Where They Came From

In the days following the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York, many Kennedy School faculty, whose work focuses on preparedness and terrorism, spoke out about the tragedy. They appeared on television, radio, and in print. The following articles appeared in the news the week following the attacks as the Bulletin went to press.

A Domestic Pearl Harbor?
by Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
September 14, 2001
Reprinted from the Financial Times

Pearl Harbor was a transformative event in American history. The closely fought political battle between isolationists and internationalists was swept aside by the Japanese attack. The lesson that the United States had to be involved in international affairs was seared into the American collective memory. Isolationism ceased to be a credible option.

The September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is likely to involve casualties that are many times higher than the 2,500 deaths suffered at Pearl Harbor, and at least an order of magnitude higher than the hundreds of deaths that have characterized the worst terrorist incidents of recent decades. And as horrible as were the effects of turning fully fueled civil aircraft into flying bombs, the use of nuclear or biological agents could be even worse. A number of analysts and experts have been predicting that an incident of catastrophic terrorism would occur. A recent commission on national security chaired by former senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman warned of our vulnerability, and a 1998 Kennedy School study on catastrophic terrorism warned that “like Pearl Harbor, such an event would divide our past and future into a ‘before’ and ‘after.’”

What might these changes look like? We should hope for major changes in defense and intelligence policies, modest changes in foreign policy, and mixed changes on the domestic front. American defense policy has been focused on projecting force abroad and the ability to prevail in conflicts far from our shores. The stationing of troops in Europe, Asia, and the Persian Gulf helps to shape the environment and assure a stable balance of power in critical regions. Our forces have been structured and sized to prevail in major regional conflicts. But as the Hart and Rudman Commission pointed out, this important function is no longer sufficient to protect the American homeland. Nor would ballistic missile defense do the trick. They recommended a new organization that would focus on homeland defense, improved use of human intelligence agents, and better coordination of defense, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies.

In foreign policy, it would be a mistake for Americans to think that they could buy protection by drawing back from overseas commitments. The American economy and popular culture have global effects that will continue to arouse hostility in some fundamentalists even if the United States government were to eschew an active foreign policy. Calls to draw back from the Middle East, for example, would not remove the vulnerability. On the contrary, the recent events suggest that we should be more proactive in pressing forward with a Middle East peace process. At the same time, our vulnerabilities also suggest that unilateralist approaches are ill suited to meet the challenge of transnational issues that cut across national boundaries, whether they be climate change or terrorism. We are going to have to learn better to cooperate with other countries behind their borders and within ours. And unilateralist policies that squander our attractive or “soft” power will make this more difficult.

On the domestic front, we will need to improve our organizations and security procedures. In the area of civil aviation, for example, airports will become even less friendly places with more tedious delays; approach routes to airports may have to be altered for security reasons; and aircraft cockpits more securely isolated during flights. But at the same time, we have to realize that open societies are always vulnerable, and that there is a trade-off between security and other values in our society. Perfect security is found in graveyards and some prisons, but no one wants to live there.

When people are scared for their lives, they do not always react well. Even liberal presidents have taken harsh measures. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeus corpus at the beginning of the American Civil War, and Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed Japanese-Americans to be removed from their homes and placed in internment camps in World War II. The one transformation we do not want to occur from a domestic Pearl Harbor is such a serious sacrifice of our civil liberties. It is one thing to suffer long lines and delays at airports; it is quite another to condone ethnic screening of passengers, or arbitrary searches without warrant or probable cause. Thus far, with the exception of some intemperate Congressional speeches and a few public expressions of ethnic hostility, Americans have responded well to the horrors of the September 11 attacks. It will be important for the president and other leaders to continue to shape a response that stays within reasonable boundaries in the trade off between liberty and security. After all, a failure to do so would be to sacrifice our most central values, and that would be the ultimate damage the terrorists could inflict on a democracy.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is dean of the Kennedy School of Government and former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.

Protecting the Homeland
by Graham T. Allison
September 14, 2001
Reprinted from the Boston Globe

As we mourn the victims of Tuesday’s vicious attack on America, it is not too early to begin thinking about lessons of the event. This domestic Pearl Harbor sounds an alarm that should wake up American citizens and our government from a decade of what can only be called delusion. The brute fact is that the “sole remaining superpower” is supremely vulnerable to unconventional attacks by terrorists and rogue states.

