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Assessing the Dangers

LIKE other nations, the United States has always faced threats to its safety and security. In recent years, however, our media have breathlessly conveyed the impression that threats of nearly every kind are materializing with far greater frequency than in the past. This is partly an illusion triggered by a human tendency to magnify today's problems compared with those of yesterday. What is hardly illusory is the outworking of a number of distinctly modern developments that give rise to emerging vulnerabilities.

When it comes to natural threats, for example, we have built communities in areas susceptible to wildfires, earthquakes, and floods, putting record numbers of people at risk. Moreover, the globalization of modern travel has produced unprecedented geographical mobility, raising the specter of a worldwide spread of infectious diseases. With respect to man-made threats, the mobility that can deliver diseases to our doorstep can bring terrorism there as well. In addition, modern science and technology amplify the capabilities of terrorists so that they may someday have the potential to destroy countless lives by detonating a single weapon in a well-populated area.

What can we do about these emerging threats to the homeland? In dealing with natural threats, we can stop some diseases in their tracks through inoculation, but obviously, we cannot prevent earthquakes or hurricanes. What we can do is take steps to reduce our vulnerability and improve our capacity to respond to them. And in the case of man-made dangers, there is much that we can do to prevent disasters from occurring. But it is imperative that we first identify and face squarely the nature and extent of those perils.

Threats Man-Made

For much of the last century, the United States and the Soviet Union existed under the threat of nuclear annihilation. As the famous Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists doomsday clock illustrated, we grew sometimes closer to and sometimes more distant from the midnight of an apocalypse. Yet this system was remarkably and fundamentally stable. It rested on the understanding that our Soviet adversaries had as much to lose from a nuclear exchange as we did. They had no desire to become martyrs. This system was sufficiently sturdy that it changed only when the internal structure of the Soviet system crumbled.

In the new century, we face challenges that are obviously different in a number of ways. Terrorist groups do not wield destructive power remotely on the scale of a nuclear state. But networked terrorists also act without the restraints of deterrence. Their supporters and assets are dispersed and low profile. Their willingness to be martyred is significant. And modern technology has given even small groups a destructive potential that continues to increase.

Nevertheless, there is a commonality between the current threat of terrorism and the historical challenge posed by the Soviet Union and other communist powers. It is the need to confront a unified, underlying ideology and worldview. In confronting the Soviets, we faced the ideology of Marxism, however hollow it eventually appeared. In our struggle with international terrorism, our main adversary is a cult of violent Islamist extremism, which seeks to hijack for its own ends the religion of hundreds of millions of peaceful Muslims. In the case of Marxism, what began as a movement distributed in pockets around the globe led to an ideology that took control of nations. In like manner, violent Islamist extremists seek host states in which they can train, flourish, and create platforms from which to attack other countries. Their aim is to follow the example of Marxism by gaining control of states or nations. This similarity is no accident. An Al Qaeda training document discovered in Afghanistan in 2002 specifically referred to Mao Zedong's three stages of insurgency: (1) recruitment and indoctrination; (2) sustained terrorist warfare; and (3) the ultimate seizure of territory and the levers of state power. Of course, Al Qaeda came closest to achieving the third and final stage of power during its pre-9/11 alliance with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

More recently, leaders of this extremist ideology have reiterated this goal. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, proclaimed in July 2006 on an extremist web site that “the whole world is an open field for us.” And the uncompromising view of these radicals is made clear by a line in Al Qaeda's charter that reads as follows: “We will not meet the enemy halfway and there will be no room to dialogue with them.” In order to grasp fully the implications of such rhetoric, we need only recall the conditions in Afghanistan under the Taliban. They harbored Al Qaeda, inflicted horrific punishment on dissenters, and drove women from public life, making them the virtual property of husbands and fathers and denying them an education along with other rights recognized by the modern world. It was only through the overthrow of that regime that these rights were restored.

