Book Guide–John Mueller’s “Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We Believe Them.”

Here’s Proliferation Press’s mini-summary of Mueller’s eye-opening work.

Thesis:

A key element in a policy toward terrorism, therefore, should be to control, to deal with, or at least productively worry about the fear and overreaction that terrorism so routinely inspires and that generally constitutes its most damaging effect…In general, the reactions to these perceived threats, though not exactly suicidal, have often been misguided, foolish, overwrought, and economically costly. (48)

 

John Mueller’s World:

1. Take on the Threat: Terrorism & WMD
2. Worldview and Take on Recent Security Policy
3. Terror Policy
4. On Iraq
   

 

 

Mueller’s Take on Threat: Terrorism & WMD

 

 

I. Terrorism

One might tentatively be led, then, into considering a rather radical explanation [lack of future terrorist attacks] perhaps terrorists scarcely exist in the United States. That is, could it be that the threat from within has been exaggerated? (179)

Terrorism is therefore [owing to its statelessness] much more like crime than like war. Like crime, terrorism has always existed and always will, and the best hope is to reduce its frequency and consequences… (193)

Like crime, terrorism cannot be “crushed.” [But can it be] reduced…through patient, diligent, and persistent international police work rather than through costly ill-conceived wars…” (193)

 

II. WMD

Some spectacularly bad advice is furnished in a Turkish proverb: “If your enemy be an ant, imagine him to be an elephant.” [Following this] “one would be wary about being stomped, but not about the possibility that the enemy could scurry up a tree or burrow into the sand.”

Nuclear Weapons

• …making such a bomb is an extraordinarily difficult task. (15)

• “Moreover, proliferation of these weapons has been remarkably slow. During the cold war there were many dire predictions about nuclear proliferation that proved to be greatly exaggerated. Among these was the nearly unanimous expectation in the 1950s and 1960s that dozens of countries would soon have nuclear weapons [Kennedy quotation]. (15)

• In 2004, political scientist Graham Allison opined that a dedicated terrorist group could get around the problems in time and eventually steal, produce or procure a “crude” bomb, and he boldly declared that, unless his policy recommendations (which include a dramatic push toward war with North Korea) are carried out, “a nuclear terrorists on America in the decade ahead is more likely than not.” (16-17)

• Doomsayers have been wryly advised to predict catastrophe no later than ten years into the future but no earlier than five because that would be soon enough to terrify their rapt listeners but far enough off for people to forget if the doomsaying proves to be wrong. Allison…seem[s] to have gotten the point. (16-17)

Chemical Weapons

• …their inclusion in the WMD category is highly dubious unless the concept is so diluted that bullets or machetes can also be included. (18)

• Discussions of chemical weapons often stress their ability to cause casualties, both dead and wounded. This glosses over the fact that historically most of those incapacitated by chemical weapons have no actually died….In WWI only some 2 or 3 percent of those gassed on the Western Front died; by contrast, wounds by traditional weapons were some 10 or 12 times more likely to prove fatal. (18)

 

Biological Weapons

• After assessing, and stressing, the difficulties a nonstate entity would find in obtaining, handling, growing, storing, processing, and dispersing lethal pathogens effectively, biological weapons expert Milton Leitenberg… concludes, “The less the commentators seems to know about biological warfare the easier he seems to think the task is. (21-22)

 

Radiological Weapons

• ..are incapable of inflicting much immediate damage. (22)
• bombers risk exposing themselves to doses of radiation so lethal that even suicidal operatives might not live long enough to deliver and set off the device. (22)

Mueller’s Worldview and Take on Recent Security Policy

I. Rogue States (122-123):

The “rogue state” label implies that such entities are too irrational to be deterred by policies designed to deal with “normal” countries, and it therefore leads to an extreme version of what political scientists call the “security dilemma”: weaponry that might be obtained by such states to deter an attack is almost automatically assumed to be designed for offensive purposes even though such use would be patently suicidal for the rogues and their regimes.