Since the end of the Cold War, American policymakers have grown accustomed to bombing others unilaterally — attacking targets in Kosovo, Serbia, Iraq, Sudan, and Afghanistan. Today the U.S. government sanctions 75 countries, provides military support to friends in ongoing conflicts (Israel against Palestinians, the Northern Alliance against the Taliban), and offers imperious instructions to all comers.

Given the overwhelming preponderance of American power, others find it uncomfortable to share a bathtub with an elephant. When that elephant arrogates to itself the role of enforcer of its views about how Iraqis, Afghans, Chinese, and others should manage their internal affairs, should it be surprising that some become resentful and even seek revenge?

The central delusion in our recent national sleepwalk has been to imagine that we can intervene in other societies with impunity — as if we lived on another planet. When American B2s leave U.S. bases to launch cruise missiles against a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan or refugee camp in Afghanistan, what reaction should we expect?

The evident but until Tuesday unbelievable truth is that as the most open society in the world, America is among the most vulnerable. Not just to ballistic missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction, as President Bush would have it — a threat, but one that falls near the bottom of this decade’s “top ten” vulnerabilities. From hijacked airplanes, to a minivan filled with fertilizer-based explosives parked outside Oklahoma City’s
federal office building, America is subject to asymmetric, unconventional attacks by terrorists and rogue states.

Could the terrorist group that organized Tuesday’s assault have done even greater damage? What about a suitcase nuclear weapon or a crude nuclear device constructed from a softball-sized lump of highly enriched uranium delivered by a minivan? There are approximately 100,000 such lumps of fissionable material in Russian arsenals and stockpiles today. As a recent report of a bipartisan task force chaired by Senator (now Ambassador) Howard Baker and former Counsel to the President Lloyd Cutler concluded: “The most urgent, unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen by criminals, sold to terrorists or hostile nation states, and used to threaten American troops abroad or citizens at home.” Alternatively, a crop duster could spray a biological agent over New York City or Washington or Kansas City.

Horrific as Tuesday’s assault was, it has punctured our delusion of invulnerability. If our government will now recognize America’s Achilles heel, and seriously addresses this danger, we can perhaps save ourselves from even greater catastrophes that are otherwise likely.

What, therefore, should be done? Combating terrorist attacks on the American homeland will require a serious all-azimuth defense — not for a day or a decade, but perpetually. There exists and can exist no magic shield, no impenetrable bubble, no exit from life on a shrinking globe where international commerce, travel, and most importantly the individual freedoms Americans rightly value create inescapable vulnerabilities.

Today, the president and leaders of Congress should take the advice of a number of recent commissions and order their staffs to produce a comprehensive strategic plan to engage the full array of both unconventional and conventional threats to Americans’ lives and liberties. In the weeks ahead, they should approve a robust program of action to defend the American homeland. A major pillar of such a plan will involve “going to the source” of the greatest danger today, and as the Baker-Cutler Task Force recommends, buying and removing as quickly as possible all the nuclear weapons and weapons-useable material Russia is prepared to sell.

What about missile defense? An all-azimuth strategy must address ballistic missile threats as well. Fortunately, such threats are much less likely, and less urgent, than the most recent attack we suffered. The reasons why are not difficult to understand. First, to attack the United States with a ballistic missile, terrorists would have had to acquire not only a nuclear warhead (or a biological warhead), but also to have performed further technical feats by building a ballistic missile that could reach the United States and miniaturizing a warhead to fit on the missile. Given the availability of planes, ships, sea-land containers, and even FedEx, terrorists, and rogue states have easier alternatives. Second, attacking the United States by ballistic missile has an additional fatal drawback: it leaves an unambiguous return address. Any group or state that initiated such an attack would know that it had signed a warrant for its sudden death.

As Americans awake from the shock and horror of Tuesday’s attack, we should now get real about defending America’s homeland. Defending ourselves will, in time, require a roof against ballistic missile attacks. But for tomorrow and the decade ahead, we have much higher priorities beginning with intelligence about threats, preemptive actions to prevent threats before they happen, and more mundane initiatives that will secure the windows, walls, and doors of our American home against this clear and present danger.

Graham T. Allison is director of the Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is a former assistant secretary of defense for policy and plans.

Being Feared Is Not Enough to Keep Us Safe
by Jessica Stern
September 15, 2001
Reprinted from the Washington Post

Americans are eager to retaliate quickly for the brutal attacks in New York and Washington. Nearly 90 percent of respondents supported taking military action against those responsible even if it led to war, according to a Washington Post poll. The desire for revenge at a moment like this is perfectly understandable: we are traumatized as a nation. But striking back quickly is far less important than discouraging future strikes by our enemies, and the two are not the same. We cannot afford to allow an emotional desire for retribution to override our long-term national security interests.

