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Nuclear Weapons, War with Iraq, and U.S. Security Strategy in the Middle East
The reorientation of U.S. strategic deterrence away from Russia and towards proliferators and rogue regimes has focused U.S. policy and planning on the Middle East. In the short term, it could force the Bush administration to come to terms with the full implications of preventive war strategies. Over the long term, it will raise questions about the relevance of nuclear deterrence as a basis for strategic relations in the region. The Nuclear Posture Review steers the United Sates into uncharted waters in the region. Strategic thinking, not unlike the work that was undertaken during the first decades of the Cold War, is needed to flesh out U.S. strategy.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Wirtz, James J., 1958-; Russell, James A. (James Avery), 1958-
2002-09-11
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Negative Security Assurances and the Nuclear Posture Review
Concerns that the United States will violate its NPT negative security assurances are being blown out of proportion. Critics seem to extend these assurances to states that have overt or clandestine nuclear arsenals and to states that violate international norms and treaties against developing, stockpiling or using biological and chemical weapons. Clearly the Bush administration has voiced no intention to be the first to use nuclear weapons against states that lack weapons of mass destruction. The administration's preference is not to use nuclear weapons -- hence the stated intention in he NPR to use conventional weapons in a "strategic" context. The NPR debate, however, does focus attention on a disturbing international trend. Even as the United States and Russia reduce their strategic nuclear arsenals, other state and non-state actors continue in their quest to bolster their nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capabilities. Whenever policies that are intended to foster disarmament -- such as the negative security assurances associated with the NPT -- confront flagrant efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction, the connection between policy and reality will be strained. The inability of disarmament policies to cope with these circumstances has more to do with bad situations, not the bad intentions of U.S. policymakers.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Wirtz, James J., 1958-; Russell, James A. (James Avery), 1958-
2002-07-05
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Comparing Threats from Saddam and bin Laden
How does the threat to U.S. national security posed by Saddam Hussein compare to that posed by Osama bin Laden? This question bears importantly on U.S. policy in the ongoing war against terrorism. A prerequisite to answering such a question is to define "threat", which from the U.S. perspective can be deemed "a person, state, or organization having motivation, capability, and intent to attack the United States, U.S. personnel or U.S. assets anywhere in the world." While the United States as a global superpower faces a wide array of threats, this analysis focuses only on Saddam and bin Laden--the latter of whom we will assume, for the sake of argument, to be still alive.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Rana, Surinder
2002-09-17
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Problems in Using Trade to Counter Terrorism: The Case of Pakistan
Even before the smoke had settled from the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington, United States Trade Representative Robert Zoellick launched a series of speeches arguing that global trade liberalization was a central plank of the counter-offensive against terrorism. In a thoughtful essay, "Countering Terror With Trade" Zoellick's (2001) main premise was that:
America's trade leadership can build a coalition of countries...Open markets are vital for developing nations, many of them fragile democracies that rely on the international economy to overcome poverty and create opportunity; we need answers for those who ask for economic hope to counter internal threats to our common values. To address the relationship between trade agreements and other international objectives the President has proposed that we build on openness and growth in developing countries with a tool box of cooperative policies.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Looney, Robert E.
2002-10-01
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Enduring Freedom for Central Asia?
China's leaders also have been forging strong economic ties with the Central Asian states over many years, and have launched a crackdown against what they are calling Islamic extremists in the Chinese regions bordering Central Asia. Although Beijing has given the Bush administration its support in the war on terrorism, Chinese officials have expressed their alarm over the rapidly expanding U.S. military presence in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and openly question what plans the United States might have for the region's future.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Skinner, Elizabeth
2002-04
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Iraq: Next Phase of the Campaign?
The Bush Administration's foreign policy is now being driven by a set of principles described by President Bush in his 2002 State of the Union Address. Characterized by various observers as the "Bush Doctrine," the outlines of this policy are: (1) that the United States will combat terror wherever it exists using all means at its disposal, including force; (2) that bilateral relationships around the world will be increasingly defined in terms of those countries that support the war on terrorism and those that do not; and (3) that "rogue" nations and/or terrorist organizations cannot be permitted to acquire and/or threaten the United States with weapons of mass destruction.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Russell, James A. (James Avery), 1958-; Bravo, IIiana P.