II. Sum-Up:

After the cold war, the United States was given to characterizing itself, with consummate self-infatuation, as “as the last remaining superpower” and as “the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.” Departing from the advice of John Quincy Adams in 121 Fourth of July speech in the House of Representatives, policy makers often concluded that this status requires it actively go abroad “in search of monsters to destroy.”

Conclusions (135-137):

1) [T]here seems to exist something that might be called a catastrophic quota: when big problems go away, smaller ones become magnified in importance to compensate. Accordingly, things never get better. Once the defining horror of the post-World War II era…faded, comparatively minor ones were deftly elevated to fill the gap: civil or ethnic war in distant places, problems presented by little countries with noisy, if pathetic, dictators, and the ever-present “complexity.” None of these was remotely new, anymore than terrorism is after 9/11, but they often seemed that way…

2) “[W]hen unfamiliar problems come to arrest the public and political consciousness, there is a demand for easily graspable, if often simplistic and spooky, explanations that can set the mind at rest. Thus, the wars in Yugoslavia became exercises in “ancient ethnic hatreds,” even though Serbs and Croats, for example, had virtually never fought each other before the distinctly nonancient event known as World War II…

3) [T]the dramatic…appeal of singular devil remains.

4) [T]op leaders of major countries can become so emotionally obsessed and personally infected by even minor challenges that they can become absurdly preoccupied by them, neglect sensible policy alternatives, and flail about without much in the way of careful analysis. [George H.W. Bush by Noriega then Saddam; Carter and hostage crisis]

5) [E]vents like 9/11] can be seized upon by policymakers to force through a preexisting agenda—removing Saddam, in this instance—that has little or no relevance to the event itself.

Mueller’s Terror Policy

· Current policy puts primary focus on preventing terrorism from happening and on protecting potential terrorist targets, a hopelessly ambitious approach that has led to wasteful expenditures, an often bizarre quest to identity to identity potential targets, endless hand-wringing and political posturing, and opportunistic looting of the treasury by elements of the terrorism industry. (143)

· My policy approach arises from an appreciation of the rarity and the likely limited destructiveness of terrorist attacks, and it stresses the country’s ability to absorb just about any damage terrorists are apt to be able to inflict. It can still allow for some role for protection, prevention and policing, however. The likelihood that terrorists will be able to explode nuclear weapons seems very low, but because such an explosion would be very consequential, it makes sense to devote some systematic effort to reduce that likelihood even further—particularly by working internationally to keep tabs on, and responsible control over, fissile material. (148)

· In general, then, terrorism would be handled essentially as a criminal matter. (148)

· [Regarding the perceived need for politicians to react to events] However, refraining from overreacting after a terrorist attack is not necessarily political unacceptable, nor does it necessarily “do nothing.” In this case, judicious efforts to control nuclear material are certainly wise, and there be continued support for international policing to further dismantle terrorist networks and to infiltrate terrorist organizations… (169)

· The gloomy news, by contrast, is more real than potential: terror continues to boom even as terrorism struggles. The sometimes self-destructive propensities to exaggerate threat, to obsess on worst-case fantasies, to fear both unwisely and too well, to engage in massive extrapolation, and consequently to overreact and overspend are alive and kicking and will likely always be. (173)

Mueller on Iraq

• Further events outside battle zones like Iraq are likely to continue to be rare, and they will hardly stop a country in its tracks, any more than those in Madrid or London did. (185)
  

• It is not clear what a terrorist “victory” in Iraq, whether real or imagined, would lead to. Victory for the insurgents against the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1989 did not lead to a massive export of terrorism to other countries or areas, though a considerable number of roaming freelance jihadists were spun off.” (189)
• Most important for present purposes, the Iraq Syndrome might increasingly lead to the conclusion in the United States that American interests in the Middle East are actually rather limited… (192)

• Conceivably, this could develop into something of a backing away from the area, adopting a strategy of “offshore balancing,” as it is sometimes fancily called. A policy of readjustment like that might in turn reduce the importance of the United States as a terrorist target.” (192)

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