Terrorism, proliferation : a European threat assessment.
Date: 2003-08-18
Institutions: European Union Institute for Security Studies
Subjects: European defence policy, European security, religious fundamentalism, terrorism, the EU's international role, third country, weapon of mass destruction

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Chaillot Papers

March 2003

n°58

Terrorism,
proliferation: a 
European threat
assessment

Harald Müller

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Chaillot Papers

March 2003

n°58

A French version is also available

Terrorism, proliferation:
a European threat
assessment

Harald Müller

Institute for Security Studies
European Union 
Paris

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The author

Harald Müller
is Director of the Peace Research  Institute Frankfurt and Professor of
International Relations at Frankfurt University. He served in the German
delegations to the NPT Review Conferences in 1995 and 2000, and in the
German Defence Review Commission 1999/2000. He is currently a member
of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. He
has published widely on arms control, disarmament, non-proliferation and
international security. His latest book is America strikes back. World politics after
September 11 (in German, 2003).

Institute for Security Studies
European Union 
Paris

Director: Nicole Gnesotto

© EU Institute for Security Studies 2003. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the EU
Institute for Security Studies.
ISSN 1017-7566
Published by the EU Institute for Security Studies and printed in Alençon (France) by
l’Alençonnaise d’Impression. Graphic design by Claire Mabille (Paris).

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Contents

n°58 March 2003

Preface Nicole Gnesotto

Introduction

1

Understanding security

• Remembering security
(cid:127) Security today

2

‘Megaterrorism’

(cid:127) Classical terrorism versus ‘megaterrorism’
(cid:127) The risks to European security 
(cid:127) Coping with ‘megaterrorism’: short- and long-term responses

3

WMD proliferation

(cid:127) Proliferation in far-away regions: North Korea, South Asia
(cid:127) Minor concerns,major promimity: Israel, Egypt, Libya and Syria
(cid:127) Of medium concern: Iran
(cid:127) A special case: Iraq
(cid:127) Rogue states and terrorists: risks of WMD transfer
(cid:127) Remedies

4

The post-11 September world and transatlantic relations

(cid:127) Terrorism and the threat to America’s allies
(cid:127) US hegemonic objectives and the role of the Union
(cid:127) American unilateralism and the European concept of world order

Conclusion

Annex

(cid:127) Abbreviations

5

7

10

10

14

21

21

37

44

54

55

56

60

62
70

77

86

87

88
92

97

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Preface

Nicole Gnesotto

T errorism. Proliferation. Iraq. For several months now these words

have been in the minds of everyone and constantly in the headlines of
newspapers, and perhaps — at the time of going to press — the cause

of a new war in the Middle East and terrible international upheaval.

For the United States, these three words define completely the new inter-
national  security  paradigm  and  by  themselves  justify  all  the  dramatic
changes in strategy made by Washington, for better or worse. In the light of
these new threats, the Bush administration has made a drastic reappraisal of
all its instruments for external action (priority being given to the military),
its relations with allies (with emphasis on ad hoc coalitions) and its princi-
ples of action (unilateral pre-emption if necessary). America’s European
partners have looked on powerless, anxious, supportive or hesitant, but
always terribly divided among themselves, at this American strategic revo-
lution and its many consequences.

Neither terrorism nor the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is
absent from the Europeans’ concerns and security policies. Yet they have
never, within the European Union, been the object of a study or a common
strategy on prevention or coercion ‘at 15’. So it is not surprising, at this
moment of truth, that Europeans’ positions are defined firstly in relation to
American policy — with every imaginable variation from complete agree-
ment on some sides to radical opposition on others — and not with respect to
a truly European threat assessment, something that simply does not exist.
Strange as it may seem, the Union does not analyse the world. Yet there will
be other crises after Iraq that are likely to produce the same destructive rifts
in the Atlantic Alliance, work on building Europe or even the project of
European integration itself.

In this Chaillot Paper, Harald Müller attempts to fill this gap. Director
of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and a recognised international
expert on nuclear proliferation, he sets out elements, taken from numerous
open sources, of what could be a specifically European analysis of the threats
posed by terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction —
European not because of the sources used but because it reflects the culture,

5

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Preface

heritage, practices and in particular the overall objective of the Union as an
international actor.

The author’s conclusions are far from optimistic regarding the medium-
term threats to European security. In this respect they scarcely differ from
analyses on the other side of the Atlantic. Divergences from the Bush admin-
istration’s approach, and they are important ones, concern the types of
response and policy that should be worked out, for the European Union, to
counter these threats.

There was a time when the collective threat had a unifying effect: that
posed by the Soviet Union was the cement that held together the transatlantic
alliance, an alliance that was the guarantor of Europeans’ common secu-
rity. Now, since the risks and threats are increasingly diffuse, clandestine,
anonymous, hard to foresee and identify with any degree of certainty but in
all cases terrifying, differences of view among Europeans and between them
and the United States tend to outweigh consensus and cohesion. Hence the
renewed questioning of issues that were taboo for over fifty years: does Euro-
pean integration really have a political objective, and if so what is it? Is
American leadership absolute or relative? Might there be incompatibility
between the European project and America’s vision of the world? Many
would have preferred not to have been obliged to open this Pandora’s box,
but it opened by itself following the shock wave that is still reverberating
after the 11 September attacks. Thinking about European security now also
means trying to answer those questions.

Paris, March 2003

6

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Introduction

Terrorism, proliferation:
a European threat assessment

Since 11 September, it has become fashionable to maintain that
nothing is as it was before. This statement is, however, much less
reasonable a proposition than the memory of the unforgettable
images of that day may suggest. It is thus useful, at the beginning of
a study of security in today’s circumstances, to list those items that
have emphatically not changed: 
(cid:90) Power relations in the world have not changed. The United States
was the dominant power before the attacks on its territory, and it
is more dominant today than ever before. 

(cid:90) The problems resulting from globalisation, such as financial
instability, poverty, unequal development and damage to the
world’s ecology are still there, and there are still no comprehen-
sive solutions to them. 

(cid:90) Regional conflicts continue to cost lives, and continue without
let-up. Conflict between the great powers is looming in East Asia
as before. 

(cid:90) The need for instruments of global governance, though largely
ignored in the most important capital city of the world, is becom-
ing increasingly urgent, and is not being properly addressed. 
(cid:90) Finally, the sources of large-scale, extremely violent terrorism
have existed for more than a decade and will not go away quickly
and easily. Thus, there is much more continuity than the superfi-
cial comments that abound in public discourse would have it.

The three single most important changes that can be identified

are: 
(cid:90) the sudden emergence of a clear and present danger that has
answered, for the time being, the question of what the dominant
security problem in the post-Cold War world is: ‘megaterror-
ism’, a non-state form of terrorism in which a readiness to take
life knows no bounds;

(cid:90) the surprising fact that this risk constitutes an unprecedented
common interest for the major powers: they are all threatened,

7

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Terrorism, proliferation: a European threat assessment

in one way or another, by the possibility of major terrorist inci-
dents. This commonality affects their relations and mitigates
their (otherwise continuing) differences in varying degrees;

(cid:90) the decisive change, as a corollary of this new security situation,
in relations between Russia and the West on the basis of this 
common interest, with the present reality that the period of
indifference, or even increasing tensions, between the two sides
in the late 1990s is over, and a solid security relationship appears
now to be emerging. This an important shift in the geopolitical
landscape.

The definition by the United States of the post-11 September
situation as a global war has strongly affected the intra-American
and  international  discourse  on  international  relations  and
thereby modified the framework in which these three aspects of
change are being debated and treated in practice. Rather than a
complete break in the continuity of history, then, we find a mix of
old and new, even though the notion that everything must be
rethought serves the agendas of certain people all too well. In these
present circumstances security policies need to be grounded in a
thorough  analysis  of  the  most  obvious  threats  and  possible
responses to them. In devising a European security policy that is
appropriate to the current situation, it has to be borne in mind
that it could be a terrible mistake to throw all those instruments of
security policy that were developed prior to 11 September out of
the window. 

To establish a basis for comparison, this paper starts with a
brief summary of what European security has implied (a) before
the end of the Cold War, and (b) ever since. It then discusses the
contested notion of security itself that has been deliberated in
both academia and politics in a lively and controversial manner. In
this context, it has to be noted that the term ‘European security’,
that is, as used in this paper, the security of the European Union,
has a specific meaning that is not – as is frequently believed –
totally identical with either the security of each of the member
states or the ‘sum’ of their national securities, but goes further.

On this basis, the terrorist threat is assessed. Due attention is
paid to the specific form – in terms of ideology, political objectives,
and means of violence – that terrorism has adopted over the last
two decades and found its expression in 11 September, and more
recently in the Djerba and Bali attacks. The other major security 

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Introduction

threat that has been intensely discussed in recent years, the prolif-
eration of weapons of mass destruction, follows, and its connec-
tion to terrorism is assessed. 

The transatlantic relationship has to adapt to current circum-
stances. After the display of solidarity immediately following the
attacks on New York and Washington, it soon became clear that
this is anything but easy to do. Unlike most accounts of this rela-
tionship, it is discussed here not only as a security asset but, doubt-
less to the surprise of some, also as a risk as far as European secu-
rity is concerned. The study concludes with the consideration of
options for Europe to deal with the security problem as defined
earlier.

9

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Terrorism, proliferation:
a European threat assessment

Understanding security

1

Remembering security

During the Cold War, Europe confronted – or was convinced of the
need to confront – a militarised, strongly motivated, nuclear, supe-
rior power and its allies without the luxury of equivalent conven-
tional forces or, alternatively, strategic depth. In addition to the
threat of aggression, the risk of unintended escalation loomed
large. Europeans lived in the awareness that, if war came, it would
most likely be a nuclear one that would lay waste their lands. The
only escape from this situation lay in a firm alliance with a friendly
and superior power, the United States, which, fielding significant
conventional  forces  and  guaranteeing  deterrence  through  its
nuclear arsenal, could contain the enemy. The alliance, though,
was not completely comfortable. As the protector was an ocean
away, geostrategic interests were not identical, nor were strategic
culture or political outlook. Tensions and cracks in the alliance
appeared, were mended, and appeared again.1 Nevertheless, the
alliance held together, and the threat was kept extra muros. But its
dark shadow never disappeared entirely.

All history becomes shrouded in myths after a while, and it did
not take long for the Cold War era to suffer the same fate. It is thus
useful to clarify what the Cold War was not in terms of security. For
example, it was not a contest with a reliable, easy-to-predict enemy,
as we read repeatedly today. Looking at national defence ‘white
books’,  NATO  communiqués,  and,  most  notably,  pronounce-
ments by the likes of the Committee on the Present Danger, a pre-
cursory organisation for the kind of security thinking now domi-
nating US defence policies, we learn how very difficult it was at the
time to assess reliably the intentions, strategies and even capabili-
ties of the Soviet Union and its allies, to try to figure out whether
their  basic  attitude  was  defensive,  opportunistic,  or  outright
offensive, how willing to take or avoid risks the Soviet leadership
was, and what risk the West was facing of bad surprises, sudden

1. These are described in David N.
Schwartz, NATO’s Nuclear Dilem-
mas (Washington, DC: The Brook-
ings Institution, 1983).

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Understanding security

1

aggression or breakthroughs in military technology. To impute to
this dangerous looking past the nostalgic order that, today, we
construct in contrast to the amorphous terrorist threat, is simply
to falsify history.2

Likewise, the Cold War was far from being a purely interstate
conflict, as we are told today. Throughout the forty-five or so years
it lasted, concern that Moscow’s ‘fifth column’ might undermine
or overwhelm Western democracies was quite stark. Indeed, the
Cold  War  started  with  that  very  concern  –  over  Communist
activism in Greece and Turkey. Throughout all those years, the
work of ‘moles’, agents, and Moscow-inspired organisations and
movements was believed to be a strong and reliable instrument in
the hands of the Soviet leadership and its long-term planning.
Communist parties, leftist unions, the anti-nuclear movement,
the anti-Vietnam and German Student Movement, Eurocommu-
nism, the Portuguese revolutionaries, the terrorists of the 1970s
and the peace movement of the early 1980s were all put into the
same  category.  And  much  as  some  of  these  assessments  were
clearly in error, as many others were correct. The Soviet Union
exerted strong influence over Western communist parties until
well into the late 1960s, it tired to infiltrate and influence peace
movements, and it lent some – limited – support to the social-rev-
olutionary  terrorist  groups  in  the  1970s.3 In  other  words,  the
intrastate dimension of the security problem is not new, but was
an, admittedly subordinate, feature of the Cold War as well.

After the Cold War, no clear, unequivocal threat or enemy sub-
stituted for the Soviet Union, no new scheme replaced the unmis-
takable pattern of bipolarity. The security problématique consisted
of a mixture of rather vague and ill-defined components.4 The
revitalisation of a militarised and totalitarian Russian empire was
one of them; it never materialised and was, fortunately, not taken
seriously  enough  to  develop  into  a  self-fulfilling  prophecy.
China’s ascendancy, a very powerful factor in US security scenar-
ios, played little role in European debates as China was one Russ-
ian Federation away – far enough indeed – and could not be iden-
tified as a factor affecting European security in the foreseeable
future. With that, the list of candidates for a full-scale replacement
of the Soviet Union ran out. The proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction and missiles was frequently discussed, but most of the
time as a future rather than a present danger. And – as will be dis-
cussed at some length later on – Europeans saw too little prospect

2. Including, interestingly enough,
the picture given of the nuclear
past in the Pentagon’s Nuclear
Posture Review; ‘Nuclear Posture
Review [Excerpts], Submitted to
Congress on 31 December 2001,’
released  8 
January  2002,
www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/li-
brary/policy/dod/npr.htm.

3. For an account, and critique, of
enemy images see Richard Ned
Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, We
All Lost the Cold War (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1994).

4. See, for instance, Edward A.
Kolodziej, ‘Renaissance in Secu-
rity Studies? Caveat Lector!’, Inter-
national Studies Quarterly, Decem-
ber 1992, pp. 421-38, and ‘What
is Security and Security Studies?’,
Arms Control, vol. XIII, no. 1, April
1992, pp. 1-31; Richard K. Betts,
‘Should  Strategic  Studies  Sur-
vive?’, World Politics, vol. 50, no. 1,
October 1997, pp. 7-33; Neta C.
Crawford, ‘Once and Future Secu-
rity Studies’, Security Studies, Win-
ter 1991, pp. 283-316; Colin S.
Gray, ‘New Directions for Strate-
gic  Studies?  How  Can  Theory
Help Practice?’, Security Studies,
Summer 1992, pp. 610-35.

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1

Terrorism, proliferation: a European threat assessment

of an actual, vital conflict between themselves and ‘the usual sus-
pects’ to start considering proliferation of these most dangerous
weapons in military and strategic terms. 

More  attention  than  before  was  thus  devoted  to  non-state
security risks. After the end of the Cold War, such risks were seen
not in the context of the malevolent strategy devised by a hostile
mastermind sitting in a major capital that tried to employ non-
state instruments as proxies in an interstate conflict. Rather, they
were interpreted in their own right, as individual, uncoordinated,
free-standing threats to European interests with their own, inde-
pendent dynamics. 

Terrorism continued to figure on this list, though ‘Euroterror-
ism’ had receded to the fringes of Europe, to Northern Ireland, the
Basque country and Corsica, where separatism continued to feed
violent action. The classical leftist terrorism had sung its swan
song with the demise of the Soviet Union at latest, even though
individual acts in Italy pointed to the continued existence of (pre-
sumably small) groups of activists. The recent destruction of the
leftist 17 November Greek terrorist organisation, which had for a
while  mysteriously  survived  the  magic  date  of  communism’s
demise, and the successful detention of its ageing leadership, sig-
nified more than anything else that this period was over.

The ‘new terrorism’ was not yet being considered by many out-
side  a  small  group  of  experts,  even  though  the  possibility  of
nuclear terrorism had strained the phantasies of some since the
1980s.5 This slowly changed in the mid-1990s.6 While the first,
forceful attack in 1993 against the World Trade Center was largely
ignored by European security analysts, the wave of terror in France
and the spectacular, but fortunately aborted, plan to blow up a
civilian aircraft over Paris or even – as some reports had it – crash it
into the Eiffel Tower7 led, at least within France, to a more focused
debate on terrorism as a serious threat to national security. Prior
to 11 September, however, the notion that this was becoming a
problem common to all European countries remained confined
to the closed and narrow circles of agencies concerned with coun-
tering terrorism. Debates in the Union’s third ‘pillar’ – justice and
home affairs – introduced in the Maastricht Treaty, related to the
subject  matter,  but  they  were  far  from  dominating  security
debates. In the European ones, terrorism did not even gain the lim-
ited prominence it obtained in the United States in the second half
of the 1990s, where it was identified increasingly as a serious and

5. Bernard O’Keefe et al., Report of
the International Task Force on Nu-
clear Terrorism ‘Washington, DC:
Nuclear Control Institute, 1986).

6. See Walter Laqueur, ‘Postmod-
ern Terrorism’, Foreign Affairs, vol.
75, no. 5, 1996, pp. 24-36.

7.  Rohan  Gunaratna,  Inside  Al
Qaeda.  Global  Network  of  Terror
(London:  Hurst  &  Company,
2002), pp. 122-3.

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Understanding security

1

growing threat to US interests, including within the United States
itself.

Additional, diffuse security problems entered the debates: eth-
nical conflict and failed states, with their repercussions on migra-
tion and organised crime – the latter two items also being seen as
security risks in their own right – were among the more politico-
military issues. The inclusion of resource dependency, degrada-
tion of the environment and uncontrolled financial flows – sub-
jects significantly far removed from the classical understanding of
security – appeared to indicate a certain degree of despair on the
part of security analysts to put enough subjects and substance
together in order to justify the still significant (in manpower and
financial terms) efforts to provide security.8 At the same time,
these debates marked the efforts of people who were primarily
interested in these other fields of policy to enhance their access to
those resources by putting a security label on them.9 From acade-
mia emerged a quite justified warning about the procedure of
‘securitisation’, i.e. the voluntaristic description of an issue as a
security  problem,  thereby  triggering  notions  of  extraordinary
danger and equally extraordinary measures to counter it.10

Throughout the 1990s, the security debate remained convo-
luted, vague, tentative and unfocused. The main progress made in
European  defence  cooperation,  significantly,  related  to  the
‘Petersberg tasks’ and the instruments needed to carry them out.
Those tasks, closely analysed, concerned much less issues of secu-
rity proper, but the normatively and morally motivated use of mil-
itary means to achieve the noble objectives of preserving or enforc-
ing peace, or rescuing humans in trouble elsewhere. Connections
to a more classical understanding of security were made, to be sure
– for example the notion of ‘horizontal escalation’ of a Balkan con-
flict across Europe, analogous to 1914, or the instability engen-
dered by mass migration. Yet these arguments were less than con-
vincing given the reality on the ground. Security institutions built
up over the decades and strengthened during the transition period
at the end of the Cold War made a new ‘Sarajevo’ most unlikely,
even if the West had abstained from an intervention; and West
European societies were, by and large, rich enough and adaptable
enough to cope with migration flows as and when they occurred.
In fact, humanitarian intervention was clearly aimed at pursuing
broader political rather than narrower security objectives. What
security meant therefore remained unclear.

8. Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, ‘Envi-
ronmental Scarcities and Violent
Conflict: Evidence from Cases’, In-
ternational Security, vol. 19, no. 1,
Summer 1994, pp. 5-40; Myron
Weiner, ‘Bad Neighbours, Bad
Neighbourhoods: An Inquiry into
the Causes of Refugee Flows’, In-
ternational Security, vol. 21, no. 1,
Summer 1996, pp. 5-42; Joshua S.
Krasna, ‘Testing the Salience of
Transnational Issues for Interna-
tional Security: The Case of Nar-
cotics Production and Traffick-
ing’, Contemporary Security Policy,
vol. 20, no. 1, April 1999, pp. 42-
55.

9. Marc A. Levy, ‘Is the Environ-
ment a National Security Issue?’,
International Security, vol. 20, no. 2,
Fall 1995, pp. 35-62.

10. Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and
Jaap  de  Wilde,  Security:  A  New
Framework For Analysis (Boulder,
Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1997).

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Terrorism, proliferation: a European threat assessment

11 September changed the debate. A new focus appeared. How-
ever, and quite ironically, 11 September at the same time triggered
a new and increasingly heated debate, not least across the Atlantic,
on precisely what this new focus might be.

Security today

Security appears to be a straightforward concept, but it is not. If
one asks either laymen or specialists for their preferred definition,
they all give different answers. In addition, the meaning of the term
changes with time, as old threats to what was assumed to be secu-
rity fade and new ones appear, changing the realm of security as
they do so. Nor should one forget that behind security there are
powerful social formations such as the military, its civilian bureau-
cracy, the related industrial and research establishments and, last
but not least, think tanks and security intellectuals, all of whom
thrive on the security business and nurture a vested interest in the
continuation  of  something  to  be  called  security,  and  threats
thereto, which help ensure their continued with existence.