When seeking to deter, compel, or appease their adversaries, smart leaders first learn about their enemies’ desires and fears. It is not clear that quick retaliation is what suicide bombers fear most. We cannot punish the perpetrators; they are already dead. And the organizers of these attacks obviously care more about taking revenge on us than they do about their own security. Osama bin Laden, for example, is reported to have said on the day of the attack that he is ready to die, and that if the U.S. military manages to kill him, thousands more “Osamas” will take his place.

I have met some of these “Osamas.” They appear in many countries and subscribe to many religions. They are usually drawn to extremist movements out of a feeling of severe deprivation — whether socioeconomic, political, or psychological. Inside extremist groups, the spiritually perplexed learn to focus on action. The weak become strong. The selfish become altruists, ready to make the ultimate sacrifice of their lives in the belief that their deaths will serve the public good.

Operatives I’ve interviewed describe the emotional satisfaction of their work, and the status they earn in their community. “One becomes important due to his work. Successful operations make a militant famous and glamorous among his fellow men,” a trainer for a Pakistani group told me.

Militants describe fighting as becoming a way of life. Jamal Al-Fadl, a member of al Qaeda who became a witness for the U.S. government, said that after the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan, there were a number of men who had been fighting so long that it was “the only thing they really knew how to do.” One long-term operative told me, “A person addicted to heroin can get off it if he really tries, but a mujahed cannot leave the jihad. I am spiritually addicted to jihad,” he said.

Islamic scholars explain that the jihad doctrine actually delineates acceptable behavior in war and, like the Western ‘just war tradition,’ explicitly outlaws terrorism. But in the extremist schools I have visited, clerics, often barely trained themselves, preach a virulent version of Islam, teaching their charges that murder is morally sanctioned and that innocent people are fair prey.

Islam is not the only religion that produces such extremists. A Christian militant who is now on death row for murder told me he was not trying to appeal his death sentence. “The heightened threat, the more difficulties forced on [me as] a Christian, the more joy I experience,” he said. Jewish extremists have repeatedly attacked the Dome of the Rock, despite knowing that their actions could cause truly massive casualties or even war.

Terrorism’s greatest weapon is its popular support. When we attack with inadequate intelligence and hit the wrong target or the right ones at the wrong time, as we probably did when we retaliated for bin Laden’s 1998 attacks, we play right into our enemies’ hands. We looked ineffectual. And we enhance our adversaries’ public relations and fund-raising strategies. After the American attacks in 1998, the head of a Pakistani militant group, which trains militants in Afghanistan, immediately held a press conference pronouncing, “Osama’s mission is our mission. It is the mission of the whole Islamic world.” The attacks did not enhance America’s image with the mujahideen I’ve interviewed, who describe tomahawk missiles as weapons for cowards too afraid to risk their lives in combat or to look their enemy in the eye.

What does this mean for our national security strategy? Our leaders need to commit themselves to a long, hard fight. We need to rely less on high-tech intelligence and more on the old fashioned kind. But this is a war that must be fought on many fronts, using every tool at governments’ disposal: diplomacy, intelligence, and, if we identify the perpetrator, military strikes. Force is not nearly enough. We need to drain the swamps where these young men thrive. We have a stake in the welfare of other peoples and need to devote a much higher priority to health, education, and economic development or new Osamas will continue to arise. It matters what other people think of us. We need to think much more seriously than we have about whether we are perceived by people in other parts of the world as malevolent or benevolent. Being feared for our military strength alone is not sufficient to guarantee our security.

Jessica Stern is a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government and a leading authority on terrorists.

New York’s Preparedness Should Inspire
Other Cities to Act
by Arnold Howitt
September 17, 2001
Reprinted from the Boston Globe

Immediately after the horrific terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers, city firefighters, ambulance teams, police officers, and rescue and hazardous materials specialists raced to the scene — and sometimes gave their lives trying to save others. Local hospitals and health care workers bore the brunt of emergency care; and city police and the state’s National Guard are keeping order in lower Manhattan. City and state agencies will oversee the months of cleanup and years of reconstruction yet to come. These are grim reminders that local and state institutions — not mainly the federal government — are the crucial players in disaster response.

