it as a political and fiscal burden given their current economy. Conflict with Iraq U.S. military action against Iraq would be extremely difficult without the political support of Saudi Arabia and access to its airspace, ports and bases. Without permission to use port facilities, bases, or airfields in Saudi Arabia, a major U.S. military operation against Iraq would be incredibly difficult. Moreover, Saudi political support is critical to the willingness of most GCC and other Arab countries to support major U.S. military operations against Iraq. Jordan will not allow the United States to launch military operations against Iraq from its territory unless Saudi Arabia supports the U.S. operation. Moreover, Jordan is not a useful option for military operations against Iraq for a number of reasons: attitude of the monarchy, a divided population, and the difficulty in providing security for bases. If Jordan were to be involved in a U.S. military operation against Iraq, the United States would carry an even greater obligation for Jordan and the Hashemite monarchy's security. Moreover, securing American deployments in Jordan would be difficult. Saudi Arabia has grave reservations about U.S. military action against Iraq and does not think that U.S. strategy is adequate to carry Arab opinion, unseat Saddam, and provide for Iraq's stability thereafter. Saudi Arabia might support U.S. action against Iraq if there are clearly understood, shared objectives that are limited to the removal of Saddam Hussein, are short in duration in order to minimize Iraqi casualties, and result in a unitary post-Saddam Iraqi government that is acceptable to Saudi Arabia. Egypt's close relationship with Saudi Arabia makes it an important factor in Saudi Arabia's decision to support U.S. military action. Egypt often serves as a political cover for Saudi activities in the region, and vise versa. Saudi Arabia now enjoys fully normalized relations with Iran and would welcome any U.S. attempt toward engagement with Iran. U.S. steps would be viewed as offsetting other regional political costs that Saudi Arabia may incur if it supports U.S. military action against Iraq. Islamic Radicalism The issue of Islamic radicalism and its export is key to the stability of the region and central to American policy interests. The question is complex, but must be addressed. The United States must support Saudi efforts in confronting the impact of radical theology and its role in Saudi intellectual life. The U.S. objective is to engage the Saudi government and offer them assistance as they address: financial flows in support of Islamic radicalism; strengthening intelligence collection on individuals engaged in subversive activities. Oil Security The United States and Saudi Arabia have had a long, extremely successful petroleum relationship. Saudi Arabia will continue to be the largest source of the world's oil for the foreseeable future, making it a U.S. strategic concern for the long run. Denying Saudi Arabia and the peninsula's oil reserves to powers hostile to the United States has been a constant in American policy for over half a century. The United States is interested in the broadest possible oil market, including Russia, and yet, should not signal to Saudi Arabia a confrontational oil diversification strategy. The United States should work toward lessening and diversifying reliance on imported oil. Domestic instability born of a domestic fiscal crisis and a malfunctioning labor market is a serious potential threat to Saudi oil supply and world oil security. Financial Cooperation Saudi Arabians have what is estimated to be almost $700 billion assets invested in the United States. Maintaining these financial flows is important to the stability of American financial markets. The institutional link between the U.S. government and Saudi financial institutions has dwindled. Given the amount of resources invested in the United States and the renewed campaign to choke off al-Qaeda funds, the United States has strong interests in Saudi financial policies and should work to reestablish this institutional link. There is no clear evidence that Saudis are pulling their funds from the U.S. financial market post-9/11; yet, it would be valuable to monitor financial flows post-9/11. At the same time, the United States must be careful to use financial mechanisms wisely and with due process in order to avoid frightening Arab investment.
    Report by The Council on Foreign Relations May 30, 2002
  • Global
    War on Terrorism: World Views
    The latest issue of the Council on Foreign Relations’ semiannual publication, Correspondence: An International Review of Culture and Society, reports on what the U.S. media may have missed in coverage of the war on terrorism since Sept. 11. The issue publishes reports from Haiti, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, and all the regions of Europe, with related stories on Europe’s battles over immigration and minorities. Alexander Stille, editor of Correspondence, will be online Wednesday, March 27 at Noon EST, to discuss how the U.S. media has covered the war on terrorism and views from the rest of the world. Submit your questions either before or during the discussion. Editor’s Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.   Indianapolis, Ind.: what do you think about the criticism about reporters in general and how it has effected the media’s reporting on the war and the public’s confidence in their reporting? Example: One day I was listening to Limbaugh as he played clips of a press conference with Secretary Rumsfeld. Limbaugh made several editorial comments about the reporters. He said the reporters were asking “silly” questions and they didn’t understand anything. That night I saw the entire interview on C-SPAN. Some of the reporters I recognized (I’m a military buff) as reporters who have convered the Pentagon and military issues for many years. So I don’t appreciate comments implying they’re all ignorant and ask silly questions, etc. Alexander Stille: Good afternoon. Thanks for your question. I think there is nothing wrong with people criticizing the media as they would any institution that plays a role in public affairs. But one would hope that any criticism would be carefully grounded in fact rather than simply reflect a dislike for the media itself or be an occasion to execute the messenger bringing bad news. In this specific case, I didn’t see this press conference, but I’ve certainly found myself from time to time irritated at the level of questions at press conferences. What concerns me about the episode you’re describing is that in a climate of war questioning the Secretary of Defense can seem to some people to be inpertinent by its very nature and to be disrespectful and unpatriotic. In general I think the press has been very deferential to the government in this current crisis. Whereas good sharp questions about what we’re doing in Afghanistan are completely reasonable. But in this specific case I can’t judge it. I worry that the asking of the question itself is seen as inappropriate.   Vienna, Va.: Hi and thank you for answering our questions: Over the past seven or eight months, two related terms have been used in so many different ways that I am finding it somewhat confusing—and those terms are “terrorist” and “terrorism.” Prior to Sept. 11, the Israelis rarely used the terms terrorists for the Palestinians. In fact, depending on what press one reads to get a balanced story, the Palestinians have been called everything from “terrorists” to “freedom fighters,” with a whole range in between. Are “terrorism” and “terrorist” relative terms that everyone uses against something with which they disagree (that may or may not include physical violence)? OR is there a standard definition that has been adopted by organizations like the United Nations, Congress, or academia that is objective and easy to understand? When a term is twisted and contorted to fit any cause or individual with which one disagrees, the term loses its significance and impact. Please help! I would like to simply be able to read and listen to the news, understanding context and assumptions, knowing what is fact and what is politics (hahaha... interesting dichotomy, eh?) Thanks! Alexander Stille: Terrorism is generally understood to involve violence against non-combatants, and as the name terrorism suggests, its objective is to spread terror rather than to simply eliminate an adversary. Vladimir Lenin was quoted as saying, “Strike one in order to educate one hundred.” The World Trade Center attack is a perfect example of terrorism because its objective was clearly not simply to eliminate the 3,000 or so people who were killed but had a host of other symbolic objectives—to paralyze the U.S. economy by making people afraid to fly, visit New York—as well as to make a symbolic statement to people in the Islamic world about the vulnerability of the world’s major power. Terrorism in its classic definition has this symbolic dimension to it. Applying it to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is very tricky because there are elements of military confrontation as well as a war of symbols. Clearly, however, the strategy of many Palestinian fighters has changed in this recent intifada in which civilians have clearly been the principal target and in which terrifying and wearing down the general population in Israel is an objective. Therefore, it would seem to fit some of the classic definitions of terrorism, but one could also argue that the demolition of houses and other recent actions of the Israeli military, which have harmed civilians, have also been attempts to intimidate that population and are open to some of the same criticisms.   Arlington, Va.: In this era of the “global community” is what what we get from the U.S. media really going to be very different from, say, European media? Alexander Stille: Yes, and to a surprising degree. I spent a lot of time reading the foreign press this Fall in the wake of September 11 and was struck by the variety in the coverage I read. For example, the European press—especially that with a leftward leaning bent—very early on began giving a great deal of attention to civilian casualties caused by our intervention in Afghanistan. Similarly the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay received front page coverage in many European papers and lead to considerable diplomatic pressure from our European allies, which then in fact forced the U.S. to make a number of public statements and adjust its policy toward the prisoners. There was much less coverage of that here. Editorial articles show an even greater distance. I was particularly struck, for example, by an editorial in a prominent Italian newspaper from one of the country’s most respected journalists—and one without a particular anti-American bias—who wrote that the tape that showed Osama bin Laden and his associates discussing the World Trade Center attacks was probably a CIA fabrication. The difference is even greater when you leave Europe and look at the press in countries that are politically more distant from us where conspiracy theories are routinely aired. However, it’s also important to realize that in some cases that because the perspectives and interests differ greatly from ours they simply see these events very differently. It is impossible, for example, for Indian journalists to write about Afghanistan without thinking of problems with Muslim separatists in Kashmir and their own recent problems with terrorism. If you look at some of the articles in the current issue of Correspondence, I think you’ll find it striking how differently countries like Poland, Russia, Brazil, Germany, France and Haiti look at events that to us might seem black and white.   Alexandria, Va.: How common are “yes-but” rationales for the 9-11 attack in the foreign press—e.g., yes, of course terrorism is wrong but what about...? Alexander Stille: Those types of “yes, but” pieces were extremely common after September 11. In Latin America, for example, many people noted that September 14 was the date on which the Socialist President of Chile Salvator Allende was deposed in a violent military coup with the backing of the U.S. government. The President of Haiti Jean Bertrand Aristide, while expressing condolences for the Trade Center victims reminded his fellow Haitians how often Haiti has been the object of terrorist violence and took this all the way back to the founding of the country at the time of the African slave trade. There are different “yes, but” stories for almost every country you want to look at. The common denominator among them is ambivalence about, or negative feelings about the role the U.S. has played in world affairs since World War II.   Park Point: Alexander Stille: If terrorism is defined as “violence against non-combatants”—then is the indiscriminate killing of women, children; innocent villagers in Afghanistan a form of more subtle terrorism, or merely the ‘collateral damage’ of war? And since war has not officially been declared by Congress, does it make it a bit more difficult to qualify the bloodshed that comes every day to villages within Afghanistan? What are our long term goals that can justify such terrorism, or institutionalized terrorism? When have we killed enough to reassure our own safety; or are we but escalating hate around the world by our actions, whatever their assumed goal? Alexander Stille: I don’t think it is fair or accurate to describe the civilian casualties we have caused in Afghanistan as terrorism. I honestly believe that the U.S. government could it have would have limited civilian casualties to zero. This doesn’t mean that we are exonerated from responsibility for those deaths, and in many instances in our history we have certainly cared less about civilian casualties than about the lives of our own soldiers and citizens. I think if you look back at history you could say that the fire bombings of Dresden or Tokyo during World War II were meant to create terror and break the will of Germany and Japan and force them to surrender. That does have certain elements of terrorism, although one may well decide, under those circumstances was justified. But I don’t think there was any such intention in Afghanistan where killing civilians would only weaken our position with the Afghan people and make reconstruction of the country more difficult.   Harrisburg, Pa.: As if true with most stories, reporters discover inside and side stories of most events years afterwards. Obviously, there is much to September 11 we haven’t yet learned. Do you believe our government has been straightforward in releasing news on the terrorist attacks? Other than declining to release sensitive material on defense and homeland security, do have you any sense there is anything that might be embarassing to the government is being kept from the public? Alexander Stille: I suspect that we will learn a lot in the next few years about aspects of September 11 and its aftermath that we don’t currently know. Take for example the recent report that the U.S. government had warning of a nuclear device possibly being detonated in New York at some time this Fall. The goverment decided that the warning was not reliable enough to risk panicking New York, and therefore the report was supressed for a few months. There may be many other things of this kind that we don’t know. As a citizen I hope that we don’t have too many very big surprises, but so far everything that has happened starting with September 11 has contained a lot of surprises. I really don’t believe that the government has lied about anything fundamental because the political cost would be so enormous.   Washington, D.C.: How can you explain some of the immigrations priorities both here and abroad, especially post-Sept. 11? The administration is pushing for “amnesty” for illegal immigrants with the proposed extension of 245(i). I also recall hearing reports of a change in Germany’s immigration laws. Is there a global consensus emerging that immigration laws should be loosened? Alexander Stille: There is no global consensus on immigration, and it remains a hotly debated topic, particularly in Western Europe which has become a major destination for a new generation of immigrants. Some countries like France are accepting that they have become a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society and are trying to adjust their laws to reflect that reality at the same time as there is an anti-immigrant backlash. But it’s taking the form of tough new anti-crime laws, French zero tolerance, rather than anti-immigration policies. Other countries like Denmark and Holland, which have been known for their tolerance toward immigrants, have either passed or are contemplating anti-immigration measures. Anti-immigration legislation is being drafted in Italy even as the country looks at a major labor shortage now and in the future.   Alexander Stille: Thank you Alexander Stille—your perspective, as always, has been most illuminating. © Copyright 2002 The Washington Post Company
    Interview with Alexander Stille March 27, 2002
  • Terrorism and Counterterrorism
    The War on Terror, Six Months Later
    Six months ago, the unexpected Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon left thousands of civilians dead. Since then, the Bush administration has been fighting and facing terrorism on several fronts—on the ground in Afghanistan, at home in the U.S., and abroad in a complicated range of diplomacy. Warren Bass, director of the Special Projects/Terrorism Program and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was online Monday, March 11 at Noon EST, to discuss the status of the war on terrorism and the lessons of the past six months. Bass’ articles on Middle Eastern affairs and U.S. foreign policy have appeared in publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and The New Republic, and he edits the Council’s new "Terrorism: Questions & Answers" Web site. A transcript follows. Editor’s Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions. Warren Bass: Good afternoon, all, and thanks for coming. I’m writing from New York, which is having a pretty sobering day—looking back to the attacks six months ago. I’m looking forward to our discussion. Washington, D.C.: Mr. Bass: Thanks for taking our questions. The Administration has thus far defined a very broad goal of defeating terrorism wherever it exists. This seems impossible as stated, but in reality, it appears that only al Qaeda and those groups linked to al Qaeda are being targeted. This could still be a very broad campaign, depending on how close the link needs to be. Do you see us sending troops, for example, to Chechnya? On a somewhat related note, is there any truth to Milosovic’s claims that al Qaeda was present in Kosovo? (I think he is trying to say he was fighting them before we were, and that we were actually aiding al Qaeda in Kosovo.) Warren Bass: Actually, the Bush administration’s goal is a bit narrower than that. It’s said that it seeks to destroy "terrorist groups of global reach"—which seems to mean not every terrorist everywhere in every nationalist conflict, but rather an attempt to single out groups with the ability to attack America. Above all, that means al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’s terror network. But it’s still a pretty ambitious agenda. I don’t see US troops heading to Chechnya—but they are going to Georgia, which is right next door, to help fight some of bin Laden’s allies who the administration thinks have been helping the Islamist rebels in Chechnya. To me, the Milosevic remark also points out an upcoming danger of the war on terrorism: that dictators will hijack the cause of fighting terrorism to give themselves carte blanche. Milosevic always said he was attacking terrorists, even as his forces were rounding up innocent Albanian civilians. It’s pretty Orwellian. And while we’re on Kosovo, let’s remember for a minute: the last time America went to war, it was to defend innocent Muslim civilians. So much for American foreign policy’s being anti-Muslim... Heidelberg Germany: Good Afternoon Mr. Bass, here is a question that arrives to you from a Italian that lives in Germany. We heard in the last weeks on the TV that the U.S. is not interested to listen our doubts, ideas and questions about the fact that the U.S. wants to attack Iraq. Now I have one question, we are all in the same boat and if we start to attack other countries like Iraq, it could be dangerous for all of us, and that the moderate Arabian countries are able to change her minds and the people that are able to push the fanatic people to look in a positive way to the extremists. Warren Bass: This question’s interesting on two levels: both the question, and the way it reminds Americans about how skeptical US allies are about next steps in the war on terrorism. Going after Saddam would be no joke. But I’m not sure that there’s any better alternative. We know he’s trying to get the bomb, and we know he’s used chemical weapons in the past—on both Iranian soldiers (in a truly brutal war that he started) and on his own civilians (in a horrifying campaign against the Kurds that Human Rights Watch, a terrific and very sober watchdog group, called genocidal). So I hope the Bush administration will listen to European concerns about Iraq. But I also hope that the Europeans will listen to the very compelling arguments for moving against Saddam. And I do actually think that Arab politics in general would be a whole lot better off with Saddam out of the picture—if it’s done carefully. Arlington, Va.: What weight do you assign to this weekend’s L.A. Times story about the Nuclear Readiness plan—in which seven nations are mentioned as targets? Warren Bass: The story you mention said that the US was drafting nuclear plans to target some new countries, some of them sponsor of terrorism. The list included Bush’s "axis of evil"—Iran, Iraq, and North Korea—as well as Syria and Libya. It’s a fascinating story—largely because it casts some light on how the administration’s internal debate is going about how to handle nukes in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 world. Are they there to be used, or to deter? Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Do you believe that the current metrics being used to calculate the success of the war on terrorism could possibly be flawed? I remember reading an article last week which stated "the U.S. is winning the war on terrorism: Thirty al Qaeda and Taliban fighters dead" Many would agree that killing terrorists in fact does not solve the problem, because for each terrorist killed, more join the cause. How does this compare to the "metrics" used in Vietnam? and why hasn’t the Administration attempted to put more emphasis on using other channels, which do not require military force, to fight the war on terrorism ? (i.e. peace negotiations, International aid, etc.) Thanks Warren Bass: I didn’t see that story. But yes, that sounds like a flawed way to keep score; I’m just not sure the administration’s using it. As America learned in Vietnam, body bags are hardly an accurate way to measure progress. A shrewd campaign against terrorism will certainly involve the use of force—but not rely exclusively on it. Think of it as being less like Vietnam and more like the Cold War, where you had sharp instances of combat alongside long, careful uses of diplomacy, foreign aid, alliance-building, and so on. America’s got a lot of arrows in its quiver. Alexandria, Va.: Are suicide bombings in civilian areas such as those by Islamic fundamentalists in Israel and India always terrorism? Do the European nations agree? I ask because some months ago the Deputy Foreign Minister of Norway stated that attacks on Jewish civilians in the West Bank might be legal under international law. He stated that more research on the subject was required. Warren Bass: The experts tie themselves into pretzels trying to come up with a perfect definition of terrorism, but still, the basic rule in international law is pretty clear: thou shalt not kill civilians. There’s a bright, bold line in what’s called "just war theory" between attacking combat-ready soldiers and attacking civilians. And it’s to the eternal disgrace of al-Qaeda that it’s on the wrong side of that line. One of the tough things with thinking about terrorism is that sometimes—often—people do awful things in the name of good causes. Me personally, I’m for the bright red line—no cause is worthy enough that it’s worth murdering innocents. There are other ways to wage a struggle. I’ve no hesitation calling such awful events as the suicide bombing of a Jerusalem cafe over the weekend or the shooting attack on the Indian Parliament a few months back cases of terrorism. If Palestinians or Kashmiris want to make themselves heard, there are saner ways to do it. Fairfax, Va.: I am hearing that an attack on Iraq is imminent. When will the U.S. attack Iraq? Does Bush have any plans for Iraq after attacking it? Also, how did Saddam become the leader of Iraq? Warren Bass: Most of the rumblings are along those lines—that the administration is genuinely gearing up to tackle Iraq. We don’t know that much beyond that, and there’s a big debate between the Pentagon and the State Department about how to go after Saddam. But it’s worth noting that they’re arguing about HOW to get him, not WHETHER to get him. What happens after Saddam goes depends on the manner in which he goes. If America invades, that’s one thing. If it tries to use the INC (the Iraqi opposition umbrella group) in Iraq the same way it used the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, that’s another. And the region is very worried about the day after. The Turks hate the thought of the Kurds in Iraq’s north splitting off and trying to link up with Turkey’s restive Kurdish minority; the Saudis are nervous about the Shiites in Iraq’s north linking up with neighboring Iran. So it has to be played very, very carefully, and my entirely unsolicited advice would be not to go in without the endgame clearly planned. There’s not that much of a rush. Saddam took power after a dreary series of coups in Iraq. Up until 1958, Iraq was actually a key Western ally in the region. Then came a military coup, which eventually would up producing today’s highly nasty Ba’ath Party regime. Washington, D.C.: Do you agree that this war on terrorism is spreading are troops a bit thin? We’re in multiple countries now doing various missions. Doesn’t this leave America open for another attack when our strongest military presence is half way around the globe? Warren Bass: The US military looks in fighting trim to me. And I think it’s important to commit the resources to win definitively in Afghanistan. The terrorism-related missions outside Afghanistan aren’t much of a drain on US resources at all. In Georgia, Yemen, and the Philippines, we’re talking about a few hundred advisers who’re not intended to see combat. So I’m not too worried about that one. What worries me more is the flip side of your question: is US homeland security up to par? And here, even six months after 9/11, we’ve got a long way to go. To some degree, the reality is that open societies are going to be vulnerable. Yes, it’s tougher to launch a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, but there’s plenty of things about living in Saudi Arabia that I’d rather not go through. Even so, it’s hard to be satisfied that all the sensible, non-intrusive, constitutionally hygienic precautions have been taken. Tom Ridge has got his work cut out for him. Park Point: Which is the more insidious form of terror... suicide bombings, etc, (unofficial terror); or terrorism instituted by the state? Be it Sharon or any other authoritarian despot that bypasses the people’s choice and creates a war? Are either/or as offensive when innocents become victims? Warren Bass: For my money, the phrase "terrorism instituted by the state" doesn’t add up. Most terrorism experts define terrorism as being attacks by substate actors—that is, by smaller groups, not by governments. That’s not to say that a government that deliberately kills civilians is in any way morally OK. Just call it by its name: a human rights abuse or a war crime. Those are pretty powerful terms, too. But if terrorism is taken to mean everything, then terrorism means nothing. Innocents are innocents. For the record, though, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not an authoritarian despot. He was democratically elected. That doesn’t make him a saint, but let’s at least be clear on the terminology. New York, N.Y.: What is this country coming to? Are we a teenage couple in love for the first time? Why celebrate a six-month anniversary? Aren’t anniversaries yearly events? I think we have better things to do, like find the folks that sent anthrax to the Democrats, or contemplate the world’s responses to America’s aggressiveness since Bush and company took over. Warren Bass: I’m in New York, too, and while I wouldn’t dare tell a fellow New Yorker how to grieve, let me gently suggest that today is hardly an anniversary that’s being celebrated—more like a landmark to be mournfully and angrily noted. Yes, we need to find the anthrax terrorists. Yes, there’s a lot still to do. Yes, robust debate over US foreign policy should continue—let freedom ring. But I