National security

The classical meaning of ‘security’ is national security. The term is
still used in most states of the world and shapes their security strat-
egy and policy. National territory is seen as a sanctuary whose
integrity must be defended against possible intrusions, interven-
tions and aggression. The main threat is believed to exist in military
form.11 The  risk  of  being  overwhelmed  or  blackmailed  by  the
superior armed force of an enemy drives states to seek minimum
defensive capabilities that would deny an adversary certain victory
and keep him guessing whether aggression would succeed or sim-
ply end in costly and risky stalemate. Or, alternatively, states try to
erect deterrent capabilities that threaten so much damage to an
aggressor’s homeland that the cost-benefit analysis of aggression
turns out negative even if nominal victory in battle is achieved.
Besides overall superiority, states are also anxious to avoid being
beaten in a surprise, blitzkrieg operation by a well-armed enemy
who is not necessarily superior in armed forces, but well deployed
and  has  a  concise  strategy  and  the  operational  and  logistical 

11. Robert Jervis, ‘Cooperation
under  the  Security  Dilemma’,
World Politics, January 1978, vol.
30, no. 2.

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Understanding security

1

instruments  to  implement  it,  and  skilled  at  deception  and 
surprise. Ultimately, armed forces at a high state of readiness, or
secure second-strike deterrent forces, have been seen as the best
counter to this type of contingency.

National security in the classical sense was not restricted to the
notion of invulnerability to invasion and conquest. The integrity
of one’s own political institutions, leadership and national popu-
lation also counted as elements of the term. National decision-
making must rest on one’s own deliberations, conducted without
undue outside pressure in the proper institutions whose function
is  to  make  these  decisions.  External  blackmail,  or  improper
transnational influence by the enemy through a fifth column,
agents provocateurs and the like was seen as undermining secu-
rity. Foreign intelligence penetration of core state institutions was
also interpreted as seriously compromising security. And irreden-
tist, secessionist and separatist movements, possibly supported
and nurtured from abroad, rang the loudest national security
alarm bells in the countries concerned, since such movements and
activities threatened both the integrity of national territory and
the cohesion of the national population. Altogether, this means
that, in addition to territorial and institutional integrity, some-
thing like the ‘identity’ of the respective polity is also generally
seen as a legitimate subject of security.

An interesting addition to the traditional notion of national
security came through the creation of the Atlantic Alliance. Unlike
historical alliances that were more or less a matter of the opportu-
nity of a given historical moment, NATO was meant to be persist-
ent. This also meant that the national security of each NATO
member was to be seen as equivalent to the national security of
every other member. True, the exact wording of Article 5 of the
Washington Treaty included a let-out, as it was left to each mem-
ber state how to fulfil its promise to the Alliance once the Council
had determined that an aggression against one member state had
taken place. But the way the Alliance conducted its business made
it overwhelmingly clear that what was expected from members
was  nothing  less  than  complete  unity  and  solidarity  at  the
moment  of  truth,  and  the  way  NATO’s  armed  forces  were
deployed was a clear sign that no member could easily disengage
when solidarity was called for.12 That 11 September gave cause to
invoke Art. 5 in a situation for which it was obviously not intended 

12. Of course, France left NATO’s
integrated military structure in
1966,  but  without  renouncing 
its Alliance obligations.

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merely demonstrated the strength of this understanding of iden-
tical (or largely overlapping ) national securities, even if the practi-
cal consequences were much less than many had foreseen when
the decision was taken.

Comprehensive security

Already in the 1970s, but more evidently in the 1980s and 1990s, a
much broader understanding of security emerged that went far
beyond the narrow definition of national security. It was generated
first in academic circles but soon found its way into political dis-
course, not least through the impact of bodies like the Brandt,
Palme  and  Brundtland  Commissions.  The  broadening  of  the
meaning took three directions. First, it was perceived that security
should include not only one’s own, but equally the adversary’s vital
interests. Second, it was noted that security might be endangered
through more than military threats alone. Third, and closely con-
nected to the latter point, it was realised that collectivities other
than the state could be the subject of security.

The first aspect of this wider definition of security gave birth to
the terms ‘common’ and ‘cooperative’ security. It started from the
time-honoured concept of the security dilemma: as the interna-
tional system has no ultimate arbiter to settle disputes between its
members, each state is left to its own devices to ensure its survival.
Unfortunately, efforts taken for one’s own defence, and defence
only,  may  from  another  state’s  perspective  look  dangerously
threatening. As this state prepares the response deemed appropri-
ate and necessary to counter this new danger, one’s own security is
diminished by the enhanced threat emerging from this response,
and so on. What was initially meant as a limited, defensive meas-
ure engenders a spiral of armament and counter-armament that
leaves  everybody  less  secure.13 Understanding  that  one’s  own
security activities impact upon the security of others, and taking
their security needs into account, is thus the starting point for the
concepts of both common and cooperative security. Even in an
anarchic system with inevitable conflict and rivalry, the reasoning
goes, a modicum of security can be achieved by self-restraint in the
light of others’ vital interests, and by cooperative instruments
transparency, 
such  as 
confidence-building and arms control.14

crisis-management  mechanisms, 

13. Op. cit. in note 11.

14. Janne E. Nolan (ed.), Global
Engagement: Cooperation and Security
in the 21st Century (Washington,
DC: The Brookings Institution,
1994).

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1

The idea of ‘comprehensive security’15 emerged from certain
almost simultaneous developments in the 1970s. The first was the
realisation, coming in the wake of the Arab oil embargo and the
quadrupling  of  the  price  of  oil  in  1973-74,  that  Western
economies were quite vulnerable to interruption in the supply of
vital resources (even though, with hindsight, they proved incredi-
bly resistant to the challenge, and aside from crude oil it is hard to
think of any other natural resource that could have a widespread
impact  on  Western  economies).  The  term  ‘economic  security’
gained currency during those years and indeed motivated the cre-
ation of the first military concepts for securing Persian Gulf oil in
the form of the US ‘Rapid Deployment Force’; but the main West-
ern  response  consisted  in  founding  the  International  Energy
Agency, with its rules governing strategic oil reserves and meas-
ures to curb demand in the event of a supply crisis. 

The second development was the recognition of increasing
environmental damage, with its huge local, regional and, increas-
ingly, also global consequences. Strongly articulated in the vari-
ous reports of the Club of Rome (begining in 1972), this insight
helped create the notion of ‘environmental’ or ‘ecological’ secu-
rity, which suggested that environmental damage could seriously
affect human life, and even the stability and survival of whole
states, a suggestion that is not totally convincing beyond the spe-
cial case of those small island countries that may indeed disappear
as a consequence of the rise in sea level caused by global warming.
Over time, more and more areas were hung on the security
Christmas tree: drug trafficking, organised crime, financial flows,
migration,  terrorism,  proliferation,  ethnic  war  (elsewhere),
national culture, gender. Astonishingly enough, official security
policy proved quite eager in adopting this inflation of the term
security.  It  found  its  way  into  documents  like  defence  ‘white
books’ and the like. One can speculate whether the extensive menu
served those members of the Western security communities well
who were concerned that the elimination of the main enemy, the
Soviet Union, might create a void that could challenge and jeopar-
dise their very existence. 

Wild ideas about military intervention appeared to save the
rain forests or to secure the transport of medical supplies needed
for European patients against the theat of pirates in faraway sea
lanes.  The  widespread  dogma  that  the  Western  military  must 

15. J. Tuchman, ‘Redefining Secu-
rity’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 68, no. 2,
Spring 1989, pp. 162-77.

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secure access to vital raw materials enjoyed a revival (as if the world
market could not deal with the interruptions that could be caused
by local turbulence or even the malevolent actions of a state actor).
Military intervention was used in more or less ill-fated attempts to
combat  drug  production  (rather  than  taking  the  unpleasant
measures at home to curb, or, alternatively, liberalise, demand). All
this appears to indicate that the frantic search for credible new
threats did indeed play a role in the security discourse.

With this broadening of the meaning of security, though, it
finally became clear that the time when the state held the exclusive
sights to ‘security’ was over. Indeed, the area covered by the subject
ranged from the whole world (‘global security’) through the envi-
ronment to subnational groups (‘societal security’, whereby the
survival and autonomy of each identifiable substate collectivity
had to be secured otherwise security did not exist) and down to
individuals (‘human security’). Human security, relating to the
weakest parts of society, became a popular and official term in UN
parlance, informing both development policies and post-civil war
peace building and consolidation activities.16 It is also guiding the
work of UNESCO in its SECURIPAX Forum.17

Removing  the  state  from  the  centre  of  security  affairs  and
replacing it by the lofty ideals of a global community or the sover-
eign individual, though, was not what was in the mind of the West-
ern security establishment. On the contrary, the new notions of
security were integrated, as much as possible, into the pre-existing
concept of national security. The state, it turned out, was much
more  in  danger  than  the  common  understanding  of  security
(which was confined to the possibility of cross-border military
attack) would suggest. Rather, it was encircled by a panoply of
ominous  and  dangerous  problems  that  required  forceful
responses.  That  those  ‘problems’  that  could  wield  a  weapon
loomed larger in the security discourse than those – like ‘environ-
mental threats’ or ‘uncontrolled financial flows’ – that did not,
came as no surprise to those well versed in the realm of bureau-
cratic politics. The security bureaucracies preferred those new
threats for which their old instruments were best suited.

16. Astri Suhrke, ‘Human Security
and the Interest of States’, Security
Dialogue, vol. 30, no. 3, September
1999, pp. 265-76.

17. www.unesco.org/securipax.

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European security18

If one starts from the more conservative view that territorial and
institutional integrity are the core of security, an interesting ques-
tion arises concerning Europe – which is here taken to mean the
European Union – and its security. The European Union, one must
remember, is no nation state. It is hence no bearer of the ‘national
security’ flag. It is equally unclear whether the ultimate aim of the
Union is a federal European state or whether its present existence as
a political system sui generis will be prolonged indefinitely even as
the integration process progresses step by step. This means that
one has to think carefully when applying the concept of security to
this strange political animal.

It is probably uncontroversial to propose that in any case ‘Euro-
pean security’ covers the territorial integrity of the Union at a
whole, which means the inviolability of the borders of each and
every single member state. The mutual relationship of the Union
and the integration project is so intense, deep and long-term in
nature that it would affect the security of Finland or Sweden if
Greece or Portugal were attacked. The European Union as such
would cease to exist if its Western members chose not to respond
after a member in the East had become a victim of aggression.
(This statement opens the delicate issue of the overseas territories
of  some  member  states  that  are  constitutionally  part  of  their
homeland. To avoid complexities, the issue is left aside for the pur-
pose of this essay.) Fortunately, this most traditional security risk
appears very remote. Europe’s territorial security is better than it
has ever been, even though there is a residual risk of a Greek-Turk-
ish clash, and the quarrels between Spain and Morocco remain.
Neither, however, appears likely to flare up into real war in the
foreseeable future. 

Likewise, the relationships (notably in economic terms) among
member states, and the ensuing interconnections between their
degree of national welfare, are so interdependent that the break-
down of the institutions of one member state would inevitably
affect the stability of all others. In that sense, European security is
coextensive  with  the  sum  of  the  national  security  of  all  the 
member states.

18 This is an analyst’s perspective.
My definition may thus deviate
from  the  official  meaning  of 
‘European security’ laid down in
Article 11 et seq. of the Treaty on
European Union.

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But it is even more. The definition of security given here, just
repeated, includes the integrity of the institutional setting and the
identity of the political unit being considered. In European terms
this means both the institutions of the Union and its identity, that
is, the essence and the direction of the European project. External
events that threaten to undermine the very cohesion that keeps
the Union together and stand in the way of its further progress
must be seen – from the viewpoint of the Union rather than any
member state – as a threat to European (as opposed to British,
French, German, Italian and so on) security. Thus, even if the 
security  of  the  individual  member  states  is  preserved,  that  of
Europe can still be violated; this is an important feature of Europe
that has to be kept in mind when discussing the corollaries of 
11 September.

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‘Megaterrorism’

Terrorism, proliferation:
a European threat assessment

2

As  stated  earlier,  the  significance  of  11  September  for  security
analysis is not as easy to gauge as some would have it. A sober assess-
ment is required that takes account of the general type of threat
that terrorism poses to European security in the accepted sense and
then applies that analysis to the form of 'megaterrorism' that
entered public awareness on that date and, in the eyes of many,
presents a qualitatively new threat distinct from terrorism as for-
merly known.

Classical terrorism versus ‘megaterrorism’

It is useful to think of terror in Clausewitzian terms. This does not
necessarily mean qualifying terrorism as a form of war since, if we
rely on the modern definition, war is fought by ‘certified’ parties,
that is states or substate units that can claim with some justifica-
tion to represent sections of the population within the embattled
state, and employ organised fighting units in their conflict. These
qualifications of course exclude terrorists as parties to wars. If a
Clausewitzian approach appears nevertheless to be useful, it is in
terms of a contest of wills in which the parties use instruments of
violence in parallel processes of physical destruction and symbolic
signalling of intentions. Clausewitz has argued that this contest
has an inherent tendency to proceed towards the ‘absolute’, that is,
towards the cataclysmic exchange of unlimited violent means, as
neither party is willing to surrender and begins each round of the
exchange at an enhanced level of force in the hope that the increase
may convince the enemy to submit. The same tendency is seen in
the struggle between terrorists and the state. Terrorists resort to
more ruthless, broader, effective levels of force as they cannot van-
quish the hated state. The state, by changing laws, acquiring new
means of intelligence, improving its weaponry and so on, provides
for responses to these new levels of violence. In theory, it is conceiv-
able that this interaction moves towards ever more violent levels of

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struggle. In practice, as Clausewitz noted in his analysis of war, the
struggle  meets  constraints  (‘friction’),  some  of  which  lie  in  its 
political character. 

The aim of classical terrorists19 – that is, the self-styled leftist
social-revolutionaries  such  as  the  Red  Army  Faction,  Action
Directe or the Brigate Rosse of the 1970s and 1980s, and the eth-
nical separatists of the ETA, IRA or Corsican vintage – was to take
over political power or sever a certain part of it and create a new,
independent state. To attain that objective, they pursued a four-
pronged strategy. First, by attacking and killing representatives of
the state, they wanted to shatter the self-confidence and coherence
of the hostile élites and make them increasingly insecure and vul-
nerable.  Second,  by  exposing  the  vulnerability  of  power,  they
wanted  to  undermine  the  loyalty  of  the  population  and  their
believe in authority, thereby creating an awareness that things are
changeable. Third, by creating incidental or intentional victims
among the civil population, they wanted to create widespread fear
and ensuing popular pressure on state authorities to make com-
promises with the terrorists. And last, by forcing the state to take
harsh countermeasures they wanted to deliver the proof of their
proposition that the state was repressive and cruel, engendering
public alienation and an increased desire in the population to
resist. 

Here lies the decisive reason why classical terrorism suffered
from an important constraint on the possibility of unlimited vio-
lent escalation. The need to win over the population meant that
attacks on the population had to remain limited. Ethno-national-
ist terrorists like the PLO, for their part, had to take care not to
alienate world opinion, whose support for their cause was needed.
A secondary reason for exercising restraint was the necessity to
avoid such forceful countermeasures by the authorities that the
terrorists would be extinguished by the crackdown, at least as long
as they were not strong enough to risk open battle; they thus had
to steer a fine course between their strategic need to provoke the
state into unpopular moves and the need to keep these moves
from overwhelming the terrorist infrastructure. 

Because of the existence of these inevitable constraints on the
actions of classical terrorists, RAND analyst and terrorism expert
Bruce Jenkins was quite right to maintain that ‘terrorists want
many people watching but not many people dead’.20 It was, how-
ever, a mistake to believe that this hypothesis could be applied to

19. Peter Waldmann, Terrorismus:
Provokation der Macht (München:
Gerling Akademie Verlag, 1998),
pp. 75-97; Bruce Hoffman, Inside
Terrorism (London:  Victor  Gol-
lancz, 1998), Chapters 3, 4.

20. Brian Jenkins, ‘International
Terrorism: A New Kind of War-
fare’,  RAND  Corporation  Paper
(Santa  Monica,  Calif.:  RAND,
June 1974).

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2

all forms of terrorism everywhere and at all times. Even for ordi-
nary  separatist  terrorist  movements  –  or  indeed  all  terrorism
rooted in ethnic distinctiveness – the use of violence against the
alien oppressors already knows fewer limitations. The oppressor’s
population is not to be won over. The use of force against this pop-
ulation, then, is only constrained by the strategic consideration of
having to negotiate independence with the enemy. If, however, the
belief prevails that eviction and cleansing rather than negotiation
is the path to independence, then this constraint falls by the way-
side as well, and the only remaining curb might be the fear of over-
whelming retaliation against the area and the population that the
terrorists claim to represent.

Looking at classical terrorism from a European security per-
spective, it is quite evident that the European level was never threat-
ened by terrorist movements. They did not push European mem-
ber states against each other or otherwise create alienation among
them, and the Commission, the Parliament, the Court, Council or
summit meetings were never targeted. They simply did not have
the European Union (at that time, the Community) in their sights
and, in this regard, were quite old-fashioned. While there was net-
working and mutual assistance among the groups, their focus was
their respective state, where they wanted to change the regime in
line with some vague and lofty socialist ideal or impose acquies-
cence in their region’s secession. They never managed to pose a
serious threat to the identity, survival, institutions or territorial
integrity of any of the states attacked. To be sure, populations were
apprehensive, as were authorities, but in a tenacious struggle the
agencies charged with combating terrorists wore them down, gen-
eration by generation, until they were basically extinct; the most
visible indication of this victory of democracy was the letter of sur-
render from the RAF in 1992. ETA and the radical wing of the IRA
are still active, but, for all the grief they cause, their impact on
internal security remains limited.

While there appeared to be a risk of excessive curbs on civil lib-
erty at some time in the 1970s, and this risk was exposed by advo-
cates of more rather than less liberalisation of West European
democracies,  the  fear  was  never  realised.  Western  Europe
remained liberal, and democracy was preserved and – e.g. in the
form of protection of privacy, the dismantlement of borders and
the free movement of people under the Treaty of Schengen – even
impressively enlarged. Populations were not alienated from their

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political authorities and institutions by terrorist provocations
but, if anything, developed even more loyalty as terrorism faced
them with a clear choice of values. The ideology, means and ends
of the terrorists never posed a real threat to security as defined in
the previous chapter.

‘Megaterrorism’ is a different matter: it is understood to mean
forms of terrorism where the Clausewitzian constraints on the use
of violence are not effective. This form of terrorism sets no limits
on the number of fatalities it wishes to cause. The ‘Jenkins doc-
trine’ simply does not apply to this phenomenon. 

A trend in this direction was increasingly visible from at least
the mid-1980s.21 While the number of terrorist attacks went down
from an average of more than 600 in the mid-1980s to about 450
in the early 1990s and less than 400 in the late 1990s, the number
of casualties, that is, the level of violence per attack, increased sig-
nificantly. More attacks were lethal, and took a higher toll than
before. And these statistics of course do not include data on pre-
vented  attacks,  some  of  which  would  have  been  enormously
deadly (such as the foiled attempt on Los Angeles Airport, the Eif-
fel Tower, the simultaneous destruction of a dozen wide-bodied
passenger aircraft over the Pacific or the attack against the Stras-
bourg synagogue). During the same period, the involvement of
terrorist groups ostensibly motivated by religious zeal increased
significantly. In 1968 no such group was registered, in 1980 it was
about  3  per  cent  of  all  known  terrorist  groups,  in  1992  these
groups made up slightly more than a quarter, and in 2000, more
than 40 per cent. It is plausible that the increasing lethality of ter-
rorism and the increasing share of organisations made up of reli-
gious fanatics should correlate, as indeed they do.22 Attacks caus-
ing mass casualties over the last ten years have almost invariably
been committed by such groups, ranging from the Japanese Aum
Shinri Kyo to al-Qaeda.

Megaterrorism and religious extremism

This all shows that religiously motivated terrorism and Islamic
fundamentalism are not the same thing. Religious terrorists exist
across all world religions. In its extreme interpretations, religion
appears to be a strong driving force for the application of ruthless
violence to achieve supposedly sacred objectives. The adoption of
such  world  views  represents  a  reaction  to  the  uprooting  of 

21. Hoffman, op. cit. in note 19;
Walter Laqueur, Die globale Bedro-
hung. Neue Gefahren des Terrorismus
(München:  Propyläen  Verlag,
2001); Kai Hirschmann and Peter
Gerhard  (eds.),  Terrorismus  als
weltweites Phänomen (Berlin: Berlin
Verlag, 2000).

22. ‘Patterns of Global Terrorism
2001’, US Department of State;
RAND-St. Andrews, ‘Chronology
of International Terrorism’, cur-
rent database.