But the destruction of Al Qaeda's headquarters in Afghanistan—while a major positive step—did not obliterate this terrorist organization or the virulent ideology it represents. Following this substantial setback, Al Qaeda and its key members retreated to other parts of the world. They removed to the frontier areas of Pakistan, where over time they have obtained breathing space to train, plan, experiment, and maintain a pipeline of operatives. They extended into the Maghreb in North Africa, and carried out attacks against UN facilities, courts, and schoolchildren. They have returned to parts of Somalia, whose weakened government produced a climate conducive to lawlessness, including piracy on the high seas. In Somalia, Al Qaeda and its cohorts hope to control territory and increase their capability of launching further attacks.

When we outline the continued threats we face from terrorism, we must begin with an extremist ideology and with Al Qaeda, its most potent representative. Vice-Admiral J. Michael McConnell, U.S. director of intelligence in the second Bush administration, noted, “Al Qaeda remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States, both here at home and abroad.”¹ Indeed, Al Qaeda and its affiliates form a truly global terrorist network, with a presence on multiple continents. While Al Qaeda remains a significant threat to the U.S. homeland, it continues to target societies across the Muslim world that reject its message and its methodology. It has launched numerous attacks against Muslims with ferocity and contempt for human life and dignity.

Al Qaeda and similar groups have killed thousands of people, mostly Muslims, over the past several years. Among their targets have been political candidates and government leaders. In December 2007, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto by Al Qaeda-allied militants brutally ended her quest to become Pakistan's elected leader again. In February 2008, in Rawalpindi, near Pakistan's capital, a suicide bombing killed that country's surgeon general. Also in February, an Al Qaeda plot was uncovered to assassinate the president of the Philippines.

But these extremists have seen fit to murder ordinary citizens as well. In November 2005, in Amman, Jordan, a bride and groom and the fathers of the two newlyweds were among the dozens of Muslims slaughtered in the middle of a wedding celebration by a triple suicide bombing. In April 2008, in a town north of Baghdad, at least forty-five people were killed during a funeral for two Sunni tribesmen.

Every report of wanton killings by Al Qaeda and its affiliates serves as a grim reminder of the lethal threat they pose. But here is the vulnerability that Al Qaeda has now created for itself: this unending slaughter of innocent Muslims sows the potential seeds for Al Qaeda's failure. Simply stated, these acts of extremism are alienating the very pool of people terrorists wish to convert to their creed. Tellingly, the two Sunni tribesmen mentioned above were part of an Awakening Council that was battling Al Qaeda and its minions in Iraq. Within the Sunni sections of Iraq, there has been a rising tide of revulsion against the mounting atrocities of Al Qaeda and other foreign fighters. Sunni leaders have taken up arms to free themselves from these terrorists. Coupled with the American military surge, the result has been a dramatic setback for Al Qaeda in Iraq.

This undeniable backlash against the extremists is not limited to Iraq. Clerics and other Muslim leaders around the world have begun a dialogue in which the apologetic for violence is emphatically rejected. Salman al Oudah, a well-known Saudi cleric, sent an open letter to bin Laden in 2007 criticizing Al Qaeda's attacks against innocent civilians. In his letter, Oudah asked, “How many innocents among children, elderly, the weak, and women have been killed and made homeless in the name of Al Qaeda?”² As a result, potential recruits to violent Islamic extremism are hearing an alternative view with growing clarity. They are beginning to learn from respected clerics that those who would recruit them to a creed that glorifies death and destruction are offering a false path.

Individual Muslims are now questioning Al Qaeda's indiscriminate violence. In a web-based question-and-answer session, al-Zawahiri was forced to strike a defensive tone in the face of sharp questioning of bombings that killed innocent Muslims, including schoolchildren.³ One questioner asked, “Do you consider the killing of women and children to be jihad?” In response to such questions, al-Zawahiri became defensive, alternately denying the charges, claiming that some of the innocents had been used as shields, and awkwardly insisting that Al Qaeda is entitled to destroy people who get in the way of their operations. Coupled with other Al Qaeda statements designed to discredit Muslim religious leaders who are opposing them, it appears that Al Qaeda's leaders are becoming worried about the growing, active opposition from within the Muslim community.