2002-04
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Beijing and the American War on Terrorism
The American war on terrorism since the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has presented Beijing with a dilemma. On one hand, Washington's call for international support in the war on terrorism gave Beijing an opportunity to improve bilateral relations with a new Bush Administration that previously had regarded ties with the PRC with a cool skepticism. On the other hand, Washington's conduct of the war on terrorism has given it new strategic assets and military relationships in Asia that, Beijing fears, may be used in the long term to contain China itself. With diverging key interests at stake, Beijing's view of the war on terrorism has been publicly collaborative but also increasingly ambivalent.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Miller, H. Lyman
2002-07-01
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NORTHCOM to Coordinate DoD Role in Homeland Defense
On April 17, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced the formation of the Northern Command, or NorthCom, to assume responsibility for defense of the land, sea and air of the continental United States -- the first time CONUS has been assigned to a unified combatant commander. NorthCom, which is slated to become operational in October 2002, will exercise command over all forces that operate within the United States in response to external threats and in support of civil authorities.[1] The announcement marks only the beginning of DoD's efforts to organize itself for the mission of supporting homeland defense -- a critical new mission for the department as identified in the Quadrennial Defense Review.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Russell, James A. (James Avery), 1958-
2002-05-06
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Financing Wars on Terrorism and Iraq
One of the key questions about the current U.S. war against terrorism and rogue states remains largely unanswered: The extent to which defense/security expenditures will have to expand to meet the threat. Clearly, the ultimate cost will depend upon events that are still unfolding: Will the United States be able to maintain the peace in Afghanistan with the current level of effort? Will the remaining terrorist cells engage in further major acts of violence? Will the United States attack Iraq? If the attack occurs, how is that conflict likely to develop in terms of the intensity and duration? The time and resources required for reconstruction and nation building? The added amount of foreign aid to affected countries?
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Looney, Robert E.
2003-01-01
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IMF Stabilization Programs and the War on Terrorism: Conflicting or Complementary Objectives in Pakistan?
Because it is one of the front-line states in the war on terrorism, Pakistan's economy and economic management will be tested to the limit. Not only will the country have to likely allocate an increasing amount of resources to defense and security, it will also have to generate rates of growth sufficient to begin lifting large segments of the population out of dire poverty, a potential breeding ground for terrorism. A related weighty task is the development of strong governance institutions capable of facilitating the country's transition out of poverty (Bremer and Kasarda, 2002).
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Looney, Robert E.
2002-12-02
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Homeland Security: Intelligence Indications and Warning
September 11, 2001 demonstrated that policy makers and intelligence organizations had conducted business in traditional ways, not in response to today's threats to our nation. The attacks in September suggest that inadequate information sharing between law enforcement and national intelligence agencies led to lost opportunities to thwart the attacks launched by Al-Qaeda. Little has yet been done to fix many of these problems. The nation has failed to formulate significant changes in the way it tasks, collects, analyzes, produces and disseminates intelligence information. The architecture needed to provide intelligence for homeland defense has not yet emerged. The September 11 attacks are a "watershed event" that should change our current intelligence organization, perhaps resulting in legislation as important as the National Security Act of 1947.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Luikart, Kenneth A.