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traditions, certainties and traditional life-worlds that globalisa-
tion has caused among rural and newly urbanised social strata.
Fundamentalism, in which the violence-prone interpretations of
religion are rooted, even though fundamentalism is far from being
automatically or universally violent, is the reorientation to a pur-
portedly absolute, unvarying truth that is to be found in the foun-
dations of a religion. The certainty gained in identifying with this
truth is a tool to locate one’s identity in the vagueness, disorienta-
tion and inevitable insecurity that the conditions of life today
impose.23

All cultures, and all humans within them, are exposed to these
conditions. However, those people whose perspectives for life are
relatively stable, whose life experiences present continuity, and
whose expectations are largely fulfilled are less likely to succumb
to fundamentalist temptations. Poor and badly disappointed peo-
ple are at higher risk of seeking consolation in fundamentalist
‘truths’ that help explain away their disappointments and exoner-
ate them of personal responsibility for their past and future. Peo-
ple with a hoped-for but factually uncertain rise to leadership
positions who have experienced fairly rapid changes in their social
milieu, and whose identity has hence been shattered, are more vul-
nerable than others to the siren songs of fundamentalism. This
includes first-generation immigrants into urban areas from rural
milieux, and primarily those among them who have undergone
higher education. Fundamentalism gives them élite answers to
their urgent questions as future leaders of their countries: what is
the justification for the deprivation of their people, what is the
response to the apparently irresistible, alien Western challenge? It
is  in  particular  young  academics  and  engineers  who  are  con-
fronted  with  these  questions.  They  are  expected  to  define  the
future of their countries, being privileged compared with the mass
of their poor and semi-poor compatriots. The average citizen of a
country can take refuge in escapism, but young academics are
denied this way out. They are in contact with the ‘cutting edge’ of
Western superiority, the avant-garde of Western culture, science
and philosophy, and are forced to make a choice. Fundamental-
ism offers those who decide on opposition a source of self-confi-
dence, and an ‘Archimedian [firm and immovable] point’ from
which a firm position against the West can be taken and founded.
It is for this reason that we find among the leaders of fundamen-
talist movements an astonishingly large proportion of academics,

23.  Gabriel  A.  Almond,  Em-
manuel Sivan and R. Scott Ap-
pleby,  ‘Explaining  Fundamen-
talisms’, in Martin E. Marty and R.
Scott Appleby (eds.), The Funda-
mentalism  Project  (Chicago  and
London: University of Chicago
Press, 1995), vol. 5, pp. 425-44.

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scientists, doctors and engineers, while in the rank and file the
lower social strata usually predominate.

Fundamentalism takes on different forms. It may be a purely
individual  revival  of  the  sources  of  one’s  own  religiosity,
unworldly meditation or contemplation in the mystical tradition.
The same attitude occurs also in a collectivist, ‘communitarist’
fashion, as the common retreat into a mystical identity with God,
without any ambition to realise one’s own ideals in the real world.
Fundamentalism can also focus on penetrating society, on prose-
lytising one’s own faith as a guide for everyday life, on offering
services such as health, education, and social security in addition
to or as a substitute for those of the state where it is lacking: this
causes the strength and popularity of the Muslim Brothers in
many Arab countries, or of Hamas among the Palestinians. Fun-
damentalism can also strive to participate in, or take over, political
power, but to choose a non-violent, legal rather than illegal path as
did the Muslim Brothers in Jordan or the FIS in Algeria prior to the
military coup in 1991. It would thus be a mistake to equate funda-
mentalism with terrorism, just as it is a mistake to see Islam as a
fundamentally violent religion.24

It would be equally wrong, however, to underrate the incredible
momentum that a disposition to use violence gains when it feeds
on religious motivation. And it is also a statistical fact that the
number of fundamentalist terrorists of the Islamic faith is larger,
and their acts of violence are therefore more numerous, than those
of other religions. In addition, it is the only religiously motivated
terrorism that has managed to create a transnational, globally
organised network.

Fundamentalist politicisation

To go from culturally motivated fundamentalism to politically
directed terrorism requires a process of politicisation. It starts with
the notion of global inequality, misgivings about the colonial and
imperial past and the perception that the cultural assault origi-
nates in the West. These circumstances create a diffuse anti-West-
ern feeling (which oddly enough coexists with the partial adoption
of Western ideals such as democracy, consumer preferences and the
like) that gives particular prominence to the United States as the
West’s leading power.

24.  Gabriel  A.  Almond,  Em-
manuel Sivan and R. Scott Ap-
pleby, ‘Fundamentalism: Genus
and Species’, ibid., pp. 399-425. 

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This resentment is enhanced by two additional factors. First,
people are being mobilised and polarised politically through key
conflicts of great symbolic value. The Middle East conflict, in the
first place, and secondly the Kashmir and Chechnya conflicts, play
this important mobilising and polarising role. Among young peo-
ple, a romantic solidarity and the readiness and desire to fight to
assist their oppressed ‘brethren’ appear. The West, and the United
States in particular, appear as the allies of the enemy, or at least as
indifferent or tolerant of injustice and deadly violence. The Mid-
dle East conflict in particular, whose symbolic weight overshad-
ows by far other world events for Arab (and other) Muslims, chan-
nels frustration, hostility and hatred towards the United States
with what is perceived as its biased support for the Israeli cause.

The second factor of politicisation is the authoritarian/totali-
tarian structure of most political systems in the Muslim world.
People  who  have  undergone  political  mobilisation  have  little
opportunity to express their views and participate in politics if
they do not join the powers that be outright. Opposition or critics
are  forced  underground,  where  violent  political  action  often
appears to be the only alternative to acceptance. Most Muslim
countries are badly governed.25 Political and religious repression
curbs creativity in Arab countries more than in other regions of
the Third World, the potential of women in society remains largely
unexploited,  per-capita  income  has  shrunk  in  the  last  twenty
years, productivity is decreasing, and research, development, sci-
ence and technology are comparatively undeveloped. Thus, high
expectations in the Arab world remain largely unfulfilled. When-
ever reality frustrates expectations, a mixture of violent and revo-
lutionary feelings emerges. This does not mean that terrorists are
themselves necessarily victims of social misery. Rather, an envi-
ronment of economic stagnation, social injustice, political repres-
sion and lack of prospects increases enhances the statistical prob-
ability of a readiness to use violence, particularly if the paths to
participation in political life are blocked. More people are then
likely to be seduced into joining radical groups.

The governments of many of those countries, such as Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Morocco, rely on the protection of the
United States. The United States is thus identified with the hated
domestic oppressors. The United States is seen as a hegemon that
keeps these repressive governments in power for its own interests,
notably  oil.  Domestic  repression  in  Arab  countries,  thus,  is

25.  For  the  Arab  world,  see
‘United  Nations  Development
Programme/Arab Fund For Eco-
nomic And Social Development,
Arab Human Development Re-
port 2002. Creating Opportuni-
ties for Future Generations’, New
York, 2002.

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ascribed to the United States. Because of their provocative superi-
ority and their ‘alien’ culture – alien, that is, in the eyes of tradi-
tionalists – the United States conforms to the image of an enemy
even better than the repressive governments themselves.

Both politicisation factors point in the same direction: they
make it easier for frustrated people to identify a preferred enemy,
and hence fronts become clear. Initial lack of orientation and per-
spective give way to a new, clear certainty and a new, heroic war-
rior’s perspective.

Violence without limits

Militant political theology provides this warrior identity with a
firm,  indisputable  because  transcendent,  basis.  This  theology
defends a God-given truth and a way of life derived from it, against
modernity, secularism, hedonistic consumerism, cultural alien-
ation  and  competing  religions.  The  central  place  that  religion
assumes in this vision is seriously underestimated in the West.
These people are not nihilists, neither do they instrumentalise reli-
gion to attain their seemingly secular goals. They are as dangerous
– as well as intriguingly charismatic – as they are because they
believe what they preach.26

A readiness to resort to unrestricted violence springs from a
conviction that one is acting in the name and on the order of the
highest,  that  is,  divine,  authority  and  pursuing  a  path  that  is
absolutely  true  and  absolutely  necessary.  From  this,  a  sharp
demarcation between ‘us’ and ‘them’ emerges which is of course
characteristic  of  all  concepts  of  an  enemy  but  is  of  particular
saliency for religious extremists as the enemy is seen as the agent of
absolute evil, the enemy of God. The resulting conception of the
world is strictly Manichaean; the enemy is ‘demonised’, and this
provides the justification for whatever level of violence is needed
to ensure victory over him. Fighting the enemy combines the acts
of strategic utility, God-willed punishment, purification of Earth
from the forces of evil and worshipping. In classical terrorism,
messages had to be communicated to the enemy (whose will was to
be broken) and – as the ‘interested third’ – the people (who were to
be both terrified and won over). In addition to these two recipi-
ents, religious terrorism also addresses God: the terrorist act is
meant as a reverent proof of faith. This makes terrorist strategy 

26. Jessica Stern, The Ultimate Ter-
rorist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1999).

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virtually  impermeable  to  rationalist  counter-arguments.  Reli-
gious terrorists see themselves as fighting in an ultimate, ‘cosmic’
war, frequently with millenarian or apocalyptical ingredients. 27

The strategic calculus

Nevertheless, it would be a grave mistake to understand religiously
motivated terrorists not as strategic actors but as ‘irrationalists’,
‘nihilist killers’ and the like. In our culture, the way religious terror-
ists derive and define their goals is certainly beyond rationality. The
way they devise their strategy and adapt ends to means is emphati-
cally not. While the Clausewitzian limits on the ‘absolute’ are not
applicable, a strategic relation between political goals (informed by
extremist religious considerations) and violent means does exist.
This is, first and foremost, true of al-Qaeda.28 Islamist extremists
perceive  themselves  as  fighting  in  a  desperate,  defensive  war
against a total assault directed against Islam and its true believers.
This  crusade  dates  back  to  colonialism  and  started  with  the
Napoleonic invasion of Egypt. The ‘forces of evil’ managed to sup-
press Muslims by force, but also to undermine their will to resist by
fielding a ‘fifth column’, that is, unfaithful, secular Muslims and,
first and foremost, apostatic leaders who refused to apply Islamic
law and serve the non-Islamic regime.

When Islamic radicals turned to militancy, they first targeted
these domestic leaders as the proximate enemy. By removing them
and replacing the secular nation state by an Islamist one – as in
Iran – they would start a movement to change the global balance of
power (as with the old Soviet ‘correlation of forces’). Each Islamic
country conquered in that way would represent a step towards
pushing anti-Islamism back from its ascendancy over the Umma,
the community of all Muslims. This was the strategy followed by
Abd el-Salam Faraj,29 the mastermind behind the assassination of
President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt. However, the strategy failed.
Egypt could not be conquered, Faraj and many of his companions
were executed. The armed rebellion of the Muslim Brothers in
Syria suffered a similar fate with the massacre at Hama in 1982.

As a consequence, militant religious leaders such as Omar Abd
al-Rahman reversed the order of priorities. It was now believed
that, as long as apostatic governments could rely on US support,
they were possibly impregnable, though the fight against them 

27. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in
the Mind of God. The Global Rise of
Religious Violence (Berkeley, Calif.:
University  of  California  Press,
2000), ch. 8.

28. The clearest expression of al-
Qaeda’s worldview and strategy is
by bin Laden himself, www.az-
zam.com/htlm/articlesdeclara-
tion.htm.

29. Op. cit. in note 27, p. 81.

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was still worthwhile. Osama bin Laden’s mentor in Afghanistan,
Ahmed Azzam, held a different opinion, but Osama was drawn to
al-Rahman’s viewpoint.30 The Gulf War of 1991 reinforced this
interpretation. For militants, it was a clear expression of America’s
will to dominate the Muslim world. The strong military presence
in Saudi Arabia, hub of world oil production as well as host coun-
try of the two holiest sites, was seen as a double assault for domi-
nance over Muslim wealth and culture. In bin Laden’s political
theology, the ‘occupation’ of the peninsula by US forces was a cen-
tral, defining moment. Al-Rahman and bin Laden after him thus
decided that the primary target was now the US protector.31 Apo-
static governments were still a worthy enemy, but the fight against
them was relegated to secondary priority, worthwhile for those
who had no chance to join the global fight against the dominant
power. This fight was taken up by al-Qaeda as its most important
mission.

The strategic objectives are long-term and potentially unlim-
ited. It is the liberation and unification of the Umma in an Islamic
state. What this might mean for Muslims in Western-dominated
societies is unclear so far, but bin Laden’s reported condemnation
of Australia because of its role in East Timor – a largely Christian-
dominated area with a Muslim minority – is a sobering indication.
From the European perspective, his reference to Spain as previ-
ously Muslim territory is even more disquieting.32 It would no
doubt  become  a  major  strategic  consideration  of  militant
Islamists if the intermediate goals were achieved one day. The
major intermediate goal is to eliminate all non-Muslim presence
and influence from the Muslim world, to expel, in particular, all
Western  military  forces,  beginning  with  those  of  the  United
States. Shorter-term goals are firstly the eviction of the United
States from the Arabian peninsula and the overthrow of the Saud
family – which would bring enormous financial resources to the
cause – and secondly the dismantlement of Israel.

Obviously, there is no way to defeat the United States in open
battle. If proof of that were needed, the campaign in Afghanistan
provided it. But even earlier, al-Qaeda’s doctrine had embraced the
principle of asymmetric strategy: to look for the weak points in the
enemy’s posture and attack them with the best means available.
For all its religious motivation, al-Qaeda sees the fight against the
West as a political struggle in the Clausewitzian sense, a powerful
struggle in which violence is instrumental in bending the will of

30. Op. cit. in note 7, pp. 22, 23.

31. Steven Simon and Daniel Ben-
jamin, ‘The Terror’, Survival, vol.
43, no. 4, Winter 2001, pp. 5-18,
esp. pp. 6-9.

32. Op. cit. in note 7, p. 86.

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the adversary. For this, traditional military force is not needed.
What is needed is to find the means by which the will of the more
powerful party can be broken.33

In this regard, al-Qaeda draws its hope from its assessment of
itself and its enemy. Al-Qaeda leaders look on themselves as battle-
hardened, determined warriors who are invincible because of their
faith and because, they believe, they have the support of Allah. In
contrast, the West, and the United States in particular, is seen as
soft, hedonistic, averse to fighting, cowardly and attached to a
good, affluent life. Since Western societies are assessed as godless
and irreligious, they do not have access to the source of strength
that feeds the courage of Muslim Jihad warriors. Al-Qaeda sees
proof for this judgment in US talk of zero casualties, the prefer-
ence for air over ground war, and its abrupt retreats from Lebanon
in 1983 and Somalia in 1993 having suffered numbers of casual-
ties that Muslim militants would consider acceptable.34

From this analysis of the situation, a clear strategy emerges: to
hit as hard as possible, and cause as many casualties, fatalities, and
damage as possible, against the enemy’s most vulnerable assets.
Weak spots have included isolated military positions in Muslim
countries where a culturally familiar and (occasionally) politically
sympathetic environment provides shelter. Much more impor-
tant – because they are more vulnerable, more valued, and thus
offer more important leverage over the enemy’s will – are targets,
notably civilian ones, in the US homeland. To kill large number of
US civilians, do damage to the US economy and destroy symbolic
landmarks that are dear to Americans is, in the eyes of these strate-
gists,  the  most  decisive  operation  that  they  can  conduct.  It  is
equally true, however, that other targets with less leverage, but still
with an impact on US will, will not be rejected if action can be
taken with a reasonable prospect of success.

Weapons of mass destruction

The discussion of al-Qaeda’s strategy has analysed the central posi-
tion of shocking mass murder; this distinguishes this group – like
other religious militants – from earlier terrorists to which Brian
Jenkins’s famous doctrine, that they do not want many people dead
but many people watching, applies. In New York and Washington,
knifes were enough to turn aircraft into bombs. Had the plane that
crashed into the second WTO tower carried a primitive, low-yield

33.Bruce W. Bennett, Christopher
P. Twomey and Gregory F. Trever-
ton, 1999: ‘What Are Asymmetric
Strategies?’,  RAND  Document
DB-246-OSD; Steven Metz and
Douglas  V.  Johnson  II,  2001:
‘Asymmetry  and  U.S.  Military
Strategy: Definition, Background
and Strategic Concepts’, Strategic
Studies Institute, US Army War
College, Carlisle, Penn., January
2001.

34.  See  bin  Laden’s  fatwa,
w w w . a z z a m . c o m / h t l m /
articlesdeclaration/htm.

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(1-5 kt) nuclear weapon that exploded on impact, people within a
radius of at least several hundred meters would have been killed,
raising the number of fatalities by an order of magnitude. Precisely
because of the changed strategic calculus of terrorists driven by
politico-religious  motivations,  the  possibility  of  their  using
weapons of mass destruction must be taken seriously; there is
nothing in their political theology or their strategy that would
stand in the way of resort to such means.

Aum Shinri Kyu has proven that this assessment is correct,
although the case of the 1995 Tokyo attack also shows that even
for a very wealthy and resourceful group, and including for chem-
ical  weapons,  usually  considered  the  easiest  WMD  to  handle,
using these weapons to maximum effect is no trivial task. The
same is true for biological weapons (with which Aum Shinri Kyu
experimented in vain), and for radiological weapons if it involves
combining radioactive material and conventional explosives and
detonating it in a way that contaminates more than a tiny area. It
applies, with additional emphasis and force, to the technically
most demanding WMD, nuclear weapons.

Al-Qaeda had shown an interest in these weapons even before
11 September.35 Documents found in Afghanistan pointed to
considerations on radiological weapons, and laboratory equip-
ment was uncovered that gave indications that some experiments
with CW production might have taken place. Eavesdropping on
the Milan cell recorded discussions on the planned use of a (still
unknown) allegedly very efficient chemical agent, and some docu-
mentation found in the United States also contained references to
chemical weapons. 

Even before 11 September, there were rumours that al-Qaeda
had tried to obtain nuclear weapons, material and knowledge
from the former Soviet Union. Later rumours alleged contacts
with Pakistani nuclear scientists, two of whom were temporarily
detained,  apparently  without  firm  evidence.36 Little  has  been
revealed  about  al-Qaeda’s  intentions  concerning  biological
weapons. But since it is known that terrorists have considered
using all other WMD, lack of evidence is no reason to suppose a
lack of intent.

As stated, moving from intention to possession to successful
use is no easy thing, even for a well-funded terrorist group. It
became a more difficult progression for al-Qaeda after the group 

35. Stefan Leader, ‘Osama bin
Laden and the terrorist search for
WMD’, Jane’s Intelligence Review,
June 1999, pp. 34-7.

36. BBC News, 25 October 2001,
‘Pakistan holds nuclear scientists’,
news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world
/south_asia/newsid_1619000/1
619252.stm.

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had been deprived of its sanctuary in Afghanistan. This was one of
the main achievements of the 2001-02 campaign: whatever plans
and activities existed, it appears that they were aborted at an early
date. The rumour in November 2002, of a planned CW attack on
the London underground mentioned that the agent of choice was
to be cyanide, a deadly but not the most effective chemical agent. It
is precisely the one that was employed in the abortive 1993 World
Trade Center incident, so this does not speak for great progress, so
far, in al-Qaeda’s CW development.

Al-Qaeda would certainly be greatly helped by external provi-
sion of ready-to-use weapons, and material or know-how. It is in
this  context  that  the  G-8’s  ‘10  plus  10  over  10’  programme
adopted in summer 2002 that will spend US$20 billion over a
period of ten years to make WMD assets of all types in the former
Soviet Union secure is of crucial importance and requires Europe’s
full and lasting support.37 It is an unconventional instrument of
European security, but one that serves it better and more directly
than some of the military programmes the member states con-
sider or push forward.

A militant Islamic group looks perhaps less attractive as an
employer  to  former  Soviet  scientists  and  engineers  and  other
‘WMD soldiers of fortune’ from differing origins is more than a
secular state government. The risk/gain calculus of the expert
might tend to give more weight to the risk of being dependent on
an alien group, and the lack of a sanctuary makes the idea of scien-
tific mercenary less attractive. Unless the group succeeds in buy-
ing weapons on the spot – something authorities in former Soviet
republics should be capable of preventing – it might not be so easy
to enhance terrorist capabilities by enlisting external expertise.

This assessment does not apply to experts who are sympathetic
towards the political theology of the terrorists. It cannot be ruled
out – remember the Pakistani case – that individual Islamist radi-
cals could work on WMD programmes in countries like Pakistan,
Iraq, Syria, Libya or Iran, and seek or cultivate contacts with al-
Qaeda operatives without the knowledge or approval of their mas-
ters. On this there is nothing in the public domain, but the possi-
bility must be considered.

