Deterring nonstate WMD attacks

Political Science Quarterly

Volumn 121, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 543-568

  Auerswald, David P ^a  

^a National War College   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846707188     PISSN: 00323195     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-165X.2006.tb00581.x     Document Type: Review

References (129)

1. For the purposes of this article, WMD include nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological weapons.
2. Current and Projected National Security Threats to the U.S.: Hearings before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 109th Cong., 1st Sess (testimony of Porter Goss, 16 February 2005, 2).
3. Also see National Intelligence Council, Mapping the Global Future (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 2004), 93-95.
4. For similar comments in 2003, see The International Terrorist Threat: Hearings before the House International Relations Committee, Subcommittee on International Terrorism, 108th Cong., 1st Sess. (testimony of Cofer Black, 26 March 2003).
5. As Audrey Cronin notes, religious terrorists show little restraint in the conduct of war (jus in bello) once they have justified going to war (jus ad belium). Audrey Cronin, "Rethinking Sovereignty," Survival 44 (Summer 2002): 119-139.
6. Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 391-413.
7. John Parachini, "Comparing Motives and Outcomes of Mass Casualty Terrorism Involving Conventional and Unconventional Weapons," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 24 (September 2001): 389-406.
8. William Potter, "Nuclear Smuggling from the Former Soviet Union" in David Marples and Marilyn Young, eds., Nuclear Energy and Security in the Soviet Union (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997): 139-159;
9. John Berryman, "Russia and the Illicit Arms Trade," Crime, Law and Social Change 33 (March 2000): 85-104;
10. Joby Warrick, "Smugglers Enticed by Dirty Bomb Components," The Washington Post, 30 November 2003;
11. and Tom Parfitt, "The Nuclear Nightmare," The Times (UK), 3 March 2004.
12. Peter Slevin, John Lancaster, and Kamran Khan, "At Least Seven Nations Tied to Pakistani Nuclear Ring," The Washington Post, 8 February 2004;
13. William Broad, "Libya's A-Bomb Blueprints Reveal New Tie to Pakistani," The New York Times, 9 February 2004.
14. Owais Tohid, "Pakistan and its Proliferator," The Christian Science Monitor, 6 February 2004, 1.
15. Lyudmila Zaitseva and Kevin Hand, "Nuclear Smuggling Chains," American Behavioral Scientist 46 (February 2003): 822-844.
16. ' Joseph Lepgold, "Hypotheses on Vulnerability: Are Terrorists and Drug Traffickers Coerceable?" in Lawrence Freedman, ed., Strategic Coercion: Concepts and Cases (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 131-150;
17. Gerald Post, "Psychological and Motivational Factors in Terrorist Decision-making: Implications for CBW Terrorism" in Jonathan Tucker, ed., Toxic Terror: Assessing the Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 271-290;
18. Daniel Byman, "Scoring the War on Terrorism," National Interest 72 (Summer 2003): 75-84;
19. Paul Davis and Brian Jenkins, Deterrence and Influence in Counterterrorism (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002), 12-14;
20. Adam Dolnik, "Die and Let Die: Exploring Links between Suicide Terrorism and Terrorist Use of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Weapons," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 26 (January-February 2003): 17-35;
21. and Thomas Friedman, "War of Ideas, Part 1," The New York Times, 8 January 2004.
22. For somewhat opposing views, see Gerald Steinberg, "Rediscovering Deterrence After September 11, 2001," Jerusalem Letters/Review, no. 467, 2 December 2001;
23. John Parachini, "Putting WMD Terrorism into Perspective," The Washington Quarterly 26 (Autumn 2003): 37-50;
24. Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2004), 124.
25. For examples of the former perspective, see Derek Smith, "Deterrence and Counter-proliferation in an Age of WMD," Security Studies 12 (Summer 2003): 152-197;
26. Andrew Newman, "Arms Control, Proliferation and Terrorism," Strategic Studies 27 (March 2004): 59-88.
27. The Cooperative Threat Reduction initiative is a cornerstone of the latter perspective. Our ability to deter state proliferation to terrorists is at the heart of the President's statements that "You are either with us or against us." See Jasen Castillo, "Nuclear Terrorism: Why Deterrence Still Matters," Current History (December 2003): 426-431.
