By Tim Garden
The US war machine is gearing itself up rapidly in the wake of the devastating terrorist attacks of 11 September. The talk is of a war on terrorism, and countries around the world are being asked to sign up to the new campaign. While the rhetoric is understandable, military planners need a more sharply focused mission to plan. Conducting a war on terrorism is no easier than a war on drugs or a war on crime. In each case the problems are complex and success will never be either total or permanent. If the military is to be given a lead role in responding to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, they will need a clear vision of what they are being asked to do. The tasks, set by the politicians with advice from the military, must have a reasonable expectation of making the world safer rather than spawning yet further atrocities.
A US official claimed that “Offence is the best defence”. While this can be true in traditional wars, it has not been the best approach to counter-terrorism in the past. The traditional terrorist organisation seeks the status that comes from engaging the full might of national armies, and thrives on the fallout from disproportionate reaction by government. No one doubts that the US can field the most powerful military capability that the world has ever known. Nor are there any doubts that on this occasion the political and public will to support military action is strong. Minimising potential casualties will not be a major issue in terms of operational planning. Coalition partners in NATO and beyond will be invited to fit in where they can. But their presence will be, for the most part, of more political significance than of military assistance.
The rational security planner will address the problem posed by last week’s terror in a sequence of priorities for action. The highest priority must go to measures that reduce the risk of immediate further attacks. In this case defensive measures take priority over offensive. The very much stricter security control at US airports is important, even if the measures may appear to be over zealous. They can be fine tuned later. There may be further terrorists ready to repeat the actions of their compatriots on new targets within the US or in Europe or Asia. The security planners need to think the unthinkable. We have a threat in which the perpetrators measure success by the numbers killed and the extent of the chaos wrought on society. We have worried in the past about the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists. We have brought that threat to an early reality by building structures which concentrate tens of thousands of people in one fragile building. The Stanley knife can become a weapon of mass destruction. Fire drills and evacuation procedures and practices from these buildings need to be taken seriously. We also need to consider other potential targets which have a large scale effect – we can be sure the terrorist has already done so. Nuclear power stations and storage areas are among these. Prohibited airspace around such installations needs to be reviewed urgently and probably extended. The military needs to provide ground and air defences for those larger zones.
These defensive measures will need to look not just at a repeat of attack by civil airliner, but also at unconventional attack by land and water. Never expect the techniques of the past to be those of the future. The protective measures needed will be manpower intensive, and unsustainable in the longer term. They will however buy time while the in-place terrorists are found. This is a job for the police and intelligence services of the many countries under threat. The first place to go on the offensive is not in far distant lands, but at home, where the danger is most acute.
However, the public demand in the US for a major external operation will be irresistible. The military will need to know what the targets are and how success is to be measured. Most acknowledge that an air campaign against the Osama bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan is unlikely to do much to counter the risk of terrorism. While pinpoint accuracy against targets is possible using cruise missiles and air-launched precision weapons, there is little in the way of important infrastructure to destroy. Bin Laden and his local followers will hide in the countryside. A special forces operation to capture him would offer more chance of real success, but would require good intelligence, careful planning, and a measure of luck. The risks of failure will have to be set against the benefits, which will be more to western morale than to a significant reduction in threat. The UK special forces certainly have expertise in these sorts of operations, and could make a real contribution to a US operation.
The alternative route to deliver bin Laden is the hope that the Taliban government will oblige. Here, alliance air power can threaten reprisals on Kabul if they fail to deliver. Such an approach begs the question as to whether the Taliban are in sufficient control to overcome bin Laden’s forces and arrest him, even if they were so moved. The use of retaliatory strikes against the main command centres of the Taliban would be relatively easy, and would serve the dual purpose of warning other terrorist supporting governments and relieving some of the public desire for action. It would not however reduce the terrorist threat, and a few misplaced cruise missiles would generate new recruits for suicide missions. The effect on the stability of Pakistan if such an operation were carried out with its government’s support needs also to be included in the planning. The overthrow of the current military dictatorship by bin Laden’s followers would give them the nuclear weapon capability that we have been so concerned about. Attacks on states other than Afghanistan have potentially even more severe implications for both stability and the promotion of terrorism.
The lesson of years of fighting terrorism is that it cannot be solved by conventional warfighting means. There may be some immediate military actions needed to counter an urgent threat. Persuasion of states which support terrorists can be helped by the application of economic, diplomatic and sometimes military force. However in a failed state, the notional government may not be able to do anything useful even under the most extreme pressures. The long term strategy must always be to starve the terrorists of support and recruits. This means giving the populations of the region some form of hope for the future. This takes a very long time.
So the military options for the US and its allies are many and various, but few offer much in the way of reducing the immediate threat from fanatical terrorists. There is a strong political need for retaliation, and this would most usefully be focused on bin Laden’s training bases. The use of special forces will be difficult, but if the circumstances are right could bring benefits. It is wise for allies to keep all options open by deploying fuel, ammunition and logistics to forward operating bases. The defence of these will also be an important precaution. But the most immediate problem is rooting out the trained terrorists already in place in the West. This is something not just for the security services, but is a campaign which should include the population at large. There are plenty of stories now of strange behaviour by the terrorist pilots before they carried out their attacks. Those stories should have been fed in to the security forces earlier. We must also use the wealth of intelligence that we can gather from the surge of Afghan refugees. They want to come to us, so let us use their knowledge. For the military and police, the defence at home will need plenty of resources. The balance between defensive and offensive measures needs to be considered carefully.
In the end, the techniques for combating terrorism are no different because of the scale or the fanaticism of the terrorists. Good intelligence, public awareness and a long term strategy remain the key. There will never be total safety, but the risks can be reduced.
Air Marshal Sir Timothy Garden is Visiting Professor at the Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College London.