Finally, there is the much discussed possibility of active assis-
tance by WMD-proliferating states to terrorists that is at the heart
of  the  declaratory  policy  of  the  US  government  in  favour  of 

37.  Christina  Chuen,  Michael
Jasinski and Tim Meyer, ‘The 10
plus  10  over  10  Initiative:  A
Promising Start, But Little Sub-
stance 
Far’,
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/
020812.

So 

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toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime. An assessment of this risk
requires an analysis of the capabilities, interests and strategic cal-
culus of these states.

Organisation and operations

It is in the nature of terrorist groups that their organisational struc-
ture remains opaque. Al-Qaeda has frequently been described as a
new type of terrorist network with extremely flat hierarchies and a
minimised role played by the organisation.38 Al-Qaeda is thus
thought to be much less vulnerable to decapitation, and much
more capable of continuing to operate if parts of the organisation
are  eliminated.  This  would  certainly  make  the  network  much
more frightening and gives it sort of a mythical aura. But is the
description accurate?

There are a couple of reasons why the image of a hierarchy-less

network does not appear to be completely plausible.
(cid:90) Socialisation and cultural milieu. The overwhelming number of al-
Qaeda terrorists originate from hierarchical, strictly patriarchal
societies. It would be a major challenge for a group of people with
this common socialisation to develop a revolutionary institu-
tional structure that is so much different from the environment
in which they have grown up.

(cid:90) Historical examples (Leitbilder). Al-Qaeda, like all Islamists, looks
back to the original Islamic community during the time of the
Prophet and the first caliphs. While there was a certain degree of
equality, there were also clear lines of hierarchy. They ran from
the Prophet through his small group of advisers and close rela-
tives to the broader community (three levels of hierarchy); and
from the caliph through the viziers and the group of elders to the
people (three to four levels). The assassins, an early Islamist ter-
rorist group during the Middle Ages, likewise had the ‘old man
from the mountains’ as supreme leader, a group of senior offi-
cers around him and young warriors that went out to kill apos-
tates to order. Discipline was strict and enforcement harsh.

(cid:90) Personal  experience.  For  many  in  the  al-Qaeda  organisation,
including the more senior members, one defining experience in
their career was the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Even
though guerrilla organisations’ hierarchies are somewhat flat-
ter than that of a formal army, they are nevertheless strictly hier-
archical. The ideal consists of a line of command running from

38. Peter L. Bergen, Holy War Inc.
Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin
Laden  (London:  Weidenfeld  &
Nicholson, 2001); Udo Ulfkotte,
Propheten des Terrors. Das geheime
Netzwerk der Islamisten (München:
Goldmann Verlag, 2001), pp. 15-
50.

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the field commander through a group of captains or lieutenants
to the ordinary fighters. This personal contact will have shaped
their approach to their terrorist activities.

(cid:90) Institutional constraints and selection mechanisms. Terrorists operate
in a dangerous and hostile environment. Discipline and sup-
pression of deviant behaviour that is extremely dangerous to the
survival of the group are an existential necessity. Extensive dis-
putes may lead to equally fatal indecision. Authority is thus
needed. This pushes these groups into leader-follower struc-
tures which, again, engenders hierarchy.

(cid:90) Sociogenetic/temporal aspects. It is trivial to remark that organisa-
tions grow by some people being there at the start, others joining
later, and others again entering after the second group. This
makes for different levels of experience, and different degrees of
mutual trust and familiarity. Usually these factors produce a
hierarchical structure that puts those with the longest presence
in the organisation more to the top and the rest more to the bot-
tom. In terrorist enterprises where personal experience is an
invaluable  asset  for  the  organisation,  the  above  mechanism
should play a significant role. 39

If we look from this viewpoint at the evidence we have about the al-
Qaeda network, the following conclusions appear to be in order.
(cid:90) There are three types of networking. In the first, al-Qaeda links
up with existing autonomous national/regional/ethnic Islamist
groups that have their own political agenda and organisational
structure. Al-Qaeda lends support to these groups, including
financial aid, technical advice, the seconding of personnel and
the provision of ideas on how to act and what to target. Decision-
making, though, is left to these groups alone. Lines of commu-
nication are horizontal rather than vertical. It appears that these
groups are largely located in Third World countries (including
the Caucasian region of Russia), but not in Europe. The second
network  links  al-Qaeda  to  ‘independent  mujaheddin’,  small
groups that rely on some support form al-Qaeda and are willing
to respond to their ideas for activities, but are largely independ-
ent. The third network links al-Qaeda to cells consisting of peo-
ple that were recruited, indoctrinated and trained by al-Qaeda,
work on the agenda set by its leadership – the struggle against
the United States and its allies – get their main funding, selec-
tion of targets and operations, and (possibly, but not certainly)

39. I rely, if not otherwise indi-
cated, on Gunaratna, 2002; Rolf
Tophoven, ‘Neue terroristische
Strukturen:  Osama  bin  Laden
und die “Al Qaida” ’, in Hans
Frank  and  Kai  Hirschmann
(eds.), Die weltweite Gefahr. Terror-
ismus  als  internationale  Heraus-
forderung (Berlin : Berlin Verlag,
2002), pp. 245-62; Ulrich Sch-
neckener, Netzwerke des Terrors.
Charakter  und  Strukturen  des
transnationalen Terrorismus (Berlin:
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Poli-
tik, 2002).

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precise orders on operations from the al-Qaeda leadership. It is
this type that presents the greatest risk to Europe. In addition, it
appears that Jordanian al-Qaeda operative al-Zarqawi has built
up a semi-independent terrorist network in Europe and North
Africa that is capable of acting on its own.

(cid:90) Bin Laden’s issuing of fatwas prove a claim to authority. Fatwas
are authoritative statements by religious leaders concerning the
judgment, and prescriptions for the related behaviour of the
faithful, with a claim to supreme truth and the need to adapt
behaviour accordingly. While fatwas can be challenged by reli-
gious competitors, they inevitably contain a claim to authority.
Bin Laden made this claim even though, as a religious layman, he
is not supposed to have the authority to issue fatwas. In addi-
tion, the video and radio messages issued by the al-Qaeda lead-
ership have the threefold function of impressing enemies, insti-
gating  mobilisation  of  the  mass  of  the  faithful  and  calling
followers to action (they may also contain secret, coded mes-
sages to organisation members, but this is speculation). This is,
again, a claim to authority. All these claims imply an awareness
of  hierarchy.  The  organisation  of  the  centre  into  functional
‘departments’ – reported in all studies on al-Qaeda – points in
the same direction.

(cid:90) Most important, the evidence about organisational structure
that we can draw from the break-up of the cells by Western secu-
rity agencies points to the existence of an intermediate level
between the al-Qaeda leadership and the operative cells. The
identification of such ‘nodes’ as the weak spots in the networks
that are the structure of the new type of ‘netwar’ has been diag-
nosed even by the theorists of very flat hierarchies. 40What are
these nodes and what are there functions?
(cid:92) First, they comprise assembly points for radical Islamists where
sympathisers, that is, potential recruits, can collect and can be
screened by al-Qaeda operatives. These assembly points are
radical Mosques and Koran schools as well as extremist reli-
gious  leaders  and  preachers  who  indoctrinate  potential
recruits.

(cid:92) Second, there are the recruiters who watch, screen and select
young  Muslims  for  al-Qaeda  and  direct  them  to  training
places – formerly Afghanistan, now unknown. These people
would  usually  have  some  connection  with  the  assembly 

40. John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt
and Michele Tanini, ‘Networks,
Netwar  and  Information-Age
Terrorism’, in Ian O. Lesser et al.,
Countering  the  New  Terrorism
(Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND,
1999), pp. 39-84.

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points, but also keep connections to the ‘centre’ where the
training  is  carried  out.  London-based  cleric  Sheikh  Omar
Mahmood Abu Omar, alias Abu Quatada, recently arrested, is
a case in point.41

(cid:92) Third, there are the intermediaries, ‘logistical guides’ such als
Ramzi Binalshib for the Hamburg cell, or regional chiefs, such
as Abdel Rahim el Nashiri, the supposed leader of al-Qaeda in
the Persian Gulf region, or Imam Samudra, the organiser of
the  Bali  slaughter.  They  appear  to  serve  as  links  between
local/regional activities and the centre, with authority to issue
messages (perhaps also orders), serve as a communication link
and transfer financial and technical resources.
The nodes are vulnerable, since they stand out. They must
articulate themselves at least semi-publicly (as regards the first
function), be in touch with the first – observable – ones in order to
do their job (the second) and travel and communicate (the third
and partially the second). All these activities have observable sig-
natures, which leaves them open to intelligence and police obser-
vation. They constitute weak links in an organisational chain that
has become all too mystified by public media and political utter-
ances.  The  main  task  for  authorities  is  to  direct  their  efforts
accordingly.

The risks to European security

Given its ideology and its strategic thinking, it is clear that the
United States will remain al-Qaeda’s overarching target. Where the
organisation cooperates with national terrorist networks, however,
other targets also gain prominence. This is certainly true for Russia
(because  of  Chechnya),  India  (because  of  Kashmir)  or  Israel
(because of Palestine). However, the attacks against Australian
tourists in Bali, and the reported statement by bin Laden that
because of its engagement in East Timor Australia is anti-Islamic,
indicate that operations can take unexpected directions that look
strange to the external observer.

What  does  all  this  mean  for  Europe?  What  is  the  risk  of 
European  countries  becoming  targets  of  al-Qaeda  or  allied
groups?  We  must  expect  the  answer  to  depend  on  a  group  of 
variables, namely:

41. Glen Frankel, ‘Britain arrests
key  figure  tied  to  Al  Qeida’,
International  Herald  Tribune,
26/27 October 2002.

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(cid:90) special grievances against individual countries;
(cid:90) opportunity of successful attack compared with other targets;
(cid:90) the availability of infrastructure favouring the preparation and

conduct of terrorist operations.

Special grievances

The existence of a ‘special grievance’ means that something in the
policy of a European country is particularly averse, or seen as par-
ticularly hostile, to the views of Islamist extremists. France and
Britain  head  the  list.  France  attains  this  prominent  position
because of its perceived acquiescence or involvement in preventing
the ascendancy of Islamists in Algeria, and its – supposed – support
for the repressive campaign by the Algerian government against
these Islamists. There is no need to prove this point. France was the
victim of terrorist acts committed by the GIA in the mid-1990s,
only just escaped an 11 September-like attack on the Eiffel Tower,
was  the  planned  target  of  an  attack  by  the  Frankfurt  terrorist
group, and obviously also the scene of an assault with chemical
agents prepared by the Milan terrorist group, all of which had
proven links to al-Qaeda. 

Britain finds itself in the line of fire because it is America’s clos-
est ally and most visible in the campaign against terror using mili-
tary means, as proven during the operations in Afghanistan. Its
hostile position towards Iraq – its participation in the perpetual
enforcement of the no-fly zones as well as support for the US pol-
icy of considering the forceful removal of the Iraqi regime – might
also enhance its prominence in Islamist terrorists’ eyes as a leading
hostile power. As bin Laden previously perceived the first Gulf War
as an offensive against Islam, he (and/or his followers/successors)
will not fail to do so again; the reported warning by al-Qaeda
leader Al-Zuwahiri and the later statement by what is believed was
bin Laden himself support this point.

Germany, also included in each warning, occupies a less promi-
nent position, but its involvement in Afghanistan might still be
visible (and, in the eyes of radical Islamists, objectionable) enough
to attract attention. Al-Zuwahiri’s and bin Laden’s threats appear
to confirm this. Among other European countries, Spain’s posses-
sions in North Africa appear not to have incited hostility among
terrorist groups so far, but given bin Laden’s invective against Aus-
tralia because of East Timor, could well do so in the future. Spain,

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together with Italy, might also instigate hostile feelings because of
restrictive immigration policies aimed at migrants from northern
Africa and from Kosovo, all inevitably of Muslim faith. It appears
unlikely that additional European countries will appear on the list
of ‘particular grievances’ in the near future.

One point that emerges here and should not be lost, but is
picked up again in the discussion of the transatlantic relationship
below, is that, though Europe, as part of the West, is fundamen-
tally  at  risk  of  becoming  a  target,  that  risk  is  significantly
enhanced for those countries that have a high profile in the cam-
paign against terror. Aligning visibly with the United States is a
move – made for good reasons – that nevertheless brings with it
additional dangers for the countries that so decide. It would be
desirable for the US government and public to be more aware of
this risk which its allies are taking in the interests of solidarity.

Opportunity

Opportunity depends on three factors: the availability of ‘good’
targets, the prospects of successful preparation and operation, and
– in that same context – a more benign environment in terms of the
measures taken by authorities to prevent terrorism as compared
with those in other potential target states.

In principle, targets attractive to al-Qaeda and related groups
abound in all European states. In the first line are US installations
such as military facilities, embassies and consulates-general as
well as less obvious sites such as US-run schools, universities or
cultural assets. In the same vein, Israeli and Jewish sites are partic-
ularly endangered and are also widely available across Europe.
Beyond this, there is no limit to the perverse phantasy of the ter-
rorists to choose targets that serve the strategy discussed above: to
create maximum damage, pain and grief in order to force the with-
drawal of the attacked state from the ‘war against Islam’. As the
aborted attack on the Eiffel Tower indicates, highly destructive
assaults against targets of the highest symbolic or cultural value
are a constant possibility. They are found in almost every major
European city, and it is not possible to draft a ‘short list’ that
would give the guarantee that everything of value can be pro-
tected. But it has to be noted that Brussels, being the home of EU
and NATO headquarters, certainly attracts more attention than
most other cities.

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The prospects of a successful operation depend, of course, on
the possibility that countermeasures by the authorities are likely
to identify and apprehend the terrorists before they can act suc-
cessfully. It is thus important for European states to pay continu-
ous, close attention to the problem and exert maximum possible
pressure on terrorists without undermining the constitutional
principles and individual liberties the protection of which moti-
vates the fight against terrorism in the first place. European states
must not lower their guard even if there is a lull in terrorist attacks,
if other, non-European targets appear to be of greater interest to
them, or if a series of successes appears to confirm the efficiency of
the work of European authorities.

For, in the end, ‘opportunity’ is no absolute, but a relative con-
cept. Terrorists operating globally will always compare the obsta-
cles they are facing in one place with those elsewhere. And they will
usually choose, if targets of roughly equal value present them-
selves in two different states, the one where resistance is likely to be
lower. It is thus crucial that counter-terrorist measures should be
applied effectively across Europe. As European governments erect
additional barriers to terrorist attacks, so too do others. It is thus
essential to avoid a ‘funnel effect’ in Europe, whereby the energies
and activities of terrorists are channelled towards the spot deemed
weakest. This applies equally within Europe: in particular, Schen-
gen countries should do their utmost to erect and maintain an
equal level of counter-terrorist protection and proficiency. One
should also bear in mind that, in non-democratic states, repres-
sion is harsher and intrusion into private life can reach levels that
are  absolutely  prohibited  and  unthinkable  in  democracies.  In
addition, we have to note that elsewhere the shock of 11 Septem-
ber has permitted central authorities to impose more constraints
on individual liberties than European publics are (quite under-
standably) willing to tolerate. If such gaps open and cannot be
closed by adopting the same types of measures, then other meas-
ures must be substituted.

What is needed is thus not an imitation of measures taken in
the United States. Rather, to achieve optimum effectiveness with
measures and authority presently available must be the first and
foremost aim within Europe. The lessons of 11 September do not
point  to  a  lack  of  legal  authority,  surveillance  instruments  or 

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similar assets for police and intelligence services. On the contrary,
they indicate an astonishing failure of authorities to implement
what lawmakers had entrusted to them. It begins with a failure to
maintain a translation capability to evaluate intelligence inter-
cepted in good time. Moreover, the intelligence community was
aware of a threat against US territory, had ample evidence that ter-
rorists were considering the use of commercial aircraft as instru-
ments to carry out attacks, had observed a meeting of al-Qaeda
operatives in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 two of whom, Khalid
al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, would later join a flight school
in the United States, live together with another of the later hijack-
ers, Hani Hanjour, and participate in the 11 September attacks,
had produced a specific warning from an agent on the increased
participation of Islamists suspected of having terrorist connec-
tions in flight training and had detained Zacharias Moussaoui in
August 2001 because he wanted to learn to fly only, not to start or
to land.42 Yet they were unable to connect these leads and build up
a coherent picture. Without these flaws, it is quite likely that at
least some of the perpetrators would have been captured before 11
September, and that the framework of the plot would have been
uncovered from Zacharias Moussaoui’s computer that the FBI
failed to tap, not because it lacked the authority but, incredibly,
because of a mistaken legal understanding of what authority was
available. Incredibly, even the Hamburg group was under the sur-
veillance of German and US intelligence while it was preparing for
the 11 September attacks.43 Rather than thinking up all the pipe
dreams of an authoritarian security state that, as terrorist attacks
in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan have amply shown, is all but immune
to that sort of threat, the agencies responsible for internal security
should be instructed to apply what they have got as best they can.
In addition, intra-European cooperation and coordination must
be optimised. If this is done well, the deterrent walls against ter-
rorists will be as high as we can make them. 

In Europe, the most important measures is not necessarily the
additional  empowerment  of  agencies  with  additional  legal
authority, but rather increased cooperation, the enhancement of
technical capability and the provision of additional manpower for
agencies often severely lacking in resources that are overwhelmed
by the fourfold burden of fighting organised crime, economic
crime, illegal migration and terrorism. 

42. US Senate Select Committee
on  Intelligence,  ‘Joint  Inquiry
Statement, Part I’, Eleanor Hill,
Staff Director, Joint Inquiry Staff,
18 September 2002; US Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence,
‘The  Intelligence  Community’s
Knowledge of the September 11
Hijackers Prior to September 11,
2001’, Eleanor Hill, Staff Director,
Joint Inquiry Staff, 20 September
2002.

43. Oliver Schröm, ‘Im Visier der
besonnenen Fahnder’, Frankfurter
Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 12 Janu-
ary 2003.

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Infrastructure

Terrorists need an environment that permits the preparation of
operations without the immediate risk of being detected. What
Mao Tse-tung once said about the guerrilla applies to the terrorist
as well: he must be able to swim in the people like the fish in water.
To operate successfully, Islamist terrorists need large Islamic com-
munities in both their host and target states.

It is, of course, necessary to qualify this statement and to be as
precise as possible. It is not meant that Islamic communities are
identical or sympathising with or supportive of terrorist groups.
That is not the case. Most Muslims living in Western Europe are as
appalled by al-Qaeda as their fellow citizens and reject both the
fundamentalist ideal of an Islamic society and state and the mili-
tant’s addiction to violent means to achieve it; it is essential to
realise that terrorism as well as fundamentalism are not majority
movements in the Islamic world: if anything, it appears that fun-
damentalism is on the decline.44 Many Muslims are very well inte-
grated into societal, economic and political life. Yet the existence
of  a  broad  cultural  community  permits  the  terrorists  to  hide
among the cultural ‘background noise’ that makes their quick
identification impossible. This is an inevitable consequence of the
new  composition  of  urban  populations  in  West  European
metropolises, and will remain so in the future.

Within these communities, there is always a certain probability
that a proportion of them will naturally be alienated by their new
environment. In addition, racist and hostile attitudes towards
immigrants, failure of authorities to protect immigrants against
such  racist  assaults,  restrictive  immigration  policies  that  put
immigrants  under  special,  discriminatory  legal  and  economic
regimes, and a failure to fulfil economic or career expectations,
can create pockets of diffident and dissatisfied persons, notably
among the youth, that create a pool of sympathisers, helpers and
potential recruits for terrorist groups. Zacharias Moussaoui, the
‘twentieth hijacker’ of 11 September, is a case in point: a highly
ambitious youth, he became a victim of racist attacks, including by
the police, and developed increasing hatred against the Western
world that, in his view, had denied him his due. Islamism became
the tool for stabilising his personality, and violent Jihad the way to
take his revenge. It is important to note that this type of career is a
possibility,  not  a  necessity:  Moussaoui’s  elder  brother,  Abd

44. Gilles Kepel, Jihad. Expansion et
déclin de l’islamisme (Paris: Gaillard,
2000), Part III; Olivier Roy, The
Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1998).

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Samad, who came from the same milieu, took a quite different
path – towards successful integration.45 In this sense, right-wing,
conservative policies that are anti-immigration and anti-integra-
tion, and thereby foster a feeling of alienation, particularly among
young Muslims, do a dangerous disservice to the security of their
countries. Even though they are used to thinking of themselves as
bulwarks of domestic security, in that regard, the proponents of
such policies are emphatically not.

Finally, within large Muslim communities, there is also the
likelihood that a certain number of extremist religious leaders
abuse  the  liberty  accorded  to  them  in  democracies  to  preach
hatred and violence. The mosques and Koran schools which they
lead become nodes for indoctrination, recruitment, and network-
ing. They provide a meeting place for sympathisers and new adepts
for  terrorist  groups.  Messages  can  be  distributed  and  money
exchanged. Tolerance of these practices, quite wrongly, under the
banner of religious freedom, has been self-defeating. Mosques and
leaders of this type are found across Europe, with a particularly
strong concentration in the United Kingdom. Curbing the activi-
ties of these nodes of terror without further alienating Muslim
communities is one of the immediate tasks for the European cam-
paign against terrorism.