28. Glen Snyder, Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961).
29. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960);
30. Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966).
31. Branislav Slantchev, "The Power to Hurt: Costly Conflict with Completely Informed States," American Political Science Review 97 (February 2003): 123-135.
32. Cronin, "Rethinking Sovereignty," 130; Davis and Jenkins, Deterrence and Influence, 3-7.
33. "Raymond Bonner and Don Van Natta, "Regional Terrorist Groups Pose Growing Threat, Experts Warn," The New York Times, 8 February 2004;
34. Jamie Glazov, "Symposium: Diagnosing Al Qaeda," Front Page Magazine, 12 August 2003; Byman, "Scoring the War on Terrorism."
35. Davis and Jenkins, Deterrence and Influence.
36. Bruce Hoffman, "The Leadership Secrets of Osama Bin Laden," The Atlantic Monthly 291 (April 2003): 26-27.
37. Brian Jenkins, Should our Arsenal against Terrorism Include Assassination? (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1987);
38. and Catherine Lotrionte, "When to Target Leaders," Washington Quarterly 26 (Summer 2003): 73-86.
39. Dolnik, "Die and Let Die," 29.
40. Davis and Jenkins, Deterrence and Influence, xii.
41. Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996).
42. Davis and Jenkins, Deterrence and Influence, 43.
43. Gerald Post, "Psychological and Motivational Factors," 273.
44. Bruce Hoffman, "Rethinking Terrorism and Counterterrorism since 9/11," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 25 (September-October 2002): 303-316.
45. David Jones, Michael Smith, and Mark Weeding, "Looking for the Pattern: Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia - The Genealogy of a Terror Network," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 26 (November-December 2003): 443-457.
46. Bonner and Van Natta, "Regional Terrorist Groups"; Hoffman, "Leadership Secrets."
47. Dana Priest, "Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground: War Created Haven, CIA Advisers Report," The Washington Post, 14 January 2005.
48. Lepgold, "Hypotheses on Vulnerability," 144.
49. Charles Ferguson and William Potter, The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism (Monterey, CA: Monterey Institute of International Studies, 2004), 6-11.
50. Gavin Cameron, "Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism Research, Past and Future" in Andrew Silke, ed., Research on Terrorism (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2004), 72-90.
51. Zaitseva and Hand, "Nuclear Smuggling Chains," 832.
52. Phil Williams, "Terrorism and Organized Crime" in Brad Roberts, ed., Hype or Reality? The New Terrorism and Mass Casualty Attacks (Alexandria, VA: Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, 2000), 137;
53. Mark Phythian, "The Illicit Arms Trade: Cold War and Post-Cold War," Crime, Law and Social Change 33 (March 2000), 1-52.
54. William Niskanen, "Crime, Police, and Root Causes" (Cato Policy Analysis No. 218, The Cato Institute, Washington DC, 14 November 1994).
55. For earlier works on the subject, see: Gary Becker, "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," Journal of Political Economy 76 (March-April 1968): 169-217;
56. Isaac Erlich, "Participation in Illegitimate Activities," Journal of Political Economy (May-June 1973): 521-567;
57. Steven Craig, "The Deterrent Impact of Police," Journal of Urban Economics 21 (May 1987): 298-311;
58. William Trumbull, "Estimation of the Economic Model of Crime Using Aggregate and Individual Level Data," Southern Economic Journal 26 (October 1989): 423-439.
59. Larry Siegel, Criminology, 4th ed. (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1992): 131-133.
60. Niskanen, "Crime, Police, and Root Causes"; Siegel, Criminology, 133.
61. Maurice Kugler, Thierry Verdier, and Yves Zenou, "Organized Crime, Corruption and Punishment" (working paper, The Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Stockholm, Sweden, 2003).