These are significant developments in the battle against extremism and terrorism. Every effort we make to counter the terrorist threat will fail if terrorist groups are able to recruit operatives faster than we can capture or kill them. Clearly, in the long run, the war against terrorism will be largely won or lost in the recruitment arena. The threat of violent Islamist extremism will not soon pass. Al Qaeda will continue pursuing platforms, recruitment and training opportunities, and laboratories in which to experiment with weapons. Therefore we dare not abandon our vigilance. In the short run, capturing and killing Al Qaeda leaders and operatives; frustrating the flow of their communications, money, and travel; and disrupting their plots are crucial tasks. But the strategic battle will be for the allegiance of a critical mass of Muslims. In that effort, the fulcrum must be a growing counterforce to extremism. It cannot emerge from governments or from their leaders in the West. It must come from within the Muslim community, finding its voice and rejecting the attempts to hijack Islam.

Although Al Qaeda and its network are our most serious immediate threat, they may not be our most serious long-term threat. There are other terrorist organizations, also driven by radical beliefs and practices, that pose a strategic risk to our nation and its allies. Among them is Hezbollah, a word that literally means the “party of God.” Hezbollah has a history that reaches back to the early 1980s, with its creation as a pro-Iranian Shi`a militia. Long before Al Qaeda was formed, Hezbollah had helped pioneer suicide bombing, including the 1983 bombing of U.S. Marine peacekeepers in Lebanon and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

Former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage once called Hezbollah “the A-team of terrorists,” and for good reason.⁴ Having operated for more than a quarter-century, it has developed capabilities about which Al Qaeda can only dream, including large quantities of missiles and highly sophisticated explosives, uniformly well-trained operatives, an exceptionally well-disciplined military force of nearly 30,000 fighters, and extraordinary political influence. Hezbollah shows what an ideologically driven terrorist organization can become when it evolves into an army and a political party and gains a deeply embedded degree of control within a state, as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon's democratic infrastructure. This is, in many ways, a terrorist group that has “graduated” from Mao's second stage of insurgency to the third stage, where it is steps away from ruling part or all of a functioning nation-state. Indeed, looking ahead, there is a real danger that Hezbollah could paralyze or even dismember Lebanon.

The good news is that Hezbollah's alliance with hostile foreign powers like Iran and Syria has cost it the support of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens who especially resent Syria's history of encroachments on Lebanon's sovereignty. While Hezbollah may not have carried out attacks in the United States itself, it has developed a presence in the Western Hemisphere, specifically in South America. In 1992, it bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing twenty-nine people. Two years later, it murdered eighty-five people by bombing a Jewish community center in that city. These acts disturbingly underscore Hezbollah's reach into the hemisphere, notably in the tri-border areas at the margins of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. Hezbollah's patron, Iran, is also forging warmer relations with Venezuela. These developments, only a relatively short distance from U.S. borders, highlight the fact that Hezbollah is not just a Middle Eastern concern.

In our immediate backyard other terrorist groups with different ideologies also pose a threat. Among the oldest is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia). Starting in the 1960s as a Marxist guerrilla group that took up arms against the government, it eventually became a criminal enterprise as well. Today, it engages in a host of activities, from narcotics trafficking and extortion to kidnapping and hostage taking for ransom and political leverage, in order to fuel its ideological efforts and its protracted war against Colombia's duly elected government. Organized along military lines, FARC replicates in the areas it controls the influence that Hezbollah has in parts of Lebanon or that Al Qaeda once had in Afghanistan. Like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, it is listed by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization. And FARC demonstrates what happens when terrorism and organized crime converge, each enabling the other.

FARC has clear ties to President Hugo Chavez's Venezuelan government and has been hosted by Chavez in that country. When Colombian forces killed a key FARC leader in early 2008, they found computer files that suggested even closer ties with Venezuela than previously known. This connection between a terrorist group and a nation-state notably parallels the relationship between Hezbollah and Iran. And as with Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, FARC has generated significant opposition among the people whose allegiance it seeks. Millions of Colombians rallied against it in early 2008, demanding that it release the hundreds of hostages it has been holding for years.