Another related factor which needs mentioning is the availabil-
ity  of  potential  allies  who  do  not  originate  from  the  Islamist
milieu but share some of its aversions, enemy images and inclina-
tion to use violence. The reaction of rightist extremists to 11 Sep-
tember suggests that assistance might be offered by such groups
to Islamist terrorists, out of a shared feeling of hostility towards
the United States, Jews and Israel. It is also conceivable, though we
have not seen strong indications, that anti-Americanism may feed
sympathies, on the extremist left, for bin Laden and his kind.

If we take all three factors into account – grievances, opportu-
nity and infrastructure – we must conclude that the larger Euro-
pean countries, notably France, the United Kingdom, Germany
and, some distance behind them, Italy and Spain, plus Brussels as
a most visible city, are the most likely to host active terrorist cells
and risk becoming the target of terrorist operations. The risk for
the rest is not zero, notably because individual idiosyncrasies play
a strong role in terrorism and make the results of strategic analy-
ses, like the one proposed here, somewhat contingent and haz-
ardous. But there is little more we can do.

45. Nicolas Richter, ‘Sie sassen da
und  schwiegen’,  Sueddeutsche
Zeitung, 28 October 2002, p. 3.

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Coping with ‘megaterrorism’:
short- and long-term responses

From these considerations, a few consequences can be drawn on
how to fight this type of terrorism. No strategy, however, will be
perfect. The nature of the beast means that terrorist incidents will
occur, and people, sometimes many people, will die. Our societies
must be prepared to sustain some degree of casualties without
breaking down. This is the first and main requirement of a long-
haul fight against this scourge.

Immediate responses

One of the most frequent flaws in discussions about combating
terrorism is a failure to distinguish between the effectiveness of
measures over time. Terrorism is a phenomenon that will not dis-
appear  over  night,  no  matter  what  countermeasures  we  take.
Strategies for the long term are needed. Nevertheless, at the same
time terrorism is an imminent threat that requires a focus on the
here and now as well; with some effort and good luck, terrorist
attacks can be uncovered in advance and prevented. Anti-terrorist
strategies must thus include instruments that have both immedi-
ate and long-term effects.46

Military action
Some idealists believe that the military has no role to play in the
fight against terrorism. Today we hear voices that, because Osama
bin Laden has not been caught, Afghanistan is not yet stable and
many al-Qaeda operatives have moved to Pakistan and elsewhere,
the Afghan campaign was a failure. This is utter nonsense. The
Afghan campaign eliminated al-Qaeda’s ability to train large num-
bers of people in combat and terrorist techniques in an undis-
turbed environment, and to build weapon laboratories to enhance
the effectiveness of its activities, which was a real achievement.
Overall, however, the use of military means against terrorism is cer-
tainly of limited value – which is why the almost single-minded
emphasis of the United States on the military instrument and pre-
emptive action is so misplaced47 – but it is not without value in
those situations where terrorism takes on a territorial dimension
and thus becomes susceptible to military operations that depend
on having, a target with coordinates to be effective. Military power 

46. I agree with the line taken by
Paul R. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S.
Foreign Policy (Washington, DC:
The Brookings Institution, 2001),
possibly the best treatise on anti-
terrorist strategy.

47. Michael Howard, ‘What’s in a
Name?’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 81,
no. 1, 2002, pp. 8-13.

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must  be  applied  whenever  a  state  gives  terrorists  a  sanctuary, 
wittingly or unwittingly, and proves unwilling or incapable to reign
them in. Terrorists use sanctuaries to develop quasi-military struc-
tures such as camps, storage areas, headquarters and laboratories
that are legitimate objectives for military attack. In these cases,
forceful action to terminate these activities, under UN Security
Council mandates, is an inescapable and very useful ingredient of
the campaign against terrorism. Acting via the Security Council –
except in a situation where there is clear evidence of an imminent
attack – is plainly preferable to a radical broadening of the meaning
of ‘self-defence’ as proposed in the US National Security Strategy.
Leaving it up to individual governments to interpret the terrorist-
host nation relationship and decide upon action will open a Pan-
dora’s box of abuse where terrorism is used as a pretext for national
aggression.  It  must  be  left  to  the  international  community  to
decide upon the appropriate measures to be adopted when a state
harbours a terrorist organisation in defiance of a Security Council
request to sever that relationship.

Intelligence and police
The first line of short-term defence, however, remains intelligence
and police work.48 As stated above, the problem is not so much
increasing empowerment as the perfect use of present authority,
and the enhancement of technical and staff capability. If, instead of
enhancing the intrusion into the daily lives of citizens, two hun-
dred staff with Arab, Pakistani and Indonesian language capabili-
ties, Muslim faith and intimate knowledge of the culture of immi-
grant communities were added, the gain would be all the greater.
Indeed, the single most effective measure to enhance our defensive
capabilities is, in the true sense of the word, pedestrian: a signifi-
cant enlargement of the number of Muslim police, daily patrolling
suburbs with a Muslim majority, developing relations of trust with
the immigrant populations and detecting signs of unusual appear-
ances  and  activities  in  their  district.  That  sort  of  friendly  and
trusted social control is so much more productive than profiling
techniques that criminalise whole sectors of the population and
lead to resentment and alienation, curbing cooperation between
immigrants  and  authorities  and  thereby  increasing  the  ‘back-
ground  noise’  in  which  the  terrorists  love  to  hide.  Raising  the 
percentage of Muslim policemen so that it equates to the percent-
age of Muslims in the population and employing them on foot

48. Richard K. Betts, ‘Fixing Intelli-
gence’, ibid., pp. 43-59.

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patrol  is  probably  the  foremost  anti-terrorist  measure  easily 
available to European societies. However, it runs counter to the pre-
vailing tendencies to cut down on personnel, introduce extra legis-
lation and depend on high technology.

Within the Union, enhancing coordination and strengthening
the information pool available to national authorities is essential.
The creation of the Terrorism Task Force within Europol with
analytical and information-dissemination capabilities has already
enhanced coordination among member states. The Open Source
Digest has proven an important instrument for providing author-
ities in all member states with the same level of information that is
openly accessible. Of great value is the Arabic-English translation
system, which is essential for evaluating the large quantity of intel-
ligence information that is only available in Arabic, and helps
those member states with inadequate translating facilities to keep
up with this important source of information.49

Of great use in this regard is the Union’s common definition of
terrorism and also the agreement to define what a terrorist crime
is and to impose common minimum penalties on perpetrators.50
Another enormously important tool is the new common Euro-
pean arrest warrant, but it will become effective only in 2004.51

Part of this policing effort relates to the uncovering, freezing
and confiscation of terrorists’ financial assets. The Europeans, as
members of the Financial Aid Task Force and by complementing
their internal money-laundering instrument, directive 91/308,
participate in this effort. In addition to this internal work, Euro-
peans must help exert pressure on those Gulf countries that are
still a major source of terrorist financial support and are hesitant
to fulfil promises and obligations to curb that support.52

Preparing to cope with emergencies
As  stated  above,  prevention  will  not  always  be  successful.  It  is
imperative to prepare sufficient capacity to cope with the conse-
quences of attacks. The courageous work of New York’s police and
firefighters is a case in point. The consequences of the collapse of
the Twin Towers would have been unimaginable in a community
with less well organised emergency services.

Some types of emergencies could overwhelm even well pre-
pared response capacities of small, medium or even large states.
This applies to attacks involving weapons of mass destruction or
attacks on targets whose destruction could cause mass casualties,

49. EUROPOL Report, Brussels,
2001, pp. 12-14.

50.  Council  Decision  2002/
475/JI.

51. Council Document 14867/1/
01 REV 1.

52. Jonathan M. Winer and Trifin
J.  Roule,  ‘Fighting  Terrorist  Fi-
nance’, Survival, vol. 44, no. 3, 
Autumn 2002, pp. 87-104.

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such as dams, chemical facilities containing hazardous material
or nuclear power plants. For these contingencies, the preparation
of  the  population,  national  health  systems,  decontamination
services and forces for the enforcement of public order is essential.
These agencies must also be prepared to take in reinforcements
from abroad and integrate them without delay and effectively in
an overall response system. They must also combine military and
civilian assets, as the ability to deal with these threats is spread
across sectors. 

The legal foundations for such transborder and cross-sector
emergency assistance must be laid, and the organisations required
to work together must be well trained for cooperation in the most
difficult circumstances. The recent EU joint exercise to thwart a
BC weapons attack, conducted in southern France, was a promis-
ing beginning, but needs enhancement and elaboration. Likewise,
it is all very well that Britain is preparing its citizens for BC attacks
by issuing specific instructions;53 however, in London, the capital
most likely to be the victim of such an attack, there are at any given
moment a six-figure number of non-British people on the streets,
most of them fellow Europeans. It would make much more sense
in terms of an effective, Europe-wide response capacity to have
common instructions on how to react in an emergency. Other-
wise, the risk will be even greater that scores of humans will be con-
fused, whereas coordinated action could save many lives. 

Maintaining public morale
The terrorists’ aim is to break the will of the polity. A democratic
community’s political will, in the end, rests with the people. Often
overlooked in the theatre of media spectacle over terrorism, the sin-
gle most effective, persistent, and therefore most important coun-
termeasure to the terrorist threat is the determined refusal of the
population to have their everyday lives disrupted, and their courage
to live as normal even in the face of the permanent threat that a hor-
rific incident may take their lives or those of their loved ones. Only
if this attitude of the people can be kept up will the terrorists lose
out. It is for this reason that the war metaphor promoted by the US
president is not a good idea. The metaphor serves to mobilise polit-
ical will and to legitimate quite extraordinary powers for the execu-
tive and, therefore, helps the short-term interests of the powers that
be. But all the same it produces extraordinary uncertainty and anx-
iety and, if ‘the war’ is not won quickly but drags on – which, given

53. Sarah Lyall, ‘Britain to advise
public on surviving gas warfare’,
International Herald Tribune, 16 No-
vember 2002.

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the type of enemy, is unfortunately inevitable – serves to discourage
people from living normal lives. What we need instead is every pos-
sible encouragement for normalcy. It is the preservation of nor-
malcy that kills the momentum of terrorism.54

The most counterproductive move that one can think of, in
this context, is generalised warnings of imminent danger without
any indication as to what the population is to watch out for, and
how it is supposed to protect itself. Yet that is exactly what the
chiefs of intelligence and police services have been providing in
autumn 2002. It is hard to see the point in this, unless it is a general
way of covering themselves in case something horrible happens,
when the heads of agencies can then say ‘we told you so’. Never
mind that ominous warnings without any proposed remedy are
likely to spread panic and anxiety in a population that is, under-
standably, already fairly nervous. Yet spreading panic is exactly
what the terrorists want to achieve. Are we really willing to pay
intelligence officials high salaries to do Osama bin Laden’s work
for him?

Middle- and long-term options

Solving conflicts
Intrastate and international conflicts do not necessarily cause ter-
rorism, and their end does not necessarily terminate it. Yet conflicts
such as the Israeli-Palestinian one, or the struggles over Chechnya
or  Kashmir,  serve  as  reference  points  for  terrorist  propaganda
worldwide  (as  they  imply  double  standards  that  discriminate
against Muslims) and as a breeding ground for recruits for terrorist
organisations among the young on the deprived and disadvan-
taged side in these conflicts. In this sense, solving violent struggles
in a way that would generally be regarded as acceptable and just by
majorities on either side would help, over time, to reduce and even-
tually drain the pool of young adults prone to using violence for
their political (or religio-political) objectives.55

The end to the Afghan civil war (apart from doing away with al-
Qaeda  bases  and  the  power  of  their  Taliban  protectors)  thus
offered the hope that the number of Afghans available for terror-
ist recruitment would shrink considerably, as their energies can
now be redirected to the civilian, productive strands of life.

54. Op. cit. in note 46.

55. Barry R. Posen, ‘The Struggle
against Terrorism: Grand Strat-
egy, Strategy and Tactics’, Interna-
tional Security, vol. 26, no. 3, Winter
2001/02, pp. 39-55.

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The European Union has been involved in conflict solution
and peace building and, therefore, disposes of experiences and
proven instruments in this field.56 It would surpass the brief of
this  paper  to  go  into  this  question  in  more  detail.  Europeans
should be aware that this is a segment of the campaign against ter-
rorism where they should commit themselves with a considerable
effort.

The most important conflict in that regard is the one between
Israel and the Palestinians. It serves as a rallying point for the
whole Muslim world, its Arab part in particular. Thus, it is align-
ing a mobilised population against Israel and the West, the United
States as the visible protector of Israel in particular. The formula
pursued by the Sharon government – first, an end to terrorism,
then negotiations and (maybe) a Palestinian state – negates the
dialectics between the status quo and violence. While understand-
ably putting Israeli security first and foremost, its consequences
undermine  that  very  security.  Without  the  clear  and  credible
prospect of change (most particularly through an end to new set-
tlements and the removal of existing ones such as those in Gaza
and Hebron) the Palestinian population cannot be turned away
from  tolerating,  condoning,  abetting  or  supporting  violent
actions that they view as part of resistance, even though they are in
fact horrible crimes against innocent civilians. 

Europeans  need  to  take  a  clear,  consistent  stand  on  these
issues, not least in their relations with the United States, which is
today the only actor capable of influencing Israel. All the support,
economic as well as military, that a peace process needs, should be
made available. In terms of the long-term campaign against ter-
rorism, a full, visible and credible Western commitment to a last-
ing Middle East peace is certainly the most important step – not
under any delusion that terrorism would stop overnight, but with
the expectation that one of its main sources would dry up in the
long run.

Assistance in building legitimate state authority
Afghanistan was not exactly a ‘failed state’ when it became a serious
problem as a refuge for transnational terrorism. At that time, the
outcome of the civil war appeared largely decided, and the Taliban
controlled more than 90 per cent of the national territory, which is 

56.  For  the  Commission,  see
http://europa.eu.int/comm/ex-
ternal_relations/cfsp/new/ip_01
_560_en.htm.

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certainly more than many recognised governments around the
world. Nevertheless, after the overthrow of the Taliban, building a
new  sovereign  state  with  sufficient  legitimacy  and  an  effective
monopoly of force within Afghan territory became a crucial inter-
national task. It quickly became evident that overcoming the Tal-
iban and al-Qaeda with military means was not enough to elimi-
nate  the  terrorist  menace.  Enduring  support  for  Afghan
state-building will remain a precondition for preventing Afghan
territory from becoming a sanctuary for terrorists again. This will
require a long-term military, political and economic commitment. 
The same is true where state authority is lacking altogether, as
in Somalia. Such places must be closely watched for their procliv-
ity  to  become  safe  harbours  for  new  terrorist  infrastructures.
Many states in sub-Saharan Africa are hardly states at all in the
accepted sense. Many of them have sizeable, alienated populations
and/or Muslim minorities or majorities. Where the gaping vac-
uum of power and authority threatens to attract terrorists, the
international community must be prepared to decide quickly and
decisively on intervention, and, if intervention occurs, to create
stable institutions that grant human and minority rights, develop
practices of good governance and promote growth and public wel-
fare. 

The decision to devolve sovereign authority from a country to
the international community is not one that can be taken by a sin-
gle state. It behoves the legitimate organ of the community itself,
the Security Council, to mandate this fateful type of intervention.
Given its global reach and unlimited will to use violence, transna-
tional terrorism is the incarnation of the ‘threat to peace and secu-
rity’ that it is the Security Council’s mission to counter. In man-
dating this type of action, the international community assumes a
heavy responsibility. The people in the country concerned – suf-
fering as they are in any case – have a right to expect a serious and
long-term follow-up to any short-term military action driven by
concern that terrorists may take over or exploit a situation where
the state is no longer in control.

With  their  particular  interest  in  and  special  relations  with
Africa, Europeans are well placed to make a major contribution to
such state-building endeavours if the need arises. Long-term state-
building, however, is clearly the superior concept in comparison
with pre-emptive or preventive military action. The latter is event-

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focused and a tactical placebo rather than a strategic remedy. In
order to seal off countries from terrorism for good, a long haul,
not short-term activism, is required.

Helping with development: the question of justice
Not every terrorist is poor. Bin Laden, for one, is very rich. But
poverty provides the background for alienation and resentment
and helps terrorists with their recruitment activities. There are con-
siderable misgivings in the developing world about the distribu-
tion of wealth and power in the world. These misgivings concern
the relationship between North and South, but also the fact of mis-
erable governance and distributional injustice within the South
itself. While not an immediate cause of terrorism, this situation,
like certain conflicts as discussed above, make the ground fruitful
for attempts at terrorist recruitment. Stable economic, social and
political environments that create realistic hopes for betterment in
the future and for successful careers for young people are a power-
ful antidote (though not a perfect guarantee) against the tempta-
tions of terrorism.

Resources available for development aid, state-building and
the support of civil society must be definitely enhanced. The devel-
oped world has failed to provide the 0.7 per cent of GNP that it was
to devote to development aid for more than two decades, and the
country  spending  most  lavishly  on  military  investment,  the
United States, has the poorest record among the industrialised
countries. The promise given in Monterey in 2002 to enhance US
development spending by $5 billion, though highly welcome, does
not really change the imbalance significantly. The EU, in contrast,
has made development policy a centrepiece of its external rela-
tions from the outset. It is a true strength of the Union, even if
some member states could do better in enhancing the funds avail-
able for development assistance. We have to develop the under-
standing that these are investments for our own security as well as
help for the welfare of far-away people. The more countries in the
world are on the path of stable and sustainable development, the
less people will be desperate enough, or so alienated and frus-
trated, that terrorism presents an irresistible temptation. Thus,
while calls for enhanced defence spending are heard loudly, the
relationship between defence and development spending has to
change rather in favour of the latter.

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Cultural dialogue
Lastly, engaging seriously across cultural boundaries is an impor-
tant ingredient in the fight against terrorism.57 This transcultural
dialogue is essential for Europe, as it of course contains citizens of
different  cultural  origin  who  are  supposed  to  live  and  work
together peacefully anyway. That dialogue can have many facets.
One very valuable approach is the Barcelona process, which links
the European Union with its Mediterranean neighbours.58

Governmental activities in this field must certainly be sup-
ported by a strong non-governmental pillar. Local communities,
non-governmental organisations, the churches and Islamic com-
munities all have roles to play in it. Initiatives like that taken by the
Turkish government or the Pope in the aftermath of 11 September
2001 are certainly very useful steps. Long-term projects like the
one to establish the elements of a transcultural ‘world ethos’59

also serve a useful purpose: The definition of a common basis
of values that is the heritage of all cultures and religions goes a
long way towards defusing the hermetic boundaries that funda-
mentalists want to draw around themselves and serves the exclu-
sionary notion of ‘we against them’ that is always part of the ter-
rorist rhetoric about the world. At the same time, understanding
and respecting differences where they exist is equally important.
Learning about the other culture is a good start in self-immunisa-
tion against the terrorist poison.

Conclusion

There is no panacea against the threat of terrorism as it appeared
before the world on 11 September 2001. The counter-strategy calls
for a complex and expensive set of instruments, as the causes of ter-
rorism are themselves deep-rooted and complex. All elements in
this set are essential. None is dispensable. Only taken together will
they result in a useful tool with which the threat can be tackled on
all fronts. The risk involved in apparently quick and easy (military)
technological solutions is obvious; so is the almost instinctive drive
to enhance the legal authority of intelligence and police services at
the cost of civil liberties and with only vague prospects of success in
countering terrorism. Long-term aspects of anti-terrorist strate-
gies always run the danger of being overlooked and underfinanced, 

57.  Mohammed  Abu-Nimer,
‘Conflict Resolution, Culture, and
Religion:  Toward  a  Training
Model  of  Interreligious  Peace-
building’, Journal of Peace Research,
vol. 38, no. 6, November 2001,
pp. 685-704.

58.  Dorothée  Schmid,  ‘Opti-
miser le processus de Barcelone’,
Occasional Paper 40 (Paris: EU In-
stitute  for  Security  Studies,
2002).

59. Hans Küng, 1993: Projekt Wel-
tethos (München: R. Piper Verlag,
1998).

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with regrettable consequences. Given the present American incli-
nation to bet on the more traditional instruments of enhancement
of military and state power, the Europeans would be well advised to
keep the broader strategic picture in mind.