62. Bartosz Stanislawski and Margaret Hermann, "Transnational Organized Crime, Terrorism, and WMD" (paper prepared for the Conference on Non-state Actors, Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction, College Park, MD, Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland, 15 October 2004);
63. Zaitseva and Hand, "Nuclear Smuggling Chains," 827-833;
64. Phil Williams and Roy Godson, "Anticipating Organized and Transnational Crime," Crime, Law and Social Change 37 (June 2002): 311-355;
65. Berryman, "Russia and the Illicit Arms Trade."
66. Phythian, "The Illicit Arms Trade," 1.
67. Ibid., 2.
68. "Pakistan's Nuclear Secrets Sold," 6 February 2004, accessed on the website of The Economist at http://www.economist.com/world/asia/ displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_NOTNJSG, 11 October 2006;
69. William Broad, David Sanger, and Raymond Bonner, "A Tale of Proliferation: How Pakistani Built His Network," The New York Times, 12 February 2004;
70. Paul Haven, "Pakistan Nuke Scientist Bought Loyalty," Associated Press, 17 February 2004.
71. Zaitseva and Hand, "Nuclear Smuggling Chains," 831.
72. Peter Landesman, "Arms and the Man," New York Times Magazine, 17 August 2003, 57.
73. For a summary of the differences between these two types of groups, see Williams, "Terrorism and Organized Crime." For an argument that the two groups are growing increasingly similar,
74. see Thomas Sanderson, "Transnational Terror and Organized Crime," SAIS Review 24 (Winter 2004): 49-62;
75. Tamara Makarenko, "A Model of Terrorist-Criminal Relations," 1 August 2003, accessed at Jane's Intelligence Review, at www.janes.com, 4 October 2006;
76. Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider, "The Mafia and Al-Qaeda: Violent and Secretive Organizations in Comparative and Historical Perspective," American Anthropologist 104 (September 2002): 776-783.
77. Williams and Godson, "Anticipating," 325; Lepgold, "Hypotheses on Vulnerability," 140.
78. Williams and Godson, "Anticipating," 337-338.
79. Dolnik, "Die and Let Die," 29.
80. Kugler, Verdier, and Zenou, "Organized Crime," 4.
81. Haven, "Pakistan Nuke Scientist."
82. Tohid, "Pakistan and Its Proliferator; "Pakistan's Nuclear Secrets Sold."
83. Broad, Sanger, and Bonner, "A Tale of Proliferation." 51 Lepgold, "Hypotheses on Vulnerability," 140.
84. Department of State, "Proliferation Security Initiative Frequently Asked Questions," 26 May 2005, accessed at www.state.gov/t/isn/rls/fs/ 46839.htm, 4 October 2006,
85. See also: Michael Byers, "Policing the High Seas: The Proliferation Security Initiative," American Journal of International Law 98 (July 2004): 526-540;
86. Chaim Braun and Christopher Chyba, "Proliferation Rings: New Challenges to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime," International Security 29 (Fall 2004): 5-49;
87. Ferguson and Potter, Four Faces, 323;
88. Michael Evans, "U.S. Plans to Seize Suspects at Will," London Times, 11 July 2003;
89. and "Eleven Countries Join Forces to Combat the Trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction," London Financial Times, 11 July 2003.
90. Department of State, "The Proliferation Security Initiative: Statement of Interdiction Principles," 4 September 2003, accessed at www.state.gov/t/isn/rls/fs/23764.htm, 4 October 2006.
91. Sean Murphy, "Proliferation Security Initiative for Searching Potential WMD Vessels," American Journal of International Law 98 (April 2004): 355-357;
92. Jofi Joseph, "The Proliferation Security Initiative," Arms Control Today (June 2004) accessed at www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_06/ Joseph. asp, 4 October 2006;
93. Andrew Winner, "The Proliferation Security Initiative: The New Face of Interdiction," Washington Quarterly 28 (Spring 2005): 129-143.
94. For an example of the flag of convenience agreements, see Department of State, "Proliferation Security Initiative Ship Boarding Agreement with Panama," 12 May 2004, accessed at www.state.gov/t/isn/trty/32858.htm, 4 October 2006.