don’t equate reprisal with aggression. Re: Advisors: Aren’t advisors another word for CIA agents? When we send in "advisors," who are we really sending. Not CEO’s with calculators, I assume. Warren Bass: Nope, it’s not CEOs—although maybe we should consider sending some of the Enron guys for a little public service? As far as we know, the US advisers in Georgia, Yemen, and the Philippines are supposed to military trainers and some Special Forces troops, to help the local security forces crack down more effectively on the local bad guys. We know there was an al-Qaeda cell in Yemen—remember the USS Cole—but it’s a bit stickier working out how extensive the al-Qaeda ties are to the militants in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge and the Philippines’ Basilan Island. For a good briefing (and forgive the shameless plug), check out the website I edit, at www.terrorismanswers.com. Washington, D.C.: Mr. Bass, From what you know, what is the consensus among intelligence people on the likelihood of al Qaeda having nuclear weapons (as opposed to dirty bombs)? My understanding was that it was viewed as low (at least for now), but The Post article regarding the Bush administration’s nervousness made me wonder if that has changed. Warren Bass: For anyone unfamiliar with the term: a “dirty bomb” is the crudest form of radiation weapon. It’s basically a conventional bomb—say, dynamite or what have you—that’s been lacked with radioactive material. So when the bomb goes off, the radioactive stuff goes flying. It’s not as dangerous as a real nuke, but it’d be pretty frightening, and the risk of radiation sickness would be added to the damage of the conventional explosive. It’s a nasty little idea. The published reports say that al-Qaeda doesn’t seem to have the chops to make a nuke on its own—and, in fact, when it tried to buy some nuclear material, it seems to have gotten bilked. The question would be whether some terrorist could steal or buy a nuke—or a nuclear-weapons scientist—from Russia or perhaps Pakistan. For my money, making sure that Russia’s nukes are definitively locked down should be pretty much job one for the White House. And if that means higher taxes, they can bill me, and I’m pretty sure most Americans would feel the same way. Part of the challenge for the Bush administration is dealing with the spread of doomsday weapons—and that’ll have a lot to do with how they go down in the history books. New York, N.Y.: If the US rightly responds to massive terrorism against our civilians by obliterating the Taliban in Afghanistan why does the State Department hold Israel’s hands back from acting likewise to Palestinian terrorists that have been killing Israeli civilians purposely for over a year? Warren Bass: Colin Powell is more than capable of sticking up for himself, but I’m still not sure that’s a fair characterization of US policy. The White House has given Sharon a good deal of leeway in responding to the awful campaign of suicide terror that the Palestinians have been waging. But in return, it’s asked that the Israelis remember that it’s a bigger world out there, and US attempts to uproot al-Qaeda and tackle Saddam can get seriously complicated by Israeli-Palestinian mayhem. Since getting bin Laden and Saddam is so overwhelmingly in Israel’s interest as well, you’d think these longstanding allies would find ways to cooperate. New York, N.Y.: How necessary is it to eliminate the “the womb of terrorists” (i.e. the radical Islamic schools in Pakistan) in the war against terrorism? and how much progress, if any is being made? Warren Bass: I’m not crazy about the womb metaphor, but still: there’s no question that there are all kinds of madrasas (Islamic seminaries) teaching pure unmitigated rubbish and hatred. Until that gets tackled, the madrasas will continue producing students who pervert Islam and trample its tenets in what they claim is Islam’s name. And while we’re tackling it, it’s going to require some stern words to such US allies as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The former used to back the Taliban, and the latter produced 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11. Something’s got to change. Alexandria, Va.: Years ago, a history teacher said—or quoted—to us “I have no idea what weapons will be used in the next war, but the war after that will be fought with sticks and stones.” (Implication being that humanity would be nearly wiped out.) Agree? Warren Bass: Now it’s going to bug me until I can come up with who originally said that quote… But there’s something to that. We know bin Laden would like to get nukes. So if the world doesn’t pull together and try to own up to this vast, sprawling, and horribly complicated terrorism problem, then sooner or later we run a terrifying risk of seeing an attack that dwarfs 9/11. Warren Bass: Thanks again for all your questions. It was good of you to come. I hope you’ll all continue following the news closely, which will give you many more answers to some terribly tough questions. Thanks again, and my best wishes on a sad, sad day.
    Interview with Warren Bass March 12, 2002
  • United States
    The ’Axis of Evil’: Warren Bass
    On January 29 in his first State of the Union address, President Bush described Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil” that needed to be targeted by the United States, drawing criticism from many countries, including U.S. allies. Does this mean the U.S. war on terrorism will eventually move to Iran, Iraq or North Korea? Will Bush’s statement discourage moderates in Iran from seeking better relations with the West? Discuss the repercussions of the “axis of evil” phrase and the U.S. war on terrorism with Warren Bass, Director of Special Projects/Terrorism Program and Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Bass specializes in the Middle East and terrorism, and edits the Council’s “Terrorism: Questions & Answers” website. Comment from Warren Bass: Good afternoon, all, and thanks for coming. Brussels, Belgium: How do you differentiate the Foreign Policies of the US and the EU? Warren Bass: As to the first question—well, almost by definition, the European Union’s foreign policy is multilateral. It’s got to weigh the views of all its members. The US gets to follow its own lights. With President Bush’s “axis of evil” comments, you also saw the EU get very, very jittery about an America that might be willing to go it alone. Colorado Springs, CO: To what extent is Israel driving the agenda against Iran and Iraq? Warren Bass: Not that much. Israel’s not really in the coalition, except for some intelligence-sharing. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been pushing the idea that Iran ought to be Public Enemy #1, but for now, in the mind of the White House, that honor pretty clearly is going to Iraq—the nastiest of the axis-of-evil states. Now if the US really does try to take Saddam Hussein out, then Israel is running some very considerable risks—above all, that it’ll get pelted with Scud missiles tipped with chemical or biological warheads. So a smart anti-Saddam policy has to take into account the risks that Saddam could strike Israel again, as he did during the 1991 Gulf War. But in general, it’s not Israel that’s driving the Bush administration’s agenda; that agenda’s driven by the president’s team’s own views of US interests. Columbus Ohio: I am deeply concerned that such a broad based perspective as President Bush presents in his “Axis of Evil” risks alienating more moderate nations and groups. Would it not be better to pinpoint select nations and groups and specifically identify the threats they present to the US and to the world? Could not we anticipate a broader international support with a more specifically focused perspective? Warren Bass: As for pinpointing select nations and identifying the threat—that WAS what the axis of evil remarks did. Bush named names, singling out Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Now there’s a question about whether these countries are threats to the US because they sponsor terrorism, or because they are trying to get doomsday weapons—germs, gases, and nukes—that we’d hate to see in the hands of al-Qaeda and company. Iran sponsors a lot of terrorism; Iraq and North Korea have been moving out of the terrorist business to at least some degree. But all three are big proliferators of weapons of mass destruction. So the threats are pretty clear, too. As for broader international support—well, I’ve got no problem with letting other leaders feel a bit challenged out of the gate. Exactly why wouldn’t other leaders want Saddam to go? Sometimes there’s something to be said for having someone else on the hot seat. Lady Lake, Florida: It is a given that Bush/Cheney is using “Smoke and Mirrors” to fight an “Axis of Evil,” to divert attention from the economy and slide huge tax cuts for big business and their other Enron-like followers. My question: “Can they keep it up until election day in 2004?” Warren Bass: I’m tempted not to answer, but still—how is responding to 9/11 “smoke and mirrors?” Disagree all you want with the administration on its economic policies, its tax cuts, and its Enron shenanigans. But there’s a serious foreign policy crisis afoot out there, too. You can disagree with how they’re handling it—that’s democracy, and that’s great—but it’s a little jarring to me to hear someone argue there’s no crisis at all. Seoul, Korea: What is the US up to? This could make the south and the north in bad shape...War is not peace. Warren Bass: With Bush on his way to South Korea this week, plenty of people in Seoul and elsewhere are wondering about this. Kim Dae Jung of South Korea has been following a “sunshine policy” of trying to reach out to North Korea, and the Bush administration has been cutting him off at the knees. I think most analysts found North Korea’s inclusion on the “axis of evil” list the most baffling of the three. They’ve been more or less out of the terrorism business for years, and their politics—the world’s last Stalinist dictatorship—are pretty different from the Ba’athist tyranny of Saddam’s Iraq and the muddled theocracy of Iran. But with the axis of evil remarks, a lot of people—like the questioner—are worried that Bush is heating things up too much. It’ll be interesting to see how he parses it all when he’s in Seoul. Orlando, Florida: Can we force the world to live like we think it should or will we have to accept it as it is? Warren Bass: Neither. Grand Rapids, Mich: why has there been no talk about the P.A., Hamas or IRA? Warren Bass: There’s been plenty, especially about the PA (the Palestinian Authority, the autonomous government Yasir Arafat runs in about 40% of the West Bank and Gaza, including its major cities) and Hamas (the biggest Palestinian Islamist terror group). In fact, Bush mentioned Hamas by name in the “axis of evil” State of the Union. And US diplomats have spent a lot of time thinking through how the Israeli-Palestinian mess may complicate US coalition-building efforts. As for the IRA, they’re deep into a rocky peace process of their own. Some more attention to them might encourage them to permanently and lastingly “decommission” their weapons—a fancy way of saying disarm. That’d be great for Northern Ireland. Banning, California: Doesn’t it hurt the long term of the United States as the beacon of justice and freedom to have a grossly obvious double standard as far as who can possess the so called weapons of mass destruction and who can’t? For instance, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, France, and the UK have all sorts of weapons of mass destruction and yet they’re not considered part of an axis of evil. If weapons of mass destruction are bad, why not call them bad everywhere? Is it that it’s easier to bully those 3 underdeveloped countries instead of China, Russia, or U.K.? Warren Bass: Well, it certainly drives India crazy—their foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, calls this sort of thing “nuclear apartheid.” But let’s be clear here: Iraq has used its chemical weapons to gas its own Kurdish citizens and to gas Iranian soldiers during the 1980s Iran-Iraq War. THAT’s why it gets singled out. And Iran is the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism; that’s why it gets singled out. And North Korea helps sell missile technology to Iran and other worrisome states; that’s why it gets singled out. Quibble with the axis bit, but the comment here about “bully” behavior makes me wonder if you shouldn’t think a bit more about whether those three countries have really done some evil things. I don’t see how one could argue otherwise. If it’s a double standard to say it’s OK for France to have nukes and not Iraq, well, guilty as charged. But France has been a mite more responsible with ’em, wouldn’t you say? Yes, China and Russia will hold onto their weapons of mass destruction; that’s what comes with being a big power. But let’s remember that the US has also basically said it’s OK with two big developing world powers—India and Pakistan—having nukes. So maybe this is less about our hypocrisy and more about Iran, Iraq, and North Korea’s bad behavior. Columbus, Ohio: The phrase “AXIS OF EVIL” seems recklessly irresponsible to me. Doesn’t it polarize our nations at a time when we need to work together to fight terrorism? How can we understand terrorism unless we make an effort to understand the history and religious fundamentalism out of which it comes? Warren Bass: Well, Bush’s policy is deliberately polarizing: one camp of states who are “with us” fighting terrorism, another camp of states who are “against us” and with the bin Ladens of the world. Why shouldn’t that choice be a no-brainer? I’m all for understanding the history. That’s why what makes me uncomfortable about “axis of evil” isn’t the evil bit, it’s the axis. Iran and Iraq killed more than a million people in their eight-year war. Some axis, that. In fact, one of the biggest terrorist groups Iraq still actively supports today is a group called Mujahidin-e-Khalq, whose major goal is—toppling the Iranian government. Evil, yes. Axis, not so much. Grand Rapids, Mich: could we be making a “axis of evil” by calling them that? Groups never really happen, they are formed from necessity in their view. Warren Bass: Well, I’d like to offer Iran in particular some carrots as well as some sticks. The trick with Iran is to foster the reformists there and see if they’ll get rid of the crazies for us—worth a shot, at least. But the Iran-Iraq enmity runs pretty deep; it’ll take more than one snappy sound bite to push those two back together. Austin, TX: Doesn’t Bush’s Axis of Evil statement do more to aggravate hatred towards the US? Almost every other country in the world except for maybe Great Britain felt that that statement was counter-productive. Warren Bass: It certainly didn’t play well in Europe. But it’s designed to put some menacing regimes on notice, and it sure got their attention. That’s at least potentially useful. As I’ve said, the “axis” part of the remark seems to me seriously overdone. But at least some of the complaints also strike me as excessive. There’s plenty of people who’ve got gripes with US policy. But after suffering the biggest terrorist attack in history, you’d like to see America’s friends standing up and being counted. Phoenix, Arizona: Why does the press call murderers and terrorists in the Middle East “militants” and other benign terms? Warren Bass: “The press” is a big group... so it’s hard for me, as someone who’s worked in journalism pretty proudly for some years, to make the sweeping generalization. I’m all for calling terrorists terrorists, and some news organizations—notoriously, Reuters—have managed to look pretty foolish by taking a dive on the issue. But the definition’s pretty tough to get. We’ve got a good one on the website I edit, www.terrorismanswers.org, on the pieces about an introduction to terrorism. That might clear up a bit more of this for you. Kenner, Louisiana: I lived in South Korea for many years in the 90’s. The hearts of the people want to reunify with North Korea. I know both South Korea and North Korea have recently made some head way in reunifying. Does not a statement like President Bush made retard such progress between the two countries? Warren Bass: The South Koreans are sure worried that it does... The president’s going to have a pretty interesting visit. Bethesda, MD: When will our policymakers realize that we (the U.S.) cannot keep going into countries and changing regimes, playing with their politics. There are always negative consequences to this. We are hated in every country that we meddled in! - A concerned American Warren Bass: No we’re not. Remember, US power helped defeat two nasty forms of totalitarianism last century: Nazi fascism and Soviet communism. There’s lots of people breathing freer air because of that, and plenty of ’em have a soft spot for America. Now, the US has also done some meddling in Third World countries that hasn’t won quite so many hearts and minds. But watch the premise: sometimes, it’s precisely the countries where the US DOESN’T try to change regimes that anti-Americanism is the strongest. Look at Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Egyptians and Saudis have been joining up with Osama bin Laden precisely because the US has been BACKING the current governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In Iran, by contrast, there’s a lot of popular support for the US—to some degree because they know that their lousy regime is home-grown, not US-backed. Chews Landing, New Jersey: If the war did move to Iran,what would Russia do? Warren Bass: I’m going to dodge this one, simply because nobody’s talking about moving the war to Iran. Iraq, perhaps. Iran, no. There, a popular, reformist, elected president—Muhammad Khatami—is trying to hold off the unelected mullahs who hold the real levers of power and control the security services. So the idea is to help the reformers and pluck Iran very, very gently—and bring it back into the family of nations. Ridgefield, Connecticut: I heard you at the Reuters Forum at Columbia University talking about global terror and the global economy. It was so good to hear some real experts talk about globalization instead of what music is playing at the World Economic Forum, or what celebrity is whining about not getting in. Why does the news media cover such nonsense when they should be paying attention to folks like you at the Reuters Forum? Warren Bass: OK, my grandmother put you up to that... But there’s a serious issue here. Your news media—yes, including USA Today—does a pathetic job about covering the world. Before 9/11, all kinds of nonsense got tons of coverage, and al-Qaeda got none. If you want to blame someone, talk to your TV news anchors, for one thing, who rake in multimillion dollars salaries while their networks shut down foreign bureaus. It’s something we’ve just got to get serious about. And international news is great stuff, not cod liver oil. These are fascinating stories, and I’m convinced that if the media tells ’em well, people will read it. If you write it, they will come. So let your newspapers and networks know. Bloomington, IN: It seems to me that this “Axis of Evil” consists of old US enemies. Is terrorism just an excuse to seek new conflict with old enemies? When was the last attack on Americans by any terrorists hailing from the “Axis of Evil?” Warren Bass: In the grand sweep of things, Iran and Iraq are comparatively new enemies. Iran was an ally until the 1979 revolution, and Saddam was “someone we could do business with” until he invaded Kuwait in August 1990. (North Korea’s something different.) Let’s be clear, too, that 9/11 was the largest terrorist attack in history, and if the Bush administration doesn’t respond well, there will be even bigger ones. So I’m wary of the idea that we’re looking to pick fights. We’ve got enough already. But as for the last attacks on Americans: good question. The last Iraqi terrorist attack on Americans was a 1993 attempt to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush while he was visiting Kuwait. A lot of Iraqi terrorism since then has focused on its own regional foes—Iran, Turkey, Israel. As for Iran, well, that 50-ton boat-load of weapons sent to the Palestinian Authority could certainly kill plenty of Americans in Israel. U.S. officials also suspect Iran of having fingerprints on the 1996 truck bombing of Khobar Towers, a US military residence in Saudi Arabia; 19 Americans were killed. And the wider network of terror groups that Iran sponsors—Hezbollah, Hamas, PIJ, the PKK, and so on—could certainly wind up killing Americans, too. North Korea is something different. As far as we know, it hasn’t been conclusively linked to a terrorist attack since 1987. Even before then, it tended to target South Korea, not America. But don’t forget the weapons of mass destruction. Houston, TX: Hi I’m a Turkish student studying in US and i want to learn what your opinion is about Turkey. Do you think think that Turkey is an ally of america or not. Warren Bass: It’s not a matter of opinion: Turkey’s in NATO, so it is formally a US ally. NATO, remember, said that 9/11 was an attack on all its members, too. And Turkey has volunteered to lead the UN peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan after the British hand it over in the spring. Toronto, Canada: What will the endpoint be in the US goal to rid the world of terrorism? How for do you think the US is willing to take this fight? Warren Bass: From my hometown! The president says it won’t be over until every “terrorist group of global reach” has been destroyed. It’s probably worth taking him at his word. Comment from Warren Bass: Thanks for your questions today, all. Comment from Warren Bass: And please do have a look at the Council on Foreign Relation’s new online encyclopedia of terrorism.
    Interview with Warren Bass March 4, 2002
  • Terrorism and Counterterrorism
    Gideon Rose: Why Did September 11 Happen?