New York’s emergency mobilization has been exemplary, but its performance under extreme stress is not the result of heroism and extraordinary effort alone. During the 1990s, under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s active leadership, the city seriously committed itself to developing a strong emergency management system. It invested dollars, recruited talented managers, planned extensively, and provided systematic training to response personnel. Terrorism was one of New York’s key concerns — the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center 1993 was a wake-up call — but the city correctly sought to prepare for all kinds of disasters, not just terrorism.

Few other cities in America could have responded to the World Trade Center attack this week as well as New York City has been able to do; and the tragic events there suggest how important it is for other locales to buttress their emergency management systems to save lives in future disasters.

What needs to be done?

The answer doesn’t lie in a dedicated system designed for terrorism, although some may urge us to focus on that threat alone. Instead, we need to significantly strengthen the general-purpose (or “all-hazard”) emergency management systems that already exist in Boston and Massachusetts — and most other big cities and states in the United States.

Although some specialized capacity is needed to combat terrorism, it makes no sense to separate terrorism from emergency preparedness for hurricanes, floods, blizzards, earthquakes, industrial explosions, and airline crashes not caused by terrorists. Many of the needed resources — emergency medical services, rescue workers, law enforcement, for example — are similar no matter what the emergency. Even specialized resources often have multiple applications. Such a system can be flexible and effectively prepared for a wide range of contingencies, including but not limited to terrorism.

We often neglect and underinvest in such services, however, because they are invisible in ordinary times, called on infrequently, and have relatively weak political constituencies compared to many other public services.

Taking the threat and reality of terrorism as a spur to improve emergency management makes good sense, even though catastrophic terrorism is likely to occur infrequently — certainly in any particular locale. We don’t know what places will be targeted. Before they were attacked, we might have guessed New York and Washington but probably not Oklahoma City. It is prudent for all areas to take account of the threat.

But even metropolitan areas that will never be attacked by terrorists need the ability to respond to other types of disasters — natural and manmade. A special system for terrorism would be duplicative and wasteful, but a strong general emergency management system is likely to prove useful, even essential, everywhere. Moreover, an all-hazard approach is more likely than a terrorism-only system to get sufficient funds for personnel, equipment, training, and exercises — and to effectively sustain the readiness of these resources over time.

A number of specific improvements in existing emergency capacity should be high priorities.

First, we need improved emergency planning, not because we can predict or prepare for every disaster that might arise — we know that is impossible — but because the more contingencies we consider and probe, the more angles we can be ready for. Emergency planning must emphasize flexible response capacity. Just as the military must develop general skills to fight wars and battles whose exact dimensions cannot be known in advance, emergency managers must develop equally flexible plans and implementation capabilities.

Second, we must improve the way that we direct and coordinate the diverse agencies and professional groups that come together from many locales and levels of government in a crisis. Within hours of the crisis in New York City, as in Oklahoma City before, multiple fire crews, police officers, ambulances, and rescue workers converged — not only from all over the city but from neighboring jurisdictions in Long Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut. How can these teams be productively coordinated when they have never before worked together and have no common operational methods? Are they doomed to ineffectiveness or even inadvertently to endanger each other’s lives?

Much of the solution lies in using “incident management systems,” developed initially by the fire service in California to deal with this problem; but these are not widely enough deployed. We need to make this approach standard practice across the range of emergency response organizations and professions.

Third, we need more health care “surge capacity.” Over the past decade, health care has become leaner: fewer empty hospital beds, more intensively used equipment, just-in-time restocking of pharmaceuticals and supplies, and tighter medical staffing — physicians, nurses, laboratory technicians, and support personnel alike. But squeezing the “fat” out of the health care system has left it with far less residual capacity to respond to disasters and other emergencies.

We should not have large amounts of normally unused health care capacity simply awaiting the next emergency, though the exact margin of capacity needs careful assessment. Instead, we need to develop specific plans for unconventional health care resources that can be quickly deployed if disaster strikes. These might include additional facilities for emergency care in school gyms, sports arenas, convention centers; mobile equipment and supplies; and registries of trained health care personnel who are currently retired or doing other jobs but could be called on in an emergency.

Fourth, we need improved communications systems, including widely accepted “interoperability” standards so that telephones, radios, and walkie-talkie systems used by emergency agencies can talk to each other.

Fifth, we must make sure that we budget funds to train emergency workers adequately and regularly test their skills in exercises.

The threat of terrorism is likely to be with us for many years. We must be better prepared for attacks, but the way to assure that we have appropriate response capability is to build a stronger all-hazard emergency management system that is ready for — but not dedicated to — terrorism alone.

Arnold Howitt is executive director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and director of the executive session on domestic preparedness at the Kennedy School of Government.