95. Winner, "Proliferation Security Initiative," 134.
96. Mitchell Reiss, "Steps to a Brighter Future: The Bush Administration's Non-Proliferation Policy," 21 June 2004, accessed at www.state.gov/s/p/rem/34267.htm, 4 October 2006;
97. Winner, "Proliferation Security Initiative," 137.
98. Department of State, "What is the Proliferation Security Initiative?" 26 May 2005, accessed at www.state.gov/t/isn/rls/other/46858. htm, 4 October 2006.
99. Reiss, "Steps to a Brighter Future."
100. Sean Murphy, "UN Security Council Resolution on Nonproliferation of WMD," American Journal of International Law 98 (July 2004): 606.
101. Andrew Semmel, "UN Security Council Resolution 1540: The U.S. Perspective," 12 October 2004, accessed at http://www.state.gov/t/isn/rls/ rm/37145.htm, 11 October 2006.
102. Department of State, "Proliferation Security Initiative Frequently Asked Questions." 62 Ibid.
103. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Results from the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings," September 2004, accessed at www.drugwarfacts.org/druguse.htm, 17 January 2005.
104. Raphael Perl, Drug Control: International Policy and Approaches, CRS Issue Brief IB88093 (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service, 13 April 2005), 1.
105. UN Office on Drugs and Crime, "Global Illicit Drug Trends 2003" (Vienna, Austria, June 2003) accessed at www.drugwarfacts.org/druguse.htm, 17 January 2005.
106. Perl, Drug Control, 1.
107. Ibid., 8.
108. Ibid., 5.
109. Raphael Perl, Drug Trafficking and North Korea: Issues for U.S. Policy, CRS Report RL32167 (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service, 4 March 2005), 2.
110. Perl, Drug Control, 12.
111. Associated Press, "U.N. Estimates Drug Business Equal to Eight Percent of World Trade," 26 June 1997, accessed at www.drugwarfacts.org/ druguse.htm, 17 January 2005.
112. United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNODCCP), Economic and Social Consequences of Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking (New York: UNODCCP, 1998), 3, accessed at www.drugwarfacts.org/druguse.htm, 17 January 2005.
113. Perl, Drug Control, 2.
114. Landesman, "Arms and the Man."
115. The above reasoning is similar to social explanations of organized crime, as detailed in Williams and Godson, "Anticipating," 328-331.
116. Williams and Godson, "Anticipating," 334.
117. Ibid., 327.
118. Schneider and Schneider, "The Mafia and Al-Qaeda," 780.
119. Williams and Godson, "Anticipating," 334; Alison Jamieson, "Transnational Organized Crime: A European Perspective," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 24 (September-October 2001): 377-387.
120. Williams and Godson, "Anticipating," 343.
121. David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, "Unraveling the A.Q. Khan and Future Proliferation Networks," The Washington Quarterly 28 (Spring 2005): 111-128;
122. Braun and Chyba, "Proliferation Rings"; Slevin, Lancaster, and Khan, "Seven Nations";
123. Broad, Sanger, and Bonner, "A Tale of Proliferation"; Raymond Bonner, "Salesman on Nuclear Circuit Casts Blurry Corporate Shadow," The New York Times, 18 February 2004.
124. Quoted in Broad, Sanger, and Bonner, "A Tale of Proliferation"; see also Slevin, Lancaster, and Khan, "Seven Nations";
125. David Sanger and William Broad, "From Rogue Nuclear Programs, Web of Trails Leads to Pakistan," The New York Times, 4 January 2004.
126. Vsevolod Sokolov, "From Guns to Briefcases: The Evolution of Russian Organized Crime," World Policy Journal 21 (Spring 2004): 68-75.
127. Government Accountability Office, Weapons of Mass Destruction: Non-proliferation Programs Need Better Integration, GAO-05-157 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 2005), 7.
128. James Fallows, "Success without Victory," The Atlantic Monthly 295 (January/February 2005): 80-90.
129. * The views expressed here are those of the author and not of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or any other agency of the United States Government. The author thanks Audrey Cronin, Bill Jamieson, Frank Mora, Michael Mazarr, Bard O'Neill, Mitchell Reiss, Harvey Rishikof, Paula Thornhill, and the anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts.