Plutonium is an element that essentially did not exist on our planet. Only human ingenuity and the intense conflicts between powerful nations have created this element in such huge amounts. And once created, we cannot make it go away. What an emblematic predicament of mankind’s Faustian bargain! For six decades, statesmen, strategists, and arms control experts have tried, and tried again, to control the spread of nuclear weapons. Now we begin to realize that our attempts to escape the predicted calamity have helped bring it about—Sophocles’ Oedipus writ large. A sad ending of good intentions. Ineffably sad.
4
ANNIHILATION FROM WITHIN
If you keep gazing into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The beginning of wisdom is fear.
—MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO
THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE did not empower ruthless cults or crazed anarchists to extirpate law and order in every province of the realm. But such an unprecedented reign of violence might become mankind’s fate in this century. The ineluctable dissemination of technology and scientific discoveries will make nuclear and biological weapons accessible to merciless insurgent movements, small terrorist gangs, secretive anarchist groups, and genocidal doomsday cults. Although some scholars and officials have warned of this peril, nobody so far has gazed into this deep abyss.
During the last few years, the media has published frightening news, based on confirmed events as well as credible rumors, about jihadist terrorists trying to obtain a nuclear bomb. One shudders to think what our enemies could do, should they succeed in this quest. They might manage to smuggle the bomb into an American or European city and cause a cataclysm beyond all telling. Dozens of writers have published gripping stories about such a calamity.1 But their stories usually end before the morning after the nuclear destruction and ignore the ensuing long-term upheaval that would engulf our whole planet like a global tsunami.
If we keep gazing into this abyss, we burden our psyche with disquieting thoughts. As Nietzsche warned, the abyss will gaze back into us. Yet fear is the beginning of wisdom. I shall now try to shed some light into this world of darkness, a world that will confront all nations with security threats they have never faced before.
Neglecting Defensive Measures
The recent waves of terrorism confound our strategic planners more than the proverbial fog of war. Overawed by the boldness and skill of the 9/11 attack, military experts have come to interpret the tactics used by militant Muslims as if they were a new form of warfare. Yet these attacks—always stealthy and often indiscriminate—are much like the tactics that have been employed in protracted insurgency wars (as in Chechnya or Sri Lanka), or that have been used to exert political pressure and gain attention (as by the Red Brigade in Italy or the Palestinian Intifada). It is also worth recalling that the use of stealth and surprise is a time-honored stratagem. Stealthy attacks by disguised fighters served Allied war aims in World War II, a tactic that was known as “sabotage.” The bravest Allied fighters carried out dangerous sabotage attacks on military targets in Nazi-occupied territories, especially France and Norway. One might argue that such stealthy attacks in World War II had been preceded by a declaration of war and therefore should not be likened to “terrorist” attacks.2 At which point an annoying critic will interject that the only declared war since then has been Osama bin Laden’s jihad.
America’s military planners have fought terrorist tactics primarily with offensive measures, sometimes to the neglect of complementary defenses. Many successful offensive operations have been carried out since 9/11, above all the defeat of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. As if to justify an exclusive reliance on offensive warfare, we keep condemning the ruthlessness and immorality of stealthy attacks. With laudable compassion and a somewhat maudlin mien, we describe our civilian victims of such attacks routinely as “innocent.” In fairness, shouldn’t we keep in mind that our combatant victims are just as innocent? It was our neglect of defensive measures that made it easy for the enemy in 1983 to launch the deadly assault on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut; and again in 1996 to bomb the U.S. military quarters in the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia; and again in 2000 to launch a shaped charge into the destroyer USS Cole. Oddly, we blamed each of these disasters on the “cowardly” sneak attacks of terrorists. We scarcely blamed the tragic losses on the shameful failure to defend our military assets and our military combatants—whether they are resting in their quarters or on full alert.
The idea that “offense is the best defense” remains popular among U.S. military officers and their civilian leaders, perhaps because of America’s past experience. During its entire history, the United States has been attacked within its territory only three times: in 1812, 1941, and 2001. So we continue to tell ourselves that the best way to fend off attacks on the 9/11 model is to go after the terrorists in their lairs and “bring them to justice.” Clearly, to achieve an effective offense-defense synergy we must carry out offensive strikes against aggressors who are preparing to