2002-12-02
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Trouble: Pearl Harbor and 9/11
"The sense of having been played for a fool was most definitely part of the emotional mix after Pearl Harbor, as it was following the al-Qaeda attacks last year, which brought allusions to 1941 briefly to the surface of policy chatter. It was the only other time anybody could think of when Americans had so complacently leaned into such a ferocious sucker punch. Strategically, of course, the analogy has nothing whatever to recommend it, which is presumably why it has faded from view. Psychologically, too, the thing is all wrong, which is more interesting. "Pearl Harbor" stands for a call to arms--for everyone putting down their tools and tending to the trouble. Nothing remotely like that has followed the advent of the "war on terror," an expression one feels compelled to place within quotation marks not to disown it, but because its meaning is so plainly metaphorical: more like the war on drugs, on poverty, on cancer, than the war against Japan. Setting aside the fact that nobody knows what a mass mobilization against terrorism would entail, such a thing, were it to happen, would be widely (and reasonably) regarded as a victory for terrorism in itself."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Moran, Daniel
2002-12-02
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What's New in the New U.S. Strategy to Combat WMD?
At first inspection, the Bush administration's new "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction," released to the public on 11 December 2002 [1], reads like old wine in a new bottle--certainly not the "fundamental change from the past" claimed by its authors. The assertion that "weapons of mass destruction (WMD)--nuclear, biological, and chemical--in the possession of hostile states and terrorists represent one of the greatest security challenges facing the United States," has become one of the more common claims heard in Washington. But words are words and deeds are deeds, Bush administration officials keep telling us. Thus it is particularly surprising that the three pillars of the Bush strategy--counterproliferation to combat WMD use, enhanced nonproliferation to combat WMD proliferation, and consequence management to respond to WMD use--were central elements of the previous administration's policy on WMD. In fact, these policy components came together early in President Clinton's first term. On closer examination, however, there is much in the Bush strategy that truly is new, much that stands out as an improvement over previous U.S. approaches to WMD, and much that already is being implemented with some success.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Lavoy, Peter R. (Peter René), 1961-
2002-12-16
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Will the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Impede the War on Terrorism?
The current round of hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians has the potential to greatly complicate -- and perhaps thwart entirely -- the War on Terrorism. A spillover of the Palestinian conflict into the larger region would threaten the stability of Pro-American regimes and would play right into the hands of regimes and groups hostile to American interests in the region. How did we get to this point? The newest Israeli-Palestinian fighting began in September 2000 when then-opposition leader (now prime minister) Ariel Sharon made a provocative visit with 1,000 Israeli police to the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem -- a site considered holy by Muslims around the world. Sharon's stated goal was to assert permanent Israeli sovereignty over the entirety of Jerusalem, including over Muslim areas and shrines. Sharon's ulterior motive appears to have been to undermine then-prime minister Ehud Barak's peace proposals (which included allowing for some Palestinian control in Muslim parts of Jerusalem), and to thrust himself and his Likud party into power. Sharon's gambit worked, but not without a heavy price.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Robinson, Glenn E., 1959-
2002-02
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Current WMD Challenges in the Middle East
The September 11th attacks and events that followed have again focused the U.S. administration, intelligence community, and Department of Defense on the danger that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could be acquired by adversary states or non-state actors. Two threats in the Middle East currently stand out among the rest: Al-Qaeda's announced efforts to make or acquire WMD, and the suspected resumption of Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Russell, James A. (James Avery), 1958-; Lavoy, Peter R. (Peter René), 1961-; Boureston, Jack
2002-02
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Homeland Defense: Ramping Up, But What's the Glide Path?
"The attacks of September 11, 2001 have brought about massive increases in spending for homeland security and have established defense of the homeland as a primary responsibility of the Defense Department. DoD's most recent Quadrennial Defense Review clearly states that defense of the continental United States has become a top priority for the military: 'The highest priority of the United States military is to defend the nation from all enemies. The United States will maintain sufficient military forces to protect the U.S. domestic population, its territory and its critical defense-related infrastructure against attacks emanating from outside U.S. borders as appropriate under U.S. law.'"
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Bravo, IIiana P.
2002-03
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Failed Economic Take-Offs and Terrorism: Conceptualizing a Proper Role for U.S. Assistance to Pakistan
During the 1990s Pakistan's economy suffered on two accounts. One, lack of vision by the civilian ruling elites to make efficient use of public financial resources to boost economic growth, contain poverty, and develop human resources. Two, the inability of these governments (B. Bhutto and N. Sharif) to check unbridled corruption and cronyism. This failure resulted in the political use of public resources, the bending of rules and regulations to benefit a selected few and the erosion of any institutional accountability. Four key economic breakdowns evolved out of this environment: (1) high fiscal deficits; (2) an unsustainable public debt (domestic and foreign); (3) a sharp deterioration in the distribution of income; and (4) a disturbing rise in the level of poverty.
