The New York Times reports today that the United States is starting to apply an idea from the Cold War to a 21st Century conflict:
The emerging belief that terrorists may be subject to a new form of deterrence is reflected in two of the nation’s central strategy documents.
The 2002 National Security Strategy, signed by the president one year after the Sept. 11 attacks, stated flatly that “traditional concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy whose avowed tactics are wanton destruction and the targeting of innocents.”
Four years later, however, the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism concluded: “A new deterrence calculus combines the need to deter terrorists and supporters from contemplating a W.M.D. attack and, failing that, to dissuade them from actually conducting an attack.”
For obvious reasons, it is harder to deter terrorists than it was to deter a Soviet attack.
Terrorists hold no obvious targets for American retaliation as Soviet cities, factories, military bases and silos were under the cold-war deterrence doctrine. And it is far harder to pinpoint the location of a terrorist group’s leaders than it was to identify the Kremlin offices of the Politburo bosses, making it all but impossible to deter attacks by credibly threatening a retaliatory attack.
But over the six and a half years since the Sept. 11 attacks, many terrorist leaders, including Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, have successfully evaded capture, and American officials say they now recognize that threats to kill terrorist leaders may never be enough to keep America safe.
The article goes on to describe various techniques — from law enforcement to what might be called psychological warfare — that are being employed as it becomes clear that permanent offensive war is not going to work.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Deterrence was one of the implementing strategies under the overarching strategy of Containment. Another aspect, or implementing strategy, was forward deployment of U.S. forces.
I wrote a couple of years ago that we need to be on the (Operational and Tactical levels of war) Offense against any clear and present danger - an Islamist cell with nukes. Yet, stay on the Strategic Defense, as with Containment. This time we need to contain the Islamists as we did the Communists.
Since Islamists are a naturally occuring minority in Islam, it means restricting and conducting extensive background investigations of immigrants from countries that produce Islamist terrorists.
I know the U.S. doesn’t have the political will to do this. Today.
June 15th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Wrong.
As much as I would like to agree with you and apply this panacea, you are dealing with a supernational idea… a calaphite of idealism aimed at dismanteling the ideals of the west, specifically, the US. Using words like “Islam” is simply unacceptable and containment will not work; as will neither deterrence. Sorry for the disagreement. In order to deter this ideology, you must first destroy their belief system. I would also contend that their idealist approach (shich is answered by our realist approach) is doomed along with all other idealistic sociologically historical undertakings. Just be patient.