(Page 29 of 53) - Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration authored by Mueller, John.

Mueller: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggerstion August 2, 2005

although nuclear weapons have been around now for well over half a century, no state has ever given
another state--even a close ally--much less a terrorist group, a nuclear weapon that the recipient could use
independently.

There is always the danger the weapon would be used in a manner the donor would not

approve--or even, potentially, on the donor itself. Allison thinks a dedicated terrorist group could get around
these problems in time and eventually produce or procure a "crude" bomb itself, but it would be one that,
by Allison's own admission, would be "large, cumbersome, unsafe, unreliable, unpredictable, and
inefficient" (2004, 97).

Goldstein is alarmed because he considers nuclear terrorism to be "not impossible," and Allison

more boldly declares his "own considered judgment" that, unless his policy recommendations (which
include a dramatic push toward war with North Korea) are carried out, "a nuclear terrorist attack on
America in the decade ahead is more likely than not."

Allison's declaration is far more likely to be

remembered if it proves true than if, more probably, it goes the way of C.P. Snow's once-heralded
broadside published in 1961:

We are faced with an either-or, and we haven't much time. The either is acceptance of a
restriction of nuclear armaments....The or is not a risk but a certainty. It is this. There is no
agreement on tests. The nuclear arms race between the United States and the U.S.S.R. not only
continues but accelerates. Other countries join in. Within, at the most, six years, China and several
other states have a stock of nuclear bombs. Within, at the most, ten years, some of those bombs
are going off. I am saying this as responsibly as I can. That is the certainty (1961, 259, emphasis
in the original).

George Will, working from the musings of Gregg Easterbrook, has come up with "Easterbrook's

Doomsaying Law": "Predict catastrophe no later that 10 years hence but no sooner than five years
away--soon enough to terrify, but far enough off that people will forget if you are wrong" (2004). Allison
and Snow seem to have gotten the point.

Al-Qaeda's capacities. In 1996 Osama bin Laden issued a religiously-oriented proclamation

which is usually taken to be a personal declaration of war on America--though actually the document
seems to restrict bin Laden's wrath to the Americans stationed in Saudi Arabia and is entitled,
"Declaration of War against the American Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places." Writing in The
Skeptical Inquirer a year after 9/11, astronomers Clark Chapman and Alan Harris quite reasonably
expressed incredulity that, however the document is interpreted, anyone would take seriously a declaration
of war promulgated by a single individual. Under the emotional impetus of the 9/11 attacks, a considerable
portion of the readership even of that magazine apparently did so (2003).

Fears of and anxieties about the twenty-foot tall terrorist seem reminiscent of those inspired by

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 are the nearly unanimous
expectation in the 1950s and 1960s that dozens of countries would have nuclear weapons by now. For example, in
1958 the National Planning Association predicted "a rapid rise in the number of atomic powers...by the mid-1960s"
(1958, 42). A couple of years later, John Kennedy observed that there might be "ten, fifteen, twenty" countries with a
nuclear capacity by 1964 (Kraus 1962, 394). This position continued after the Cold War. Over a decade ago,
Christopher Layne confidently insisted that Japan by natural impulse would soon come to yearn for nuclear weapons
(1993, 37) while John Mearsheimer equally confidently argued that "Germany will feel insecure without nuclear
weapons" (1990, 38). The Japanese and the Germans themselves continue uncooperatively to seem viscerally
uninterested, though problems with North Korea could alter that perspective for Japan. On the slowness of the
proliferation process more generally, see Mueller 1967, 1998; Meyer 1984; Graham 1991; Reiss 1995; Paul 2000.

Goldstein 2004, 128, 132. Allison 2004, 15; on Korea: 168-71.