No scenario for escalation inevitable incentives for conflict minimization

Terrorism

Terrorism – General

Best statistical analysis proves -- the risk of terrorism is super low.

Zenko, 6-6-12uah

Today, the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) released its 2011 Report on Terrorism. The report offers the U.S. government's best statistical analysis of terrorism trends through its Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (WITS), which compiles and vets open-source information about terrorism--defined by U.S. law as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents." Although I invite you to read the entire thirty-one page report, there are a few points worth highlighting that notably contrast with the conventional narrative of the terrorist threat: "The total number of worldwide attacks in 2011, however, dropped by almost 12 percent from 2010 and nearly 29 percent from 2007." (9) "Attacks by AQ and its affiliates increased by 8 percent from 2010 to 2011. A significant increase in attacks by al-Shabaab, from 401 in 2010 to 544 in 2011, offset a sharp decline in attacks by al-Qa'ida in Iraq (AQI) and a smaller decline in attacks by al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)." (11) "In cases where the religious affiliation of terrorism casualties could be determined, Muslims suffered between 82 and 97 percent of terrorism-related fatalities over the past five years." (14) Of 978 terrorism-related kidnapping last year, only three hostages were private U.S. citizens, or .003 percent. A private citizen is defined as 'any U.S. citizen not acting in an official capacity on behalf of the U.S. government.' (13, 17) Of the 13,288 people killed by terrorist attacks last year, seventeen were private U.S. citizens, or .001 percent. (17) According to the report, the number of U.S. citizens who died in terrorist attacks increased by two between 2010 and 2011; overall, a comparable number of Americans are crushed to death by their televisions or furniture each year. This is not to diminish the real--albeit shrinking--threat of terrorism, or to minimize the loss and suffering of the 13,000 killed and over 45,000 injured around the world. For Americans, however, it should emphasize that an irrational fear of terrorism is both unwarranted and a poor basis for public policy decisions.

Terrorists can’t acquire or use WMDs.

TERRORISM The greatest current threat to U.S. security is from terrorism. Yet terrorists kill less Americans than peanuts in most years. Even in 2001, terrorists killed less than one-10th as many Americans as the flu. The minority of the jihadist movement actively trying to kill Americans has shown no sign of a presence in the United States, as the FBI has grudgingly admitted. (Contrary to what you usually hear, absence of evidence is evidence of absence, but not proof.) The jihadists’ perverse ideology makes them unpopular in their own lands — except perhaps when American military occupations give credence to the jihadist propaganda that America is at war with Islam. The possibility that terrorists will soon manufacture nuclear or biological weapons and kill us in droves is remote. The difficulty of making nuclear and biological weapons is generally understated. (Chemical weapons, often discussed inthe same breath as biological and nuclear weapons, are not much more deadly than conventional munitions and therefore their proliferation to terrorists should not be a special concern.) Weaponizing biological agents is a mean feat for most nations and probably beyond the capability of today’s terrorist groups. Nuclear weapons are our greatest worry and we probably should invest more to secure them and their components. However, given their size, the tight security that protects them, and the general need for activation codes to use them, the odds of terrorists stealing such a weapon and using it are close to zero. The most prudent worry is that terrorists might acquire fissile material and employ engineers competent enough to build a homemade nuclear weapon that could be smuggled into the United States. But this scenario requires a number of risky steps: a nuclear terrorist must find a source for fissile materials and other components, buy those materials, smuggle them across borders, design and assemble the weapon, and then deliver it to its target, which will likely be another location, probably across borders. Each of those steps is possible, but the existence of multiple failure points drives down the odds of overall success, especially for a loose-knit group, as Ohio State political scientist John Mueller writes. (See “A False Sense of Insecurity,” Fall 2004.)

No impact and terrorists can’t get weapons.