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WMD proliferation

3

The second, not completely unrelated security problem of our time
is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As for the
structure and capabilities of terrorists, much of our knowledge
about the capabilities of states trying to acquire weapons of mass
destruction remains within the realm of speculation. Proliferators
rarely come out in the open; the recent revelations by North Korea
itself (unclear as they are as of today) remain an exception. The sig-
natures of activities vary from nuclear reprocessing and certain
types of uranium enrichment (which is highly visible due to heat
emissions) to biological agent growing (very invisible due to small
space and negligible energy needs). And it is erroneous to believe
that what governments know from their services gives them much
more certainty about the real capabilities than ordinary mortals
can learn from open sources; the difference in knowledge is relative,
not absolute most of the time and in most cases. 

It is also necessary to acknowledge that threat analysis of WMD
cannot be based only on an assessment of capabilities. That assess-
ment is essential, certainly, but it must be combined with inten-
tion and strategy. French or British nuclear weapons are not a con-
cern for their European partners, as the relations are amicable and
there is no intention in Paris or London to threaten nuclear use
against any European country. In order to understand the risk
entailed  in  proliferators’  WMD  we  must  understand  whether
there are circumstances and objectives that might induce these
countries to employ their weapons against Europe. The third ele-
ment in threat assessment is remedies. A threat against which
instruments are available is less horrible than one that cannot be
countered.

The following assessments are based on a detailed comparison
and scrutiny of recent reports on the status of proliferation of
WMD and their means of delivery, with the emphasis on Iraq.

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Proliferation in far-away regions: North Korea, South Asia

All WMD proliferation is worrying. It is far from certain to result in
stable deterrence relationships and much more likely to create risks
of instability in the region where it occurs.60 In addition, it presents
a serious challenge to the global regimes designed to curb or elimi-
nate the threat of WMD. Proliferation will therefore always tend to
diminish European security, just as regional stability and robust
global regimes contribute to it. In addition, since the United States
with its global interests is a significant strategic actor in all regions
of the world, European interests will always be concerned if WMD
are used or their use is threatened in far-away regions, because the
political repercussions working their way through US policies and
politics will never be negligible. Nevertheless, in a narrow sense
only  proliferation  that  relates  directly  to  European  territory,
because of existing quarrels between European countries and the
proliferators and by geographical proximity – measured in terms of
the range of the means of delivery available to proliferators – will be
discussed as a threat to European security. It should be noted that
proliferation in general is detrimental to European interests in a
political sense, but only a segment of proliferation events amount
to a threat to Europe.

It is for this reason that the virulent proliferation in North
Korea can be left out for the time being. Europeans have not been
involved in the peninsula except through their efforts in recent
years to help diplomatically with détente, notably through estab-
lishing diplomatic relations with Pyongyang. Due to distance and
lack of geopolitical interest, there are no political quarrels pitting
North Korea against Europe. North Korea’s chemical weapons, its
presumed efforts to develop a biological weapons capability and
its admitted nuclear programme – including recently admitted
uranium enrichment activities – do not concern Europe directly.
They relate to the country’s regional situation and are, in the first
place, a deterrent as well as a bargaining chip vis-à-vis the United
States. Nevertheless, the Taepo Dong II, a ballistic missile under
development with an estimated range of up to 10,000 km, would
be of interest to Europe, as it opens up the prospect of bringing
Europe within reach. The missile, not yet flight-tested, could be
ready for deployment late in the current decade.61 North Korea 
remains a headache because of its policy of gaining hard currency 

60. Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth
N.  Waltz,  The  spread  of  nuclear
weapons: a debate (New York: Nor-
ton, 1995).

61.  US  National  Intelligence
Council, Foreign Missile Develop-
ment  and  the  Ballistic  Missile
Threat Through 2015, Washing-
ton, DC, 2001, pp. 4, 9; Carnegie
Endowment  for  International
Peace, Carnegie Analysis, ‘Chemi-
cal and Biological Weapons in the
Middle East’, www.ceip.org/files/
nonrolif/templates/article.asp?N
ewsID=2669;  16  April  2002, 
pp. 241-54.

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through the transfer of missiles and missile technology, but it is
not a direct threat.

The same is true for South Asia.62 Europe is certainly con-
cerned that the tense Indian-Pakistani relationship could escalate
out of control and lead to the world’s first nuclear exchange ever.
But by the same token, Europe entertains viable relations with
both countries. India, the state with the greater potential techni-
cally and in nuclear and missile terms, is an economic partner of
growing importance. Relations with Pakistan are of less signifi-
cance economically, but are far from being adversarial: like the
United States, Europe has a strong interest in Pakistan’s stable
development as the only long-term hope of reducing the country’s
unfortunate role as a seedbed of radical, militant and violence-
prone Islamist radicalism.

While India’s nuclear weapons have a global significance in the
eyes of the Indian élite, affording the country the status of world
power, strategically both India and Pakistan think and adopt pos-
tures in regional terms, within the Chinese-Indian-Pakistani tri-
angle of deterrence. The range of missiles remains confined to this
zone, and Pakistan in particular has a long way to go before its mis-
sile range can be extended to the point that it can threaten Euro-
pean territory. Its longest-range missile, the Shaheen II (possibly
2,500 km), only recently on the drawing board, would not even
reach the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.63 So even if Pak-
istan should fall into the hands of the radicals – a sobering and
improbable, but not impossible, contingency – there would be no
immediate  military  threat  to  Europe.  Indian  and  Pakistani
nuclear and missile proliferation is a serious political, but not mil-
itary security concern for the Europeans. However, it goes without
saying that a nuclear exchange in South Asia would strongly affect
the European Union, since it would change the parameters of
world politics

Minor concerns, major proximity: Israel, Egypt, Libya and
Syria

Israel

Israel is rarely included in the ‘list of proliferators’, and in official
American documents on the problem of proliferation it is conspic-
uously absent. Yet it is by far the most capable country, in terms of

62. Andrew C. Winner and Toshi
Yoshihara, ‘India and Pakistan at
the Edge’, Survival, vol. 44, no. 3,
Autumn 2002, pp. 69-86.

63. US Department of Defense,
Office of the Secretary of Defense,
‘Proliferation:  Threat  and  Re-
sponse’, Washington, DC, 2001,
p. 29; US National Intelligence
Council, op. cit. in note 61, pp. 13,
14; Carnegie Endowment, op. cit.
in note 61, pp. 207-20.

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non-conventional weapons and their delivery, in the Middle East,
in addition to its impressive conventional superiority. Israel is cred-
ited with a nuclear force of between 100 and 200 warheads, aircraft
capable of carrying them (F-15l), and two types of ballistic missiles,
the Jericho I (500 km range) and the Jericho II (1,500-2,000 km), sec-
ond in range only to the largely useless, inaccurate and obsolete
CSS-3 missile acquired by Saudi Arabia from China during the
1980s. Israel is believed to have some chemical weapons capability
and at least to conduct intense research on biological weapons in
its Biological Research Institute at Nes Tzyona.64

While the Jericho II could reach much of southern and central
Europe, Israel is not seen as a threat to Europeans. Relations are at
a minimum correct, mostly good, and to some of the EU member
states (Netherlands, Germany) very close. The EU entertains a
free-trade zone with Israel, and economic, political and cultural
contacts are frequent and intense. 

Although Europeans genuinely care for Israel’s security, they
tend to be much more critical than the United States of Israeli
policies  towards  the  Palestinians.  In  particular,  occupation  of
Gaza and the West Bank and the operations of the IDF in the occu-
pied territories are openly and frequently criticised. For there is the
feeling that, while Israeli WMD do not affect European security,
they have a negative bearing on it, if only indirectly. In upholding
an imbalance that is seen as threatening or unbearable, for reasons
of status, by its Arab neighbours, and in combination with the
unresolved issue of continued occupation of Arab territory, these
weapons and their delivery means create a stimulus on the Arab
side to catch up. In other words, the weapons that Israel believes it
needs  to  guarantee  its  own  security  lead  to  the  search  for  an
equaliser in certain Arab countries that, in turn, tends to diminish
Israeli security and has an impact on European security as well.

Egypt

Egypt was the first Middle East state to use chemical weapons (dur-
ing the Yemen war in the 1960s) and is today credited with a CW
capability  and  BW  research.  Consideration  of  a  nuclear  pro-
gramme was brought to an end with the death of President Nasser.
However, Egypt has pursued quite ambitious missile programmes,
but is still left with the Scud only.65

64. Carnegie Endowment, op. cit.
in note 61, pp. 221-36.

65. Dany Shoham, ‘Chemical and
Biological  Weapons  in  Egypt’,
Nonproliferation  Review, Spring/
Summer 1998, pp. 48-58.

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Egypt, which is at present firmly connected to the Western
world, is not seen as a threat in Europe, but rather as a very impor-
tant partner in the Arab world. If anything, there is concern about
the economic and social viability of this big country. However,
there is also confidence that Egypt, which was host to quite violent
and dangerous terrorist Islamists in the 1980s, will be capable of
withstanding this menace, because of the opposition of a majority
of the population to extremism and the authorities’ ability to keep
the threat in check, as they did after the assassination of President
Sadat. It was only after the failure to turn the power structure in
Egypt upside down that extremists like Omar Abd al-Rahman
turned against the United States as direct target and that Ayman
al-Zawahiri joined Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda.66

Libya

The proliferating country closest to Europe is Libya. At the end of
the 1980s, there was great concern about the rapid development of
chemical weapons in the wake of revelations that a small German
chemical engineering company had installed a turnkey chemical
weapons plant at Rabta. Moreover, Colonel Gadaffi once (1986)
ordered the firing of Scud missiles at the Italian island of Lampe-
dusa and in the direction of Crete, but the missiles fell short of their
targets  –  an  event  ironically  symbolising  the  overall  futility  of
Libya’s WMD efforts.67 Libya is reported to have used chemical
weapons on a small scale against hostile forces in Chad. Its chemi-
cal weapons development apparently slowed down considerably
during the 1990s, leaving Tripoli with a quantity of chemical war-
fare  agent  at  most  in  the  low  hundreds  of  tonnes.  Biological
weapons research and development is probably under way, but no
weaponised agent is believed to exist. No significant progress has
been reported on the nuclear programme since the 1970s; it is
assumed to be far from a military capability. 

Missile acquisition has been confined to the Scud B, which is
capable in ‘best’ circumstances of reaching some of Italy’s Liparian
islands  and  the  western  part  of  Crete,  but  the  1986  incident
showed that, for technical reasons, the threat is lower than the
measurement  of  range  alone  would  suggest.  Libya  has  made
strong efforts to develop its own missile production capability,
and has probably sought North Korean assistance and possibly 

66. Steven Simon and Daniel Ben-
jamin, ‘The Terror’, Survival, vol. 4,
no. 4, Winter 2001, pp. 5-18.

67. For the following, US DoD, op.
cit.  in  note  63,  pp.  45-49;
Carnegie Endowment, op. cit. in
note 61, pp. 305-12.

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negotiated on the delivery of the 1,300 km range Nodong missile,
but so far, apparently, to no avail.68 In addition, relations with
European countries, notably Libya’s immediate neighbour Italy,
have improved in recent years. To a large degree that has become
possible through Colonel Gadaffi’s clear attempts to reintegrate
into the international community, a positive long-term effect of
the economic sanctions that were imposed on Libya in the wake of
the Lockerbie bombing. There is thus no conflict that could possi-
bly stimulate Gadaffi to consider the use of chemical weapons
against Europe, even if he had the capability to deliver them.

Syria

Syria is credited with an extensive chemical weapons programme.
The core of it appears to be the air- and missile-delivered nerve
agent sarin. A development programme for the even more lethal VX
is reportedly under way. Syria’s missiles (Scud B and C) cannot reach
present EU territory, but can reach Cyprus, which is due to become
a member in May 2004. Syria is not known to be working on longer-
range means of delivery. The country is believed to look into bio-
logical agents, but is not reported to have produced or weaponised
such agents. No nuclear weapons programme is under way, only
relatively small-scale general nuclear research, and the facilities are
subject to IAEA safeguards.69

Its security concerns relate to Israel: Damascus wants to pre-
serve a counter-deterrent capability against Israel’s conventional
superiority  and  nuclear  capability.  It  believes  it  needs  such  a
counter-deterrent in the light of the Syrian capital’s location –
some  30  km  from  the  present  Israeli  positions  on  the  Golan
Heights – and the fact that, in occupying these heights, Israel is
dominating the high ground above the easily negotiable Syrian
lowland.

There are no political quarrels between Syria and Europe now
that Syria appears to have ended its support for terrorist groups
operating on European soil, though Europe would welcome a
more forthcoming Syrian attitude to a Middle East settlement. If
Bashar al-Assad continues with his so far very tentative and timid
programme of economic overture, the EU will certainly become
Syria’s  major  partner,  further  reducing  tensions  and  creating
opportunities for developing viable relations.

68.  US  National  Intelligence
Council, op. cit. in note 61, p. 12.

69. US DoD, op. cit. in note 63,
pp. 42-5; US National Intelligence
Council, op. cit. in note 61, pp. 12,
13.

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Of medium concern: Iran

Among the countries of the Middle East, Iran is the other member
of President Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ besides Iraq. From a European per-
spective, Iran’s stance is much more ambivalent, with dangerous
traits on the one hand, but positive trends and thus opportunities
for openings on the other hand. This ambivalence derives from the
dual (both religious and secular) structure of Iranian politics: con-
servative, partly fanatic clerical elements under the highest reli-
gious authority, Ayatollah Khamenei, command a monopoly of
force, the military, the ‘guardians of the revolution’ (Pasdaran), a
sort of élite militia, the secret service and the justice system, and
also function as a sort of constitutional court (judging from a
purely theological perspective) while the remaining executive func-
tions and the legislative rest with the reformers under President
Khatami.

Iran developed a chemical weapons capability during the war
with Iraq in response to Iraqi chemical attacks to which the inter-
national community reacted weakly, if at all, and did not offer pro-
tection. It reportedly used chemical weapons on a small scale in
the latter part of that war. Since then, chemical agent production
has probably been expanded. Its chemical technology has appar-
ently so far permitted the production of only relatively old-fash-
ioned agents – blister, blood and choking agents. Research and
development of nerve agents and biological weapons research are
reportedly continuing, though large-scale agent production and
weaponisation  have  not  been  reported.  Iran  has  declared  past
chemical weapons activities, but has stated that they were termi-
nated at the end of the Iran-Iraq war and that the related equip-
ment has been dismantled or ‘civilianised’. Despite suspicion and
public declarations about Iran’s chemical weapons, no country
has asked for a challenge inspection by the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons under the terms of the Chemi-
cal Weapons Convention.

Iran’s nuclear activities have given rise to much speculation.
American and Israeli sources are convinced that Iran has an active
nuclear weapons programme. Other services from time to time
report on suspect procurement activities – for example attempts
to acquire enrichment technology – that fit badly with the present
stage of development of Iran’s civilian nuclear energy economy.
However, one has to note that a powerful dual-use programme was

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already active under the Shah. After it was dismantled in the early
Khomenei years, it was brought back on stream in the mid-1980s,
most likely in response to intelligence that Iran might have gath-
ered about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons efforts. That is
now some seventeen to eighteen years ago, and it is quite astonish-
ing, given that Iran did not start from scratch in 1984 or 1985, that
Iran is not closer to having a nuclear weapon than the standard
assessment of ‘several years away’. This does not speak for a crash
programme of Iraqi dimensions, even if the very broad approach
to the whole fuel cycle that Iran is pursuing on the basis of a very
rudimentary civilian programme obviously poses more questions
than Iranian authorities are ready or capable to answer. More
recently,  evidence  has  mounted  –  not  least  through  contacts
between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency – that
construction of significant fuel cycle facilities, namely uranium
enrichment and heavy water production, is under way. Obviously,
these facilities are still a long way from reaching operational readi-
ness, but this step up the proliferation ladder is a sobering indica-
tion (as are developments in North Korea) that the confronta-
tional  strategy  of  the  ‘axis  of  evil’  philosophy  can  have  rather
unintended results.

The missile programme pursued by Tehran is probably the
most worrying part of the pattern of its proliferation activities.
Iran has a number of Scud Bs and Scud Cs, and has developed
national production capacities with North Korean, Chinese, and
Russian assistance. It has flight-tested the Shahab-3, a missile with
a range of 1,300 km that can reach western Turkey and all of
Cyprus. Two other projects, the Shahab-4 and -5 are presumably
still only at the blueprint stage and might reach the test stage as
space launch vehicles (SLV) rather than as ballistic missiles, but, if
fully developed and deployed a decade or more from now, could
reach deep into Europe. In terms of strategic objectives, these
development plans are a mystery if Iran’s security interests are
confined to its regional concerns. 70

This is something that has to be resolved between the EU and
Tehran before it becomes a serious security concern, since the
extension of missile range without a sensible strategic rationale
cannot be simply noted without some response. Europe has not
joined the total technology embargo against Iran imposed by the
United  States.  It  observes  particular  precautions  in  licensing
exports  and  technology  transfers  to  the  Islamic  Republic  to 

70. US DoD, op. cit. in note 63,
pp. 34-8; US National Intelligence
Council, op. cit. in note 61, pp. 9,
10; Carnegie Endowment, op. cit.
in note 61,  pp. 255-70.

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prevent WMD-capable dual-use technologies from being trans-
ferred. Nevertheless, Europe has become an important economic
partner for this country whose economy is still in dire straits due
to bad mistakes made by the clerics on ideological grounds and for
the self-interest of their huge economic conglomerates that figure
as Islamic foundations.71 Simultaneously, Europe has kept up a
‘critical dialogue’ with Tehran, on the conviction that, in the pre-
carious balance between the two elements of Iran’s dual-rule sys-
tem, maintaining contacts and engaging in permanent dialogue
and cooperation will, over the long run, strengthen the hands of
the reformers. This policy should be further pursued and indeed
reinvigorated.

A special case: Iraq

Much has been written on Iraq’s WMD capabilities recently. There
is no need here to repeat the stories of WMD production before the
Gulf  War,  the  revelations  by  UNSCOM  and  the  IAEA  and  the
aprupt end of inspections in 1998. The focus here is an assessment
of where Iraq possibly stands today, after the 27 January 2003
report by Hans Blix and Mohamed al-Baradei, what intentions and
strategies the Iraqi leadership may have with regard to the weapons
and materials at hand, and how this might pose risks and threats to
Europe.

Iraq’s nuclear programme was largely dismantled by the IAEA.
What remained were some dual-use items and the skills of the sci-
entific and engineering teams, including knowledge on the design
of an implosive device. Since 1998, Iraq has tried to revive its pro-
gramme. There have been a number of attempts to buy equipment
and material needed for centrifuge enrichment.72 The uniform
assessment of the various reports is that Iraq certainly does not yet
have the means to set up a centrifuge enrichment facility large
enough to enrich uranium to weapons grade, that it will face con-
siderable difficulties in producing the necessary parts and equip-
ment by itself, that the international embargo creates significant
obstacles to procuring the equipment abroad, and that even with
equipment in place Iraq may still face long delays before the task of
arranging centrifuge cascades for high enrichment is mastered – if
ever. As a consequence, all reports reviewed for this study set the
date of an Iraqi nuclear weapon based on indigenously enriched

71. Ray Takeyh, ‘Re-imagining US-
Iranian Relations’, Survival, vol.
44, no. 3, Autumn 2002, pp. 23-
36.

72.  British  Government,  Iraq’s
Weapons of Mass Destruction - The As-
sessment of the British Government
(London: The Stationery Office,
September  2002),  p.  26,
www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page61
17.asp.

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uranium at five years or more. Iraq has also reportedly tried to
acquire a huge quantity of uranium abroad (in ‘Africa’).73 This is a
certain  mystery,  as  Iraq  is  known  to  have  domestic  uranium
resources that have been extracted before; it is unclear for what
purpose Iraq would try to buy – with the risk of detection – natural
uranium abroad rather than work through its own production
line. The reason might be that Iraq no longer possesses viable
purification and conversion facilities (which would extend the
lead times even more).74 The documents that inspectors seized in
the home of a nuclear scientist reportedly date back to the 1980s
and concern laser isotope enrichment. It had been known from
previous inspection work that Iraq had worked on that technol-
ogy but given it up because of its complexity. Since none of the
countries with a more advanced nuclear establishment – military
or civilian – has developed that technology to full technical matu-
rity, it is more than unlikely that Iraq, in the difficult circum-
stances of the 1990s, could have made significant progress.

The situation is, of course, different if we assume that Iraq
could acquire weapons-grade material directly from abroad. In
that case, Iraq would still have to work this material into shape,
and to arrange the (possibly prefabricated) conventional parts and
the physics package into a viable device with sufficient precision.
It should be noted that experience in the nuclear sector shows that
Iraq has had great difficulties both with precision production and
with  complex  engineering  tasks,  and  was  much  better  at  the
cruder technologies such as electromagnetic isotope separation
(EMIS). The studies set the lead time for a bomb built with fissile
material  acquired  abroad  at  ‘several  months’,75 ‘a  year’76 and
‘between one and two years’77 (British intelligence). The differ-
ence, though it does not appear huge, is nevertheless interesting. It
appears that British intelligence (whose report appears generally
to be the most accurate and based on more recent human intelli-
gence)  foresees  more  technical  difficulties  and,  consequently,
more time needed to deal with flaws than its American counter-
parts or non-governmental experts.