Finally, while Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and FARC represent threats from ideologically motivated organizations, U.S. security will be increasingly threatened as well by sophisticated transnational groups that operate purely as criminal enterprises. The same forces of globalization that have helped spread dangerous ideologies have empowered criminal organizations to become far more adept at trafficking in narcotics and human beings, and also in other kinds of activities that threaten the stability of societies and their governments.

Perhaps the most lethal of such groups is Mara Salvatrucha, MS-13, formed in the early 1980s by immigrants in Los Angeles, some of whom were former guerrilla fighters in El Salvador. It began as a street gang, selling illegal narcotics, committing violent crimes, and fighting turf wars with other criminal entities. In January 2008, an FBI threat assessment noted that MS-13 is in at least forty-two of our fifty states, with 6,000 to 10,000 members nationwide. Over time, MS-13 has spread not only across our cities but back into Central America, engaging in human trafficking, assassinations for hire, assaults on law enforcement officials, and other violent activities that threaten the stability of countries in that region.

In 1997, in Honduras, MS-13 kidnapped and murdered the son of President Ricardo Maduro. In 2002, in the Honduran city of Tegucigalpa, MS-13 members boarded a bus, executed twenty-eight people (including seven small children), and left a handwritten message taunting the government. Two years later, the president of Guatemala, Oscar Berger, received a message tied to the body of a dismembered man, warning of more killings to come.

MS-13 is not now an ideological group, but it continues to bring death and disorder to our neighbors to the south. That will be even more disturbing should a day come when this criminal network gains the power to dominate a small state in our own hemisphere.

The Generational Challenge

From Al Qaeda to MS-13, over the next decade we will face a full spectrum of man-made threats that call for an array of preventive measures. These threats will derive from organizations that are networked, widely distributed, difficult to deter, and aided in their ability to commit acts of violence by globalization and technological advances in travel, communications, and weaponry.

How will we prevent such threats from being carried out against our country? In brief, we need to keep pursuing a broad-gauged strategy. First, we need to keep using our military and intelligence assets abroad to stop dangerous people from reaching us at home. Second, we need to secure those hinges of the global architecture that are being exploited by global terrorism and crime, and where these illegal global networks are also at their most vulnerable. This means intercepting the illegal networks' communications, stopping their flow of finance, and interfering with their ability to travel.

Third, wherever we face ideological threats, we must contend with them. We must give voice to those around the world who oppose them. From Iraq to Lebanon to the Western Hemisphere, wherever people stand for freedom against tyranny and terror, we must stand with them. And we must urge communities of moderation to have the courage of their convictions and take a similar stand. To do anything less is to cede the battlefield of ideas to extremists, enabling them to recruit the next generation of terrorists without a fight. Fourth, we need to encourage the free flow of people and ideas to and from our nation. That means outreach to encourage travel to the United States

Fifth, we must continue to send people and resources abroad to help meet humanitarian needs. When we help African nations fight malaria or HIV/AIDS, we are not only combating misery with compassion, but demonstrating our values through positive action. Hezbollah gained significant traction by providing social services to local communities. When we have provided aid overseas, as in post-tsunami Asia, we have seen our image strengthened. Engagement with health, education, and social welfare around the globe can be an important tool in strengthening global security.

Finally, enhancing our trade and security support for our international partners is critical in fostering the strength they need to resist dangerous global ideologies and criminal networks. Whether through free-trade agreements like the one with Colombia or capacity-building plans like the Merida Initiative aimed at reinforcing Mexico's campaign against narcotraffickers, we must seize every opportunity to inoculate our neighbors against international terrorists and crime organizations.

Unquestionably, the threats we face constitute a generational challenge to our nation—a challenge we can surely meet and overcome through patient and sustained resolve, a common-sense strategy, and a comprehensive set of intelligent policies and tools.