Linzer 4 – Washington Post staff writer (Dafna Linzer, “Nuclear Capabilities May Elude Terrorists, Experts Say”, Washington Post, December 29, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32285-2004Dec28.html)//MG

Without sophisticated laboratories, expensive technology and years of scientific experience, al Qaeda has two primary options for getting a bomb, experts say, both of which rely on theft -- either of an existing weapon or one of its key ingredients, plutonium or highly enriched uranium. Nuclear scientists tend to believe the most plausible route for terrorists would be to build a crude device using stolen uranium from the former Soviet Union. Counterterrorism officials think bin Laden would prefer to buy a ready-made weapon stolen in Russia or Pakistan, and to obtain inside help in detonating it. Last month, Michael Scheuer, who ran the CIA's bin Laden unit, first disclosed in an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" that bin Laden's nuclear efforts had been blessed by the Saudi cleric in May 2003, a statement other sources later corroborated. As early as 1998, bin Laden had publicly labeled acquisition of nuclear or chemical weapons a "religious duty," and U.S. officials had reports around that time that al Qaeda leaders were discussing attacks they likened to the one on Hiroshima. A week after his CBS appearance, Scheuer said at breakfast with reporters in Washington that he believed al Qaeda would probably seek to buy a nuclear device from Russian gangsters, rather than build its own. There were as many as a dozen types of nuclear weapons in the hands of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, but Russian officials have said that several kinds have since been destroyed and that the country has secured the remainder of its arsenal. The nature and scope of nuclear caches are among the most tightly held national security secrets in Russia and Pakistan. It is unclear how quickly either country could detect a theft, but experts said it would be very difficult for terrorists to figure out on their own how to work a Russian or Pakistani bomb. Newer Russian weapons, for example, are equipped with heat- and time-sensitive locking systems, known as permissive action links, that experts say would be extremely difficult to defeat without help from insiders. "You'd have to run it through a specific sequence of events, including changes in temperature, pressure and environmental conditions before the weapon would allow itself to be armed, for the fuses to fall into place and then for it to allow itself to be fired," said Charles D. Ferguson, science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "You don't get it off the shelf, enter a code and have it go off." About This Series The three articles beginning today are the culmination of a year-long effort to examine the challenges the United States faces more than three years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Previous articles have ranged from the threat posed by conventional truck bombs to the difficulty of tracking terrorist fundraising. The articles starting today take a detailed look at terrorists' ability to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, biological and chemical. While the dangers certainly are real, there is considerable disagreement among security experts about the probabilities for "catastrophic terrorism." In the case of nuclear and biological weapons, the subjects of articles today and tomorrow, there are technical and scientific hurdles that have proved daunting, even for nations with sizable budgets and state-of-the-art facilities. Chemical weapons, which will be explored in an article Friday, would be somewhat easier to devise or obtain, but also far less likely to yield huge numbers of casualties. A radiological device would have similar limitations for terrorists. Each type of weapon presents special challenges for the groups seeking to acquire it, but experts warn that the odds for a successful attack could rise significantly in the future as determined foes intersect with advancing technology. The strategy would require help from facility guards, employees with knowledge of the security and arming features of the weapons, not to mention access to a launching system. Older Russian nuclear weapons have simpler protection mechanisms and could be easier to obtain on the black market. But nuclear experts said even the simplest device has some security features that would have to be defeated before it could be used. "There is a whole generation of weapons designed for artillery shells, manufactured in the 1950s, that aren't going to have sophisticated locking devices," said Laura Holgate, who ran nonproliferation programs at the Pentagon and the Energy Department from 1995 to 2001. "But it is a tougher task to take a weapon created by a country, even the 1950s version, a tougher job for a group of even highly qualified Chechen terrorists to make it go boom." Transporting a weapon out of Russia would provide another formidable obstacle for terrorists. Most of the ready-made bombs that could be stolen would be those made with plutonium, which emits far higher levels of radiation and is therefore more easily detected by passive sensors at ports than is highly enriched uranium, or HEU.

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