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THE PROBABILITY OF A NUCLEAR TERRORIST ATTACK IS LOW
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| THE PROBABILITY OF A NUCLEAR TERRORIST ATTACK IS LOW John Mueller 2007 (Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science, "REACTIONS AND OVERREACTIONS TO TERRORISM Prepared for delivery at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, August September 3, 2007, http://psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/jmueller/APSA2007.PDF. Allison's bold, imaginative, and alarming prediction of 2004 may, unlike the one he issued in 1995, prove right. But it also might end up therewith that of the imaginative scientist/novelist who assured us nearly 50 years ago that if "the nuclear arms race between the United States and the USSR. not only continues but accelerates...within, at the most, ten years, some of those bombs are going off" (Snow 1961, 259); or with that of the imaginative University of Chicago political scientist who in 1979 proclaimed, "The world is moving ineluctably towards a third world war--a strategic nuclear war" (Hans J. Morgenthau in Boyle 1985, 73); or with that of the imaginative Harvard pundit who confidently assured us in May 2004 that "we can confidently expect that terrorists will attempt to tamper with our election in November" (Ignatieff 2004, 48). As this experience suggests, it is clearly possible to have a surfeit of imagination and to become obsessed with what Bernard Brodie once labeled in somewhat different context, "worst case fantasies" (1978, 68). Peter Zimmerman and Jeffrey Lewis pointedly conclude a 2006 article by declaring, "just because a nuclear terrorist attack hasn't happened shouldn't give us the false comfort of thinking it wont" (2006, 39). However, just because something terrible is possible shouldn't send us into hysterics thinking it will surely come about. 10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 175 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com Download 1.23 Mb. Share with your friends:
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