    Gideon Rose is the managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine. His recently-released book, How Did This Happen: Terrorism and the New War is a collection of essays from experts in the areas of international issues, terrorism, military strategy and security, including former Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and former NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark. He joined the CNN.com chat room from New York. CNN: Your book brings together 24 of the world’s foremost authorities on the Mideast, terrorism and diplomacy. Were these experts able to define in simple terms what is behind the anti-American sentiment that led to the attacks on September 11? ROSE: The best piece in the book on that particular subject is a chapter by a scholar at Princeton, named Michael Doran, that describes the attack as somebody else’s civil war. He argues that Osama bin Laden and his network of terrorists are best understood as the extremists within the extremist camp of radical Islam, and that their chief goal is to promote a pure, universal Islamic community. Their chief enemy, [it is argued,] is the Arab Muslim leadership that they consider corrupt and repressive, and no longer following the true faith. The argument he makes is that the United States essentially has been brought into this conflict because it is seen as the chief backer of these Arab regimes, and because in the last several years, the radical Islamists have been stymied in their attempts to topple the Arab regimes, such as those in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, directly. So now, in a sense, the targeting of the United States is a measure of desperation, and an attempt to direct change within the Arab-Muslim world itself. CHAT PARTICIPANT: What part, if any, did the Middle East conflict play in the growth of terrorism? ROSE: A number of authors in the book touch on this, and essentially agree that the Arab-Israeli conflict plays a role in generating dissatisfaction within the Arab and Muslim worlds, but did not cause the attacks in the first place. Basically, these attacks were planned long before the peace process foundered, and the people behind the attacks have no desire for a secure, stable peace settlement. They would like to see the elimination of Israel entirely, so in some sense, a move toward a settlement in the way that most understand that would not be a good outcome for the Islamist radicals. So, the failure of the peace process, and the increasing violence between Arabs and Israelis did not cause the attacks, but does contribute to dissatisfaction and anger within the Arab and Muslim world more generally, that provides a climate in which extremism and anti-Americanism can find some support. So, working hard to get the Arab-Israeli conflict under control, the authors agree, can and should be part of the overall response to the attacks. CHAT PARTICIPANT: Would this not have happened because of the hatred toward the United States even if peace had developed between Israel and Palestine? ROSE: Absolutely. These attacks were set in motion long before, when the peace process was going well, not badly. There’s no reason to believe that they would have not occurred had the peace process worked out. CNN: How could the attacks have been avoided, according to these experts? ROSE: The people in the book essentially focus on three separate topics. The first concerns the motivations of the people who carried out the attacks, and the context in which they operate. The second broad subject relates to American vulnerabilities. The third broad subject relates to the overarching historical significance of the attacks, and the new world we are in. With regard to American vulnerability, several of the authors point out that the problem lies in an American economy and society that put a premium on openness and the free flow of goods and people, and that this created a situation in which security and homeland defense were low priorities. A number of the essays suggest ways in which the flows of goods and people, whether through the economy or through the air traffic control system or through the borders, can be better policed and regulated, so as to reduce the vulnerabilities. They all stress, however, that there’s no way to guarantee that future attackers can never succeed. CHAT PARTICIPANT: Do you think that the influx of non-American people into this country contributed to September 11 ROSE: It’s not so much the influx of non-Americans as the failure to track and protect ourselves from those with hostile intent. So, pure immigration reform probably isn’t the answer, but better tracking and managing of information about who is coming in and where they are and what they’re doing might well be in order. CNN: From a terrorism perspective, are all the acts of aviation terrorism believed to be linked? ROSE: The authors argue that the September 11 attacks were carried out by the same organization or network that carried out the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, the bombing of the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, and other radical Islamist terrorist attacks. But they are not directly linked to previous airline hijackings, let’s say before the early 1990’s. In fact, one of the most dangerous and scary features of what happened on September 11 was the change in tactics that the terrorists used. Previously, almost nobody had thought of turning a plane into a guided missile, and so the authors in the book generally agree that these recent attacks mark a new and dangerous stage in terrorism more generally. No longer are terrorists merely interested, as we used to think, in “having lots of people watching, not lots of people dead.” CHAT PARTICIPANT: Some critics want to blame September 11 on the Clinton administration for not seeking out al Qaeda and getting bin Laden. What is the authors perspective on this? ROSE: The authors note in the book many attempts made to thwart previous terrorism, and to crack down on Osama bin Laden and his network, for example, by tracking and blocking his financial resources. Nevertheless, it’s clear that not enough was done, but as the chapter on intelligence reform suggests, establishing benchmarks for what performance by government agencies involved in counter-terrorism should be, is very, very difficult. In baseball, we know that a batter who gets one hit in three times at bat is excellent, and one who gets one in four times at bat is okay, and one who gets one hit in five times at bat is lousy. But we only know that because we have a vast track record of human experience in baseball to judge each new case against. In counter-terrorism, it’s very hard to say just what a good job is, even though we’d all like it to be 100% success. CHAT PARTICIPANT: Why aren’t the other Muslim countries more outspoken on the terrorist problems? ROSE: That’s a good question. The authors in the book argue that the attacks and the climate in which the attackers could thrive are part of a larger trend in the Arab-Muslim world that consists of an inability to thrive in the modern world, and the dissatisfaction and frustration felt by many ordinary Arabs and Muslims around the world at the relative failure of their country’s political and economic performance in recent decades, has created a large pool of resentment that sometimes can find itself directed against the United States as the chief backer of the current system. Many Arab and Muslim governments, the authors argue, are failing their own peoples, and are reluctant to challenge them or upset them further by confronting openly their false views on, for example, the pernicious role of the United States and Israel in causing the failure of Arab and Muslim fortunes. Silence is sometimes the more cautious course for these regimes. CHAT PARTICIPANT: Mr. Rose, were there signs of the attack that U.S. intelligence agencies missed? ROSE: There were indications, not only that the attackers were prepared to come at the United States, but also that they were prepared to use planes as weapons. A terrorist was caught on his way to an attack at the Los Angeles international airport just before the millennium celebrations, and the man behind the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Ramzi Yousef, had planned to blow up several planes in the Pacific a couple of years later. Moreover, the United States had picked up reason to believe that Osama bin Laden and his network felt themselves to be in a life or death struggle against the United States. All this made U.S. intelligence nervous, and made them concentrate on trying to stop bin Laden and his agents, but unfortunately, there were no specific details about the attack available beforehand that were caught in time to prevent it. CNN: From an intelligence perspective, can the CIA ever rehabilitate itself in order to prevent such attacks again? ROSE: One of the best chapters in the book is on precisely this subject. It’s also one of the most depressing. Because it argues that intelligence reform is unlikely to achieve much in the short or even medium term. In the long term, the author notes, a revitalization of human intelligence could bear fruit, but the real problem lies not just in the CIA but in the society at large, which has paid far too little attention to the outside world and the serious study of it in recent decades. CHAT PARTICIPANT: Why didn’t the U.S. government listen to Oliver North when he told the Senate who Osama bin Laden was and what he was capable of? ROSE: It’s an urban legend that Oliver North noted Osama bin Laden by name in his Iran-Contra testimony. So, there was nothing to listen to. In general, we knew that terrorism was a problem, but almost nobody thought it would be this great a problem. CNN: Do you have any closing comments to share with us? ROSE: One of the things that’s most interesting about the book is that it presents the current crisis from several different angles, such as the diplomatic context, the historical context, the ideological context, and the social context. At the end of the day, however, what one comes away with is, I think, just how difficult it is to prepare for and manage high-consequence, low-probability events, such as we’ve just witnessed. We need to be prepared without losing our heads, and that’s going to be a very difficult thing to manage. CNN: Thank you for joining us today. ROSE: So long, and we welcome your comments at the magazine.
    Interview with Gideon Rose December 4, 2001