The question, then, is how great is the probability that enough
material can be acquired through direct purchase? While continu-
ing difficulties in the nuclear sector of the former Soviet Union
cannot be denied, reports on illegal trafficking of nuclear material
have become fewer and fewer over the years, no significant quanti-
ties  of  weapons-grade  material  have  been  intercepted  and  no 

73. Ibid., p. 25.

74. ‘Iraq’s Weapons Of Mass De-
struction:  A  Net  Assessment’,
Strategic Dossier (London: Interna-
tional Institute for Strategic Stud-
ies, 2002), pp. 25, 26; op. cit. in
note 72, pp. 24-27.

75. IISS, op. cit. in note 74, p. 26;
Joseph  Cirincione  with  Jon  B.
Wolfsthal and Miriam Rajkumar,
Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruc-
tion, Carnegie Endowment, op.
cit. in note 61, p. 271.

76. Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruc-
tion Programs (Washington, DC:
Central 
Intelligence  Agency,
2002),  p.  2;  www.cia.gov/cia/
publications/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oc
t.2002.htm.

77. British Government, op. cit. in
note 72, p. 27.

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indication that significant quantities of this material are missing
has been made public. Efforts to improve physical security and
material accountancy in the former Soviet Union have been made
for a decade and have recently been accelerated and strengthened
through the G-8’s ‘10 plus 10 over 10’ programme. The likelihood
that Iraq might acquire material from this source is thus consid-
ered small.

Other suppliers could be Pakistan or North Korea. However,
Pakistan possesses no large reserves of the precious material and is
keen not to fall too far behind in terms of warhead numbers com-
pared with more resourceful India. Pakistan is working with the
United States on combating terrorism, has a US military presence
at home and is thus unlikely to provide the most dangerous mate-
rial to one of America’s main enemies. North Korea appears to be
in the course of developing enrichment and, probably, has too
small quantities of the material to pose as an exporter. It is also
remarkable that North Korea, a lavish distributor of missiles and
missile technology, is not known to have sold samples from its
sizeable chemical weapons stockpile to other countries. Again, it
appears unlikely that Pyongyang would run the risk of driving the
United  States  to  the  point  where  military  action  could  well
become a serious probability. The conclusion, then, is that it is
unlikely that Iraq would be a nuclear weapon state in the next five
years, and possibly much later.

The situation in the case of chemical weapons is quite different.
Here, Iraq is very experienced in production, weaponisation and
use. Iraq has never fully accounted for its stockpile of warfighting
agents,  precursors  or  weapons.  Although  its  production  and
weaponisation infrastructure has been largely dismantled, the
country could still either use clandestine stocks or produce new
agents in widely available dual-use facilities that had a civilian mis-
sion at the time UNSCOM was checking the country. It is also
noteworthy  that  Iraq  has  reconstructed  several  building  com-
plexes at former chemical weapon sites; how these facilities are
actually used is not known. 

As a consequence, it is highly likely that Iraq still possesses a
stockpile of several hundred tonnes of deadly chemicals, includ-
ing, at the more ‘conventional’ end, mustard gas, and at the more
dangerous and lethal end of its capabilities, VX and sarin, two
highly effective nerve agents. Indications that Iraq has recently
tried to import huge quantities of atropin, the vaccine used to

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3

counter the impact of these nerve agents, are an indication that
this might indeed be the case.78 Iraq would have to use artillery,
aspirated delivery vehicles or short-range missiles for most of this
stockpile, with very few missiles of medium range left (see below).
Iraq could employ gravity bombs or spray canisters mounted on
aircraft. Its missile warheads had impact fuses which would not be
very effective in dispersing chemical agent over a wide area. This
capability is likely to be of very limited use against well-prepared,
trained troops and, while being a deadly threat to civilians in the
area of impact, is not likely to cause mass casualties even if used
against cities in the neighbourhood. It is not known whether Iraq
has improved its warhead designs to overcome the flaws of fuse on
impact, which tend to limit the area of lethality and to lose most of
the agent before it can deploy its deadly effects. 79

As a conclusion, Iraq could use chemical weapons on the bat-
tlefield – with very limited impact – and as a terror weapon against
civilians in neighbouring countries – with a somewhat larger but
no real mass destruction effect.80

By far the most significant use would be delivery by missile
against Israel, with the strategic purpose of provoking a (nuclear)
overreaction, with the consequence that Arab allies of the United
States might be forced to change sides in an ongoing armed con-
flict.81

The  most  worrying  part  of  Iraq’s  arsenal  is  its  biological
weapons. Iraq’s BW programme was much further developed that
expected by the allies in the Gulf War. Anthrax, aflatoxin and bot-
ulinum, had been weaponised (as with chemical weapons, into
warheads, bombs, spray canisters and artillery shells) and were
deployable and usable (though, because of their relatively primi-
tive technology, their impact would have been most likely limited).
BW  remained  the  most  opaque  part  of  Baghdad’s  WMD  pro-
grammes even after UNSCOM’s best efforts to discover them.
Huge  stocks  of  growth  material  –  several  thousand  litres  –
remained unaccounted for, and intensive deception activities by
Iraqi authorities reinforced the suspicion that there was much
more than met the eye. Since signatures of BW activities are also
hard to identify, the uncertainties are enormous. Since the people
behind the programme are still there, we must assume that activi-
ties have continued. Facilities are there to conduct work, even
though dedicated BW sites have been dismantled. As in the case of
CW,  some  reconstruction  on  sites  formerly  devoted  to  BW 

78. New York Times, 12 November
2002.

79. IISS, op. cit. in note 74, p. 53;
British Government, op. cit. in
note 72, pp. 18-24; Anthony H.
Cordesman, If We Fight Iraq: Iraq
and Its Weapons of Mass Destruction
(Washington,  DC:  Center  for
Strategic and International Stud-
ies, 2002), p. 13.

80. IISS, op. cit. in note 74, p. 54.

81. Cordesman, op. cit. in note
79, p. 3.

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activities has been observed.82 The estimates of present capabili-
ties necessarily give a very broad range of existing BW assets. They
reportedly contain material produced before UNSCOM’s revela-
tions  and  new  agents  possibly  developed  and  produced  after
1998.83

Among the important uncertainties is whether Iraq managed
to develop the skill of producing dry instead of wet agents after
1991. At the time of the Gulf War Iraqi weapon makers had mas-
tered only the more primitive technique, which drastically reduces
efficiency, survivability and lethality of BW agents. UNSCOM dis-
covered, however, that Iraq had been working on drying technol-
ogy, and during the period since inspections ended Iraqi scientists
might have made progress, but this is unconfirmed speculation.84
Among  the  innovations  reported  by  intelligence  since
UNSCOM stopped operating are mobile BW laboratories, appar-
ently capable of producing a certain amount of agent, though it is
unclear if and how this might be weaponised. British intelligence
appears to be convinced that such ‘rolling facilities’ – vans with
laboratory equipment – exist in Iraq.85 Such facilities could help
Iraq to produce agents even during hostilities, moving the labora-
tories from place to place to escape destruction, in the expectation
that their movements would be concealed by the ‘background
noise’ of ‘normal wartime traffic’. 

Possibly the most ominous and threatening possibility is the
possession by Iraq of smallpox agent. In contrast to the other BW
assets Iraq is believed to have, smallpox is (highly) contagious and
– when moved into foreign countries – could quickly cause the ter-
rible spread of this highly lethal disease. 86

BW delivery would be along the same lines as CW. With con-
ventional means of delivery, the possibility of causing mass fatali-
ties appears to be very limited.87 However, in contrast to CW, bio-
logical agents could be taken abroad, and applied with fairly lethal
impact by individuals or small groups. In particular, an infectious
agent such as smallpox, which spreads in the host population,
offers the prospect of mass casualties. As a deterrent of last resort,
or as an instrument of post-mortem revenge, this possibility must
be taken seriously.88

For a region like Europe that is at some distance from the
source of risk, means of delivery are of as much interest as the
weapons themselves.89 Given the dismal state of Iraq’s air force
and its lack of long-range bombers, the most interesting question

82. CIA, op. cit. in note 76, p. 14.

83. For various assessments see
IISS, op. cit. in note 74, pp. 39,40;
British Government, op. cit. in
note 72, pp. 21, 22; CIA, op. cit. in
note 76, pp. 11-15.

84. IISS, op. cit. in note 74, p. 40;
Cordesman, op. cit. in note 79,
p. 13.

85. British Government, op. cit. in
note 72, pp. 18, 22.

86. IISS, op. cit. in note 74, p. 39.

87. Ibid., p. 29.

88. Ibid., p. 40.

89.  I  assume  that  Iraq,  having
never tested a nuclear, boosted or
thermonuclear device, is not ca-
pable  of  making  small  nuclear
weapons (‘suitcase bombs’) that
can be delivered clandestinely by
individuals.

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here is missile capabilities. Iraq’s missile programme was among
the most active in developing countries, its indigenous develop-
ment and production capabilities were impressive, and the mili-
tary leadership is very experienced in its use due to many launches
in both the Iran-Iraq and Gulf Wars. 

Iraq had managed to extend the range of the product of origin,
the Scud-D missile it obtained from the former Soviet Union, from
300 to ca. 650 km – the renamed Al-Hussein missile, which was used
in the Gulf War – with some drop in payload. It did not succeed in
extending it further to around 950 km. The Al-Abbas was once
flight-tested, but never deployed because of its poor performance.
And even the Al-Hussein showed frame instability during flight,
which led to the break-up of many of the missiles launched before
impact but provided an unintentional method to escape anti-mis-
sile defence, as the spiralling flight paths of the missiles did not
correspond to precisely calculable ballistic trajectories and made it
very difficult for the guidance electronics of interceptors to accu-
rately target the incoming device.

Since the Gulf War, Iraq is reported to have been working not
only on extension of the range of its short-range missiles (a range
of 150 km was permitted under Resolution 687), but also on an
intermediate-range  missile  of  ca.  1,200  km,  which  would  be
enough to reach Cyprus and possibly Crete. A new, larger test
stand for engines has been installed;90 however, this points to a rel-
atively early stage in missile development and, of course, tells us
nothing about whether the in-flight stability problem has in any
way  been  successfully  tackled.  It  is  thus  safe  to  conclude  –  as
reports do – that Iraq will not in the near future have a missile with
a range, payload and accuracy significantly better than the Al-Hus-
sein. British intelligence puts 2007 as the earliest date (under UN
sanctions) by which such a missile could be produced.91 US intel-
ligence estimates deem it unlikely that Iraq could deploy a long-
range missile before 2015 without significant external support
and with UN sanctions in place.92

There  remains  the  need  to  estimate  how  many  Al-Husseins
might  still  be  around.  Estimates  vary  between  one  dozen,93
twenty,94 twenty-five95 and three dozen. In addition to specula-
tion on numbers, it is not at all clear how well they have been main-
tained (although Iraq does have maintenance skills) and whether
any, and if so how many, are still usable. However, it would be
imprudent to hope that all of the Al-Husseins are non-operational

90. British Government, op. cit. in
note 72, p. 29; CIA, op. cit. in note
76, p. 17.

91.  British  Government,  ibid.,
p. 27.

92. IISS, op. cit. in note 74, p. 66;
US National Intelligence Council,
op. cit. in note 61, pp. 11,12.

93. IISS, ibid.,  p. 66.

94. British Government, op. cit. in
note 72, p. 27.

95. Carnegie Endowment, op. cit.
in note 61, p. 272.

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and that some would fail to deliver their deadly payload on target.
Iraq has also been developing unmanned aerial vehicles capable of
spraying CW and BW agents, but because of constraints on range
these appear to be less threatening to Europe.96

An assessment of the threat to Europe from this sketchy analy-
sis, which was confirmed without new insights by US Secretary of
State Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN Security Council on
27 January 2003, would look like this: Iraq is presently and for the
foreseeable future not capable of posing a military WMD threat to
the Union. The possible exception could be parts of Crete, but the
question is whether Iraq would be capable of launching a success-
ful and accurate WMD strike over this large distance, and whether
its intermediate-range missile project will ever bear fruit. As time
goes by, and if and when Iraq obtains consistent and continued
foreign assistance in its missile project, it might be capable of
extending the range of its means of delivery to finally reach major
parts of Europe. That point is distant, possibly well into the next
decade. 

This conclusion provides no grounds for complacency. Sad-
dam Hussein has proven many times over his determination not
to give up on weapons of mass destruction and their means of
delivery. The history of deception, intimidation, lies and physical
harassment of UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors speaks for itself.
On several occasions, only the threat of force made him concede.97
His strategy was to hide as many elements of the programmes as
possible, to keep the teams of experts together and employ them in
related civilian or dual-use occupations in order to be ready to
reconstitute prohibited activities whenever possible. While his
recent agreement to admit new inspections with an even more
intrusive mandate is welcome, we must expect him to play the old
game again if and when he believes that international attention
(that of the United States in particular) is diverted to other issues.
Indeed, the inspectors’ report of 27 January 2003 confirmed that
Iraq, while more forthcoming than in 1998, still refrained from
full  and  comprehensive  cooperation.  The  timely  12,000-page
report submitted in December 2002 failed to answer the questions
left open when UNSCOM had to quit Iraq. While the inspectors,
despite intelligence leads provided by the United States and the 

96. CIA, op. cit. in note 76, p. 20.

97.  IISS,  op.  cit.  in  note  74, 
pp. 5-9.

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United Kingdom, did not find anything dramatic, Iraq remains in 
breach of Security Council Resolutions 687 and 715 of 1991, and
1441 of 2002, as long as these questions remain unanswered.

The Iraqi leader has not only shown a strong desire to have
these weapons. He has also willingly used them when he had no
reason to fear retaliation. His regional ambitions were revealed
when he twice attacked a neighbour for territorial gain. His role in
the Middle East conflict is unhelpful and is one among several fac-
tors that prevent the region from turning to peace, welfare and sta-
bility.

Even though some European countries, France in particular,
have kept some relation with Iraq, in general there is no partner-
ship and no reason to suppose that one might be formed as long as
the  present  Iraqi  regime  persists.  European  countries  were
involved in the 1991 war and applied UN sanctions; Britain has
been a continuous enforcer of the no-fly zone restrictions together
with the United States. Relations between Europe as a whole and
Iraq must thus be described as tense. Should Saddam Hussein
acquire the means to reach Europe with weapons of mass destruc-
tion, this would no doubt enter his strategic calculus. He might be
tempted to try to prevent Europeans from considering joining
enforcement actions together with the United States, even under a
UN Security Council mandate. Europe’s freedom of action, as well
as European security, would be compromised. In the short term –
that is, during the next five to ten years – it is unlikely that Iraq will
emerge as a direct threat to Europe, provided that transfers to the
country are closely supervised and active assistance in WMD and
missile programmes from the outside can be curbed. Beyond that
date there are reasons for concern unless the international com-
munity acts upon available intelligence and enforces the prohibi-
tions on Iraq’s WMD and missile activities, if necessary by repeat-
edly destroying the related facilities using military force. Finally,
the Bush administration is right in maintaining that the interna-
tional community has to consider whether a regime that con-
stantly defies the rules and breaches its commitments is not per se
a threat to peace and international security and must therefore be
removed. However, that is a decision for the UN Security Council
to take, not for any national government alone.

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Rogue states and terrorists: risks of WMD transfer

In the context of the discussion of Iraq, perhaps the most worrying
and – on the surface – convincing argument for prompt military
action was the possibility that Iraq might transfer WMD, especially
chemical and/or biological agents, to al-Qaeda operatives. The
analysis of the constraints on Iraq’s present and future capability to
deliver these weapons to far-away targets such as Europe would
then be void, since more pedestrian instruments would be used. It
is worth considering this possibility in some detail.

General considerations

In any conflict with the West, ‘rogue states’ would be in an inferior
position. Means of asymmetric warfare would be needed for them
to have any chance of prevailing and at least ensure survival at the
end of the conflict. Collaboration with terrorists could offer viable
means to do damage, thereby weakening the capacity of the supe-
rior enemy to start or continue fighting. It could also break his will
to do so and lead to his conceding to the challenger on essential
issues. Since terrorists are capable of hitting the (stronger) enemy’s
homeland,  presently  not  something  within  reach  of  the  chal-
lenger’s military forces, such an option might appear quite attrac-
tive as well as strategically rational at first glance.

There are, however, several snags which a ‘rogue’ leader con-
templating this option would take into account. The first is the
issue of control. WMD are the most precious asset in the hands of
the state, and a sensitive and dangerous one at that. Use of these
devices must be precisely calibrated to achieve the desired effect.
Political leaders (whatever the country concerned) therefore tend
to wish to keep close control over the possession and use of WMD.
Handing them over to terrorists would be a tremendous loss of
control. Giving them to al-Qaeda, an organisation with a politico-
religious agenda of almost apocalyptical dimensions, contains the
very tangible risk that they will be used in accordance with that
agenda, not with the strategic goals set by the transferring state. As
long as survival remains the ultimate purpose of state strategy and
WMD are meant to secure that objective, transferring WMD to
religiously motivated terrorists appears to be a very bad idea, as the
action  committed  abroad  with  the  assistance  of  those  WMD 

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might provoke retaliation that terminates the state, or at least the
regime, and therefore defeats the object.

One could argue that using terrorists rather than missiles or
agents of the state serves the purpose of allowing the author of
their action to remain anonymous. This would mean that there
was no way to trace the path back from the action through the
weapon and the (terrorist) agent to the (state) source. For two rea-
sons, this does not appear a convincing consideration. If the whole
act is meant to be part of a strategy of deterrence and denial, then
this objective has to be made clear to the target. If the West is to be
deterred from intervention in a ‘rogue’ country and damage is
done by terrorist means to demonstrate the capability of the state
to be invaded to retaliate forcefully, then this has to be communi-
cated, and anonymity is not then helpful.

If the purpose is to wreak destruction to such a degree that the
targeted Western state (or the West as such) becomes unable to act
in any way for a long while, then the terrorist act must be on a scale
that is simply not technically feasible in the foreseeable future; in
addition, the greater the damage done, the more determined the
victim will be to reveal the source and to retaliate, with commen-
surate risks for the author.

There is the final possibility that the purpose is not of a strate-
gic but of an emotional nature – simple revenge. States should be
above that, of course, but it does happen: Lockerbie was Gadaffi’s
response to the 1986 bombing of Libya. The attack against the air-
liner was undertaken anonymously, just to give the Libyan leader
satisfaction that the enemy that had hit his country, only just
missed himself and killed a member of his family would suffer as
well. In that case again, the risks run by empowering terrorists to
use WMD will be weighed against the gain of revenge; and Locker-
bie (like the case of the bombing of the Mykonos discothèque) the
line of command was traced back to the author. In the post-11
September world and after a terrorist WMD attack, no dictator
can hope to escape a counter-attack by the West; he knows he
would be finished. Using terrorists instead of intelligence opera-
tives reduces the chance of being traced. However, it is astonishing
how much information even the hard-nosed al-Qaeda members
revealed under the duress of a relentless, professional interroga-
tion. A revengeful dictator could not be confident that he would
get away with such an act. 

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Maybe the most powerful consideration that would advise a
government possessing WMD not to transfer these weapons to al-
Qaeda  terrorists  is  the  complete  lack  of  certainty  that  these
weapons would not be turned against the author of the transfer
itself. Secular governments in the Muslim world have been identi-
fied as apostatic and as agents of the godless West. Indeed, initially
they  were  the  main  target  of  fanatic  Islamists,  and  only  after
attempts to gain power in Egypt and Syria had failed did they turn
against the supposed protector of the hated regimes, the United
States. However, this does not mean that the secular regimes are
no longer possible targets. Bin Laden has made it plain, for exam-
ple, that the overthrow of the Saudi regime remains a top prior-
ity.98 If an opportunity arises to get rid of one of them and thereby
to establish a base in the Muslim world, it would presumably be
used.  Thus  ‘rogue’  regimes  will  possibly  try  to  use  terrorists
against the West, they may even give them shelter and support, but
they are fairly unlikely in normal circumstances to devolve to them
the most dangerous weaponry that is in their possession. 

Country-specific considerations

Iraq
There is no reason to assume any greater readiness to transfer
WMD to terrorists in the case of Iraq. Attempts by the present
Administration to establish links between al-Qaeda and Saddam
Hussein  remain  unconvincing.  The  first  connection  was  the
alleged presence of a Kurdish radical Islamic group with connec-
tions to al-Qaeda and a chemical laboratory in northern Iraq. But
the Administration conceded that this was not under Saddam
Hussein’s control but in the northern no-fly zone enforced by
British and American aircraft (a hypothesis that begs the question
why this site was not eliminated in a sortie by these forces). The sec-
ond allegation was the training, in the mid-1990s, of some al-
Qaeda members in the art of chemical warfare. Again, this immedi-
ately raises two questions. First, why have chemical agents not been
used by this group since, and, second, why was this support con-
fined to this period and not continued, resumed or expanded after
1998, when Iraq had apparently lost all hope of removing UN sanc-
tions in a cooperative rather than confrontational way? The third
connection,  a  meeting  between  11  September  gang  leader
Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague, turned

98. www.azzam.com/htlm/
articlesdeclaration.htm.