Under the Musharraf Administration, considerable progress was made in correcting the first and second problems, but possibly at the expense of a further sizeable increase in the numbers of people below the poverty line. In part, economic performance under Musharraf stems from the emphasis placed over the last three years on macroeconomic stabilization as a key to fighting poverty. The strategy hinges on the premise that stability will result in higher rates of investment and eventually the restoration of rates of growth of over 6% (Malik 2003) per annum achieved during the 1960s, and through most of the 1980s. In turn high growth will pull large segments of the population up over the poverty line. The hope is that in the near future sustained rates of growth of over 6% will again be the norm.
The question that immediately arises is whether this is a realistic goal for the economy.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Looney, Robert E.
2003-02-01
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Strategic Response to Terrorism: A Framework for U.S. Policy
Deterrence by denial is the ultimate objective of the terrorism response framework. Although most counter-terror strategies begin with deterrence, their aim is to prevent an attack, not to deter the terrorist strategy. Some also describe deterrence of terrorism in terms of deterrence by punishment. While it is possible to deter a specific attack by threatening punishment, it is unlikely to succeed in terms of deterring a terrorist campaign in the first place. This framework depicts deterrence as the net result of operational, tactical, and strategic programs that range from pre-attack policies through the long-term response to a terrorist incident. This is ultimately deterrence by denial. Delegitimized and marginalized, the terrorists' message falls on deaf ears, and recruits no longer rush to their cause. They are denied sanctuary, funding, and logistics support. Their organization, communication, and movement is disrupted. Their planning, training, and access to weapons is curtailed. They are denied victims. They are denied the ability to generate fear and as a result are unable to influence targeted government. With this across-the-board denial, the terrorists and the terrorists' message are marginalized, and their strategy is rendered impotent. At that point terrorism is deterred.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Smith, James M.
2003-02-06
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Return of Strategy
Today there is a return to strategy in the foreign and defense policies of the United States and its allies. Strategy's return has been prompted by the need to make decisions about when, where and how to use force to deter, disrupt and destroy individuals, groups and states that seek to attack the United States and its overseas interests and to stop the spread of democracy and free markets. Because force is now being considered not just to deter war, but also to wage war, there is a need to revive the fine art of strategy.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Wirtz, James J., 1958-
2003-01-01
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With New Nuclear Arms Pact, Attention Shifts to What Post-Cold War Arms Agenda Should Be
On May 24, 2002, at a summit meeting in Moscow, U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty to reduce both sides' deployed strategic nuclear warheads. The two presidents also signed a joint declaration outlining a new strategic relationship involving increased cooperation between the two countries. The U.S. government refers to the new arms treaty as the Treaty of Moscow, while some commentators have adopted the acronym SORT, for strategic offensive reductions treaty. The treaty requires cutting deployed strategic warheads from approximately 6000 on each side today to between 1700 and 2200 by the end of 2012. It does not set any specific targets along the way; each side can reduce as fast or as slow as it wishes (or even temporarily increase its forces) as long it meets the deadline ten years from now. In contrast to earlier treaties, the agreement allows both sides complete freedom to choose the types and mix of delivery vehicles on which their permitted warheads will be deployed. The treaty expires at the end of 2012 unless the two sides agree to extend it. Either party can withdraw from the treaty before then by giving three months notice, half the withdrawal period specified in previous arms control pacts.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Knopf, Jeffrey W.
2002-07-01
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Quiet Revolution: The New Nuclear Triad
The purpose of the Bush administration's new strategic triad is to integrate defenses (i.e., missile defense), nuclear weapons and "non-nuclear strike forces" into a seamless web of capabilities to dissuade and deter adversaries and to fight and win wars if deterrence fails. The NPR notes that the strike elements "...can provide greater flexibility in the design and conduct of military campaigns to defeat opponents decisively. Non-nuclear strike capabilities may be particularly useful to limit collateral damage and conflict escalation. Nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack (for example, deep underground bunkers or bio-weapons facilities)." By using the term "triad" to describe this new array of strategic capabilities, the Bush administration also is redefining a central concept borrowed from Cold-War nuclear deterrence. Prior to the Bush administration, the term triad was used to refer to the three legs of the U.S. strategic nuclear force: submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), land based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and long-range bombers. The purpose of maintaining the triad was to complicate Soviet efforts to launch a disarming nuclear attack against the United States: an attack that maximized destruction of land based ICBMs, for example, would not harm SLBMs deployed safely at sea.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Wirtz, James J., 1958-; Russell, James A. (James Avery), 1958-
2002-05-01
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Deterring Violent Non-State Actors in the New Millennium
The attacks of September 11 and the ensuing global war on terrorism have highlighted what many observers had predicted during the 1990s: that collective violence and challenges to the international system by violent non-state actors (VNSA) would become a defining feature of the post-Cold War security environment. It is asserted that new adversaries like Al Qaeda will pursue their objectives whatever the cost and cannot be deterred by the threat of retaliation. These assertions have generated much thinking and debate about the role that deterrence is supposed to play in national security strategy and policy. While it may be true that deterrence will not function with VNSAs in the same way deterrence worked during the Cold War, we believe a revised version of deterrence that we would call Broad Biological Deterrence, or BBD, remains a viable strategy for meeting the challenge posed by VNSAs.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Casebeer, William D.
2002-12-02
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Deterrence and Preemption
The logic of deterrence is thus more elusive than it may appear at first glance, especially if that glance is conditioned by the long nuclear stand-off of the Cold War. Nuclear deterrence is deterrence in radically simplified form, since the destructiveness of the weapons themselves tends to disabuse those who hold them of any notion that mere audacity or cleverness could allow them to evade the consequences of their use; though it is worth recalling that even in the nuclear arena the hypothetical dangers of a "decapitating" first strike have proved capable of stirring up intense anxiety from time to time. Nuclear deterrence--which amounts to little more than an exchange of hostages on a massive scale--is also unusual in that, at least as between the Soviet Union and its Western opponents, both sides were tacitly willing to admit to being deterred, a fact that contributed to the transparency, and hence the stability, of the nuclear balance.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Moran, Daniel
2002-12-02
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Following the Terrorist Informal Money Trail: The Hawala Financial Mechanism
Since 9/11, investigations into the al Qaeda financial network have led to several notable successes in the United States and Europe. Much of this achievement in the United States has resulted from strengthening the financial investigatory powers of domestic law enforcement agencies and coordinating them through the Treasury Department's new Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center. In other countries, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, for example, is helping to coordinate the tracking of terrorist funds through the global banking system and cracking down on countries that fail to improve transparency and regulation. These efforts are already proving useful in uncovering large-scale drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations. They have also helped reveal important information on terrorist groups, particularly those operating in the West.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Looney, Robert E.
2002-11-01
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Constituting the Uyghur in U.S.-China Relations: The Geopolitics of Identity Formation in the War on Terrorism
Central Asia has been extraordinarily agitated since 9/11, which can be partly explained by a sense that a clash of Muslim and non-Muslim civilizations was spilling over into the region from Afghanistan, and partly explained by the U.S. military presence in the region. This agitation has overflowed into Xinjiang, with the Chinese PLA cracking down on Uyghur terrorists/freedom fighters. Western human rights groups have been rightly concerned that this crackdown is spreading a wide net, scooping up innocent Uyghurs in addition to the freedom fighters. China is accused of bandwagoning in the war on terrorism in a manner similar to Jakarta's effort to categorize Aceh separatists as al Qaeda-trained terrorists, and New Delhi's casting of Kashmir as part of the global terrorist threat.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Christoffersen, Gaye
2002-09-02
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Role of Foreign Aid in the War on Terrorism
The events of September 11 made it painfully clear that the political, social and economic problems of other countries have a direct impact on American national security. The United States was attacked by a terrorist organization that has had great success in recruiting new members in nations which offer young men little political voice and limited economic opportunity.
With this in mind the United States and its coalition partners have responded to the terrorist attacks with a three pronged strategy -- short run military, medium term aid to vulnerable countries and groups, and longer term assistance programs that directly focus on the sources of terrorist motivation. The first task has been in large part successfully completed while the second is only in the initial stages of implementation. In all likelihood however these initial successes must also carry to the second and third medium- to longer-term strategies to assure the ultimate defeat of al Qaeda and like-minded groups.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Looney, Robert E.
2002-07-01
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Economic Costs to the United States Stemming From the 9/11 Attacks
Like all major disasters, natural or manmade, the terrorist attacks of September 11 resulted in a tragic loss of life and destruction of property, as well as short-term disruption of economic activity. In addition, because of the size and premeditated nature of the attack, there are likely to be more lasting effects in some industries and segments of the U.S. economy.
Conceptually, the economic costs to the United States stemming from the 9/11 terrorist attacks can be broken down into several categories, largely depending on their nature (direct and indirect) and on the time period examined (immediate, short-term, medium-term and long-term). Those costs that are short run and direct are clearly the easiest to identify and measure. Estimates covering longer periods of time and focused mainly on indirect costs require numerous assumptions concerning counterfactuals and hence are on less firm ground.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Looney, Robert E.
2002-08-05
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WMD Proliferation and Conventional Counterforce: The Case of Iraq
Press reports indicate that the Bush administration is finalizing a national security strategy document that advocates preventive military attacks to stop states from developing weapons of mass destruction. The palpable hue and cry against such an idea is easy to understand since it overturns a policy that traditionally has guided U.S. thinking on addressing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation. For decades the United States chose to rely on multilateral control regimes and diplomatic or economic pressures against states seeking to acquire WMD. Indeed, one notable exception to this policy has been the effort undertaken by both Republican and Democratic administrations over the last decade to use military force to slow or destroy Iraq's efforts to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Russell, James A. (James Avery), 1958-
2002-07-03
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Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security
The proposed Department of Homeland Security is being touted as the most significant change in the Federal government since the creation of the Department of Defense and the National Security Council following the Second World War. It is certainly a major reorganization of the numerous agencies involved in U.S. homeland security. It now appears that these existing agencies and functions will be unified in one operational structure and assigned the basic mission of defending Americans in their homes and places of work against foreign and domestic terrorists operating within the United States. Part of this new Homeland Security Department will be devoted to monitoring, analyzing and utilizing intelligence about these domestic threats to national security. But the question remains: How should this new department be organized to utilize existing intelligence assets and to generate new sources and types of intelligence? The U.S. military's recent experience, especially in organizing for joint warfare, might be a place to turn for some lessons.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Channell, Ralph N.
2002-08-09
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Assessing Al Qaeda's WMD Capabilities
Events in the recent past have focused the world on the al Qaeda terrorist organization and its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD). WMD can be defined as nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiological weapons. The U.S. Code, Title 5, defines WMD as "any weapon or device that is intended, or has the capability, to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through the release, dissemination, or impact of (A) toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors; (B) a disease organism; or (C) radiation or radioactivity."[1] According to Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, "Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden said in the past that the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by his terrorist gang is a religious duty. U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan found evidence that al Qaeda was aggressively pursuing chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear information and material."[2] Now CNN has obtained tapes recording al Qaeda's chemical experiments. As more evidence is found we can begin to understand the details about al Qaeda's WMD objectives. This analysis examines al Qaeda's WMD undertakings as we know them, and describes U.S. efforts to counter, preempt, and otherwise prevent al Qaeda from obtaining a robust WMD arsenal.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Contemporary Conflict
Boureston, Jack
2002-09-02