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out to be a hoax. In his 27 January 2003 presentation to the UN
Security Council, Colin Powell, for the first time, made strong
assertions about a connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hus-
sein, claiming the existence of a terrorist cell in Baghdad and fre-
quent contacts between Iraqi intelligence chiefs and al-Qaeda oper-
ative al-Zarqawi. If correct, this would present a grave threat indeed
and change the calculus of the risks contained in Iraq’s WMD pro-
grammes. However, other intelligence services which keep a close
watch on al-Zarqawi because he is seen as a major threat to Europe
doubt the validity of this assertion.99

It  thus  appears  likely  that  no  real  connection  has  existed
between the two ‘rogue’ actors. This does not, however, settle the
issue of whether Saddam Hussein could be motivated to cooper-
ate with the enemies of his enemies, following one of the most
time-honoured principles of strategy. By supporting al-Qaeda, he
could  annoy  and  weaken  the  United  States,  take  revenge  and
inflict damage on the US homeland (and that of its allies, which
makes it a European concern) that he currently has no means to
achieve using the military instruments at his disposal.

Even so, all the concerns and inhibitions analysed above apply
in the case of Iraq. Saddam Hussein wants to keep control of his
WMD assets and to have them employed at a time and place of his
own choosing. He does not want to put his regime’s survival at risk
– notably now that he is clearly trying to establish a dynasty with a
view to devolving power, after his death, to one of his sons. His call
for a jihad during the Gulf War and later was rightly interpreted in
the Muslim world as a fake propaganda attempt by somebody who
had not previously cared at all for Islam. The Iraqi dictator is far
from enforcing the shariah as the law of the land, and has been
harsh on religious opponents.100 He may well become as likely a
target for al-Qaeda as anybody else.

There is one exception to this consideration that is of some sig-
nificance: if Saddam Hussein was certain that he would not sur-
vive and that his regime was condemned to the dust of history by a
war against his regime, he might be tempted to inflict as much
damage as he could on the hated enemies who had brought about
his demise. It is this very situation that could induce him not only
to use his own WMD as a last paroxysm in the war, but also to hand
over some of them for revenge post-mortem. Knowing he was to
die, all the precautionary strategic considerations that were iden-
tified above as prohibitive would no longer apply. The character of

99. Don van Natta, Jr. and David
Johnston,  ‘A  Terrorist  With  a
Deadly Past’, New York Times, 10
February 2003.

100. Peter Heine, Terror in Allahs
Namen. Extremistische Kräfte im Islam
(Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 2001),
p. 73.

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the man makes it not unlikely that he would prefer to exit not with
a whimper but with a bang. This, however, leads to the assessment
that as long as Saddam is optimistic that he will remain in power
he has good reasons not to put his WMD assets at the disposal of
al-Qaeda. The prospect that he might be forced out by military
means, in contrast, would remove all cautionary inhibitions. 

Other countries
These considerations apply even more so to the other proliferators
in the Middle East. The governments of Egypt and Syria are both
bêtes noires for radical Islamists because of their ruthless and suc-
cessful crackdown on their movement in the 1980s. Neither has
any  interest  in  losing  control  over  its  chemical  weapons  and
becoming targets of Western retaliation. This is also true for Libya,
whose awkward return to the international community cannot
afford the setback that would follow if Tripoli were implicated in a
terrorist WMD attack.

As for Iran, the fundamental distrust and antagonism between
Sunni (al-Qaeda) and Shia Islamism (Iran) would prevent such
intimate cooperation. Even if it is true that the Iranian intelligence
service, run by hard-line fanatics, let some al-Qaeda members slip
through after the Afghan campaign, that is a far cry from running
the risks that cooperation on WMD would entail. It would take
extraordinary events to turn this relationship of mistrust around;
if Iran were to become the object of military threats as the next
member of the ‘axis of evil’, this might lead to the ascendancy of
radicals in Iran. The strategic situation would then conform to
that discussed in the case of Saddam Hussein facing a US war
against his regime. In these circumstances, everything would be
possible. Again, the conclusion is clear: if Western Europe keeps
up a viable dialogue with Iran, opening the prospect for further
cooperation and economic assistance in Iran, the very remote risk
of an Iranian/al-Qaeda coalition can easily be averted.

Wild cards: North Korea, Pakistan
The wild cards in this game are North Korea and Pakistan. Con-
cerning Pakistan, the accepted wisdom has for long been that the
notion of an ‘Islamic bomb’ is a misnomer, and that the country’s
political  and  military  élite  see  its  nuclear  weapons  purely  in
national terms. Indications that Pakistan has been willing to share
technology and hardware with anybody have been restricted to

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unproven rumours (concerning, for example, collaboration with
Iraq). However, recent indications about a deal with North Korea in
which Pakistan transferred centrifuge technology in exchange for
obtaining Nodong IRBM technology are a different matter: Pak-
istan might indeed be willing to trade its most sensitive commod-
ity  if  the  price  is  right.  Another  concern  emerged  during  the
Afghanistan campaign, when two scientists connected with Pak-
istan’s nuclear weapons programme were temporarily detained on
suspicion that they might be related to radical Islamist circles.
These charges were dropped after a short time, but the concern
remains that in this nuclear-armed country where the officer corps
and the ubiquitous intelligence service, ISI, include a certain pro-
portion of fundamentalists, the transfer of knowledge or even
hardware to non-state actors is not to be excluded completely. It is
up to the United States, now so intimately related and strongly
present in that country, to ask the hard question and, if need be, to
take measures to prevent the worst. Given the role of the present
Pakistani leadership as a bête noire of radical Islamists, it can be
expected that it, too, is interested in curbing this danger. European
governments should therefore be prepared to assist the Americans
as far as is practicable.

The other problem case is North Korea. Of course, the link
between the Stalinist monarchy and al-Qaeda is anything but ide-
ological. Rather, it is the desperate economic situation that could
induce the North Korean leadership to consider a deal – more for
chemical  and  biological  agents  than  for  the  very  scarce  fissile
material it might have diverted. In the recent past, North Korea
has been the most prolific exporter of missile and related technol-
ogy. Fortunately, there has been no mention of any transfer of
WMD production itself. However, confronted with a really tempt-
ing offer – for which al-Qaeda presumably still possesses the nec-
essary assets – Pyongyang might find it hard to resist.

This danger is mitigated by the obvious and visible desire of the
leadership to overcome the country’s isolation, terminate the per-
ceived threat from the United States and slowly approach the
world markets. The clumsy behaviour of a political class desper-
ately  sticking  to  power  and  not  overly  experienced  in  normal
diplomatic intercourse tends to cloud this policy and lead to seri-
ous backlashes due to misinterpretations and concomitant reac-
tions, notably by a US government that approaches North Korea
with the utmost distrust and aversion and, until autumn 2002,

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preferred confrontational to more accommodating diplomacy.
The disastrous outcome of the visit of Assistant Secretary of State
John Kelly in October 2002 speaks for itself.101

And this is exactly where the problem may lie: if the North
Koreans conclude that they can strike a deal  with the Americans,
they will avoid suicidal moves that would put an end to American
goodwill: trading with al-Qaeda would be such a move. However,
should Pyongyang come round to the view that its attempts at rec-
onciliation (hard to distinguish as they are) are not being recipro-
cated,  and  that  they  are  taken  advantage  of  –  a  view  they  are
inclined to take given their notoriously paranoiac state of mind –
or that they are the next target in the American plan to eliminate
the nuisance factors of the ‘axis of evil’ – this could tip the scales
towards al-Qaeda, for economic reasons as well as, possibly, for
revenge.

It is thus vitally important to keep the prospect of reconcilia-
tion with the North Koreans alive, whatever strange zigzags their
path towards accommodation may take, and to help their econ-
omy at least to survive. The present hesitant attempts at reform
must be supported, and the crisis over the enrichment programme
– whether it exists or not – overcome. After all, the North Koreans
have a point in objecting that their agreement with the United
States called for American renouncement of a nuclear threat, and
that this commitment has not really been implemented, and even
explicitly ignored in the new Nuclear Posture Review. Europeans
must stubbornly continue their line of developing political and
economic relations with this very strange partner, and they may
wish to exchange views with the North Koreans on the issue of
combating terrorism and keeping terrorists at arm’s length from
weapons of mass destruction.

To be watched: Russia, China
Russia and China both have a keen interest in preventing terrorists
from acquiring WMD. Each country has repeatedly been the victim
of terrorist attacks and each is struggling with separatist move-
ments that are at least partially inspired by radical Islamism. How-
ever, in the past, Russia and China have not always been consistent
and reliable in their WMD-related export behaviour. They have
transferred technology and hardware with governmental approval
to countries with doubtful records and may continue to do so (Rus-
sia to Iran, China to Pakistan). The government-private sector 

101. Don Oberdorfer, ‘My Private
Seat at Pyongyang’s Table’, The
Washington  Post,  10  November
2002.

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relationship is still evolving, and this causes inevitable losses of
efficiency  in  the  introduction  and  application  of  physical  and
export controls. One has to realise that Western companies have
made the most significant contributions to WMD programmes in
third countries, including Iraq, even though the Western institu-
tional structure is much more stable, experienced and effective
than that in the countries transforming from centrally controlled
economies to market systems. Elements of the old and new military
industrial complexes look eagerly to making profits, and inexperi-
enced and new control structures may fall short of effective and
efficient supervision of their activities.

Both Russia and China have overhauled their export control
laws,  regulations  and  administrative  systems  several  times  in
recent years. Physical control in WMD facilities in Russia has also
been improved, mostly with Western (particularly US) assistance,
but there is still much to do, as the G-8’s ‘10 plus 10 over 10’ pro-
gramme indicates. Little is yet known about physical security in
this sector in China. Traditions of central control contrast with
the relative autonomy of provincial administrative structures and
the increasing independence of business activities. 

While we can assume that there is a keen interest in preventing
WMD and their ingredients from falling into terrorists’ hands, we
cannot be sure that the necessary control structures are fully in
place. We can also not be completely certain that the same strict
interest applies to cross-border transfers. At any rate, it is advisable
to keep a friendly and continuous dialogue with both govern-
ments on these subjects, at the top as well as at the operational
level, and to be ready to assist technically and, if need be, finan-
cially wherever possible.

Remedies

On the basis of the above, we can conclude that a direct military
threat to European territory only exists at its fringes – some Italian
and Greek islands – and will probably only grow slowly in the com-
ing decade. Once Cyprus accedes to the EU, however, its security
will become a major concern. This is even truer for Turkey, which is
within missile range of all its neighbours. When Turkey becomes a
member of the EU, the whole security situation in the Middle East
and  the  Persian  Gulf  will  become  a  primary  concern,  not  just

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because of the issue of oil supply but because the very survival of a
member state will be at stake. With regard to all threats and risks
that  concern  single  member  states  but  not  the  totality  of  the
Union’s territory, a particular danger must be noted and properly
addressed: the risk that hostile powers may try to split the Union by
directing threats against those member(s) within their reach in
order to extract concessions and break up Europe’s united front in
a given political conflict. It is absolutely essential that this problem
be addressed in European foreign and security policy early on, and
that common policies are drawn up for conflicts that could emerge
and are implemented with perseverance and determination.

The instruments: diplomacy, deterrence, containment,
enforcement

The first line of defence is always diplomacy. On close examination,
it is also the most promising with regard to proliferating countries
in all cases but Iraq. Diplomacy takes two approaches to the prob-
lems of proliferation and terrorism. First, it sounds out the inter-
locutor with a view to understanding the concerns that motivate
him to seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In other
words, it is essential to comprehending the threat analysis and
security problems as seen from the other side, and makes proposals
on  how  to  deal  with  them.  (In  thinking  this  line  of  argument
through, what went wrong in Western relations with North Korea
and Iran very quickly becomes obvious.) The second track is a car-
rot-and-stick approach that works mainly through incentives that
are desired by the partner, but upholds the prospects of them being
withdrawn if ‘red lines’ concerning European security are crossed.
Deterrence  must  be  focused  on  the  possibility  that  WMD
might actually be used, whether against European territory or not.
And it must relate to any support for terrorism of the al-Qaeda
variety that involves WMD. States considering hosting or assist-
ing al-Qaeda – or substate or regional rulers doing the same – must
face the certain prospect that the international community, once
aware of this policy, would take action against them. However, this
generalised policy of deterrence – an absolute necessity in the pres-
ent security environment – should not take the form of a unilat-
eral, national policy, as conceived in the US National Security
Strategy,  but  as  a  multilateral  commitment.  In  order  to  curb
incentives to procure WMD as a retaliatory capacity against the

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possible use of WMD by enemies, the international community
must agree on an unambiguous statement of policy that, unlike
the case of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in the 1980s, the next
employment of such weapons will be met with a strong and deter-
mined response, based on a UNSC mandate, that will end with the
toppling of the regime responsible for their use. Political and mil-
itary leaders involved in it will be brought to justice personally,
should they survive. A UN Security Council resolution to this
effect should be actively sought and supported both at NATO and
European Council level to prove to the world that the most mili-
tarily capable groups of countries stand behind this policy. The
EU, in addition, should make it clear that it will similarly act in
self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter if one of its mem-
ber states is attacked by WMD. 

The  whole  utility  of  deterrence  hinges,  of  course,  on  an
assumption that the countries concerned are capable of being
deterred. In general, it would appear that the mission of WMD in
the military postures of these countries is to guarantee the sur-
vival of the regime and leadership, that is, they serve as an ultimate
deterrent. They would be employed – initially on a small scale – in
a conflict where the enemy was threatening the removal or extinc-
tion of the leadership or the state as such. In a war that each side
understands as meant to be limited, by contrast, it is much more
likely that ‘rogue’ states would restrict themselves to conventional
weapons. The calculus would be that escalation to the WMD level
might change the enemy’s war aims: from limited concessions the
objectives  would  move  to  unconditional  surrender,  with  the
intention  of  holding  the  WMD  users  personally  responsible.
Faced  with  this  prospect,  the  leaders  of  states  owning  WMD
would  probably  refrain  from  using  their  most  lethal  military
assets.102 This will be discussed below for Iraq and Iran more
specifically. 

Containment relates to two contingencies. On the one hand, it
is essential to inhibit WMD and missile programmes as much as
possible with a view to keeping them at low technological levels as
long as possible. Intelligence, export controls and sanctions poli-
cies all work in that direction. It is no well thought-out counter-
argument that such measures ‘only’ buy time. Time is often all
that is needed: to mitigate the security situation of a proliferator
so  that  he  voluntarily  gives  up  his  assets  (e.g.  South  Africa,
Argentina or Brazil); to assist in a transformation that leads to

102. See Peter R. Lavoy (ed.), Plan-
ning the Unthinkable: How New Pow-
ers Will Use Nuclear, Biological and
Chemical  Weapons (Ithaca,  NY:
Cornell University Press, 2000).

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regime change, with a new government turning to other priorities
and a willingness to forego WMD; or simply a change of leadership
by allowing nature to take its course where the problems are first
and foremost personal. The second direction of containment is
the  prevention  of  the  successful  use  of  WMD  threats  as  an
umbrella  for  aggression,  intimidation  and  expansion.  This
assumes a readiness to undertake military action on behalf of the
security of third parties, as in 1991. By making this readiness quite
clear in advance, the respective ambitions of proliferators can be
held in check in the first place. It is here that containment and
deterrence converge. Since Europe has a strong interest in seeing
that WMD proliferation does not lead to distinct political and ter-
ritorial advantages for those who proliferate, it must be more pre-
pared than in the past to have a clear declaratory policy to that
effect, and be capable of making good on it if need be.

Enforcement is the final instrument; enforcement, that is, of
the non-proliferation regimes that have largely been so successful,
but, as with all legislation, have been disregarded by a small num-
ber of signatories at some time. As systems based on law, these
regimes need an enforcement mechanism, otherwise they will lose
their capacity to reassure faithful members. Europe has a primary
interest  in  the  survival,  growth  and  strengthening  of  these
regimes, as was recently demonstrated once more in the BWC con-
text. In all these regimes, certain procedures are prescribed where
there is suspicion of a breach of the rules. The first decision, then,
is whether to use these procedures or to seek other remedies. In the
case  of  North  Korea,  for  example,  in  1994  the  United  States
deemed it wiser to establish the ‘Framework Agreement’ that tol-
erated the breach for a certain period in the hope of a long-term
solution to the problem. In other cases, it might be better to follow
through the rules on consultation (all regimes) special inspections
(NPT), on-challenge inspections (CWC) or investigations by the
UN Secretary-General (BWC and Geneva Protocol).

If a breach is proven, or if the state under suspicion refuses to
collaborate, thus preventing a due forensic clarification of the
matter, strict enforcement measures must be taken, ranging from
economic and diplomatic sanctions to military action. The latter
takes us into the grey area of pre-emptive and preventive war. Pre-
emption is considered on the basis of speculation about the target
state’s current capabilities and imminent intentions; prevention
is considered speculation about the target’s future capabilities

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and intentions. The objective in either case is to prevent the unac-
ceptable damage that a combination of intention and capability
can bring. In addition, any military action must observe humani-
tarian law, must have a reasonable prospect of success and must
not leave the situation worse than it was before. Pre-emption and
prevention cannot be excluded as ultimate means if no other way
of enforcing compliance can be found and not acting would most
likely lead to the use of WMD. Weighing up the pros and cons is an
agonising, painful and difficult process. It cannot be left to any
single state alone lest a precedence be set that could lead directly to
international anarchy. Instead, due procedure, which means deci-
sion-making by the Security Council, is imperative. 103

What combination of these various instruments is best suited
to dealing with each proliferating state? The following discussion
is confined to the three countries on President Bush’s ‘axis of evil’.

Coping with the ‘axis of evil’

North Korea
North Korea is in a desperate situation: the economy has collapsed,
the country has lost its allies and is confronted with an alliance of
enemies  that  are  superior  many  times  over.  Pyongyang  has  no
chance of prevailing in war, only of doing damage before its demise.
North Korea has sought, and to a degree obtained, assurances from
the United States. These lost credibility already under the Clinton
administration, as nuclear targeting doctrine shifted more and
more to an ‘anti-rogue’ posture. The situation, from the North
Korean perspective, became even more alarming under Bush, with
the interruption of diplomatic exchanges, the naming of the ‘axis
of evil’ and the Nuclear Posture Review, which listed North Korea
as one among seven possible targets for US nuclear weapons. Con-
fronted  with  this  situation,  North  Korea  was  facing  an  acute
dilemma. The leadership had meanwhile decided to open up incre-
mentally, following the Chinese example. The defunct administra-
tive food distribution system gave way to something approaching a
market. Special economic zones are opening up. North Korea seeks
access to international lending institutions which, in turn, requires
the assent of the United States. At the same time, the extremely dis-
trustful leadership fears that advantage might be taken of it. The
conflicting signals from Washington only heighten this preoccu-
pation. Thus, Kim Yong Il is unlikely to give up his WMD and mis-

103. Harald Müller, ‘Compliance
Politics: A Critical Analysis of Mul-
tilateral Arms Control’, Nonprolif-
eration Review, vol. 7, no. 2, Sum-
mer 2000, pp. 77-90.

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sile potential once and for all until and unless the relationship with
the United States assumes a more stable, cooperative character.
Precisely this posture, however, will prevent the United States –
notably during an Administration with the particular mindset of
the Bush people – from accommodating.104

Europeans should play an assertive role as go-between in this
catch-22 situation. They should indicate to North Korea that they
understand its security concerns and are willing to convey this
understanding to Washington, helping to impress on their Amer-
ican allies the necessity to refrain from using force or threats. They
should be ready to cooperate economically in the most efficient
way to help Pyongyang in its transformation. At the same time
they should make it clear that pushing ahead with WMD and mis-
sile programmes – rather than maintaining the ambiguous status
quo  –  would  immediately  jeopardise  Europe’s  cooperation,  as
would its continuing technical assistance to Middle East missile
programmes that impinge on European security, or any contacts
with terrorist groups. By framing the European position in an
incentive/disincentive  structure,  with  strong  emphasis  on  the
cooperative side, North Korea’s concerns can be duly taken into
account, and there is a real chance that the crisis might be defused.

Iran
As  for  Iran,  it  must  be  realised  that  in  1981  the  country  was
attacked by a neighbour that was supported, despite an aggression
that was in flagrant breach of international law, by the Western
world as well as by the Soviet Union, and that Iraq used chemical
weapons on a large scale without the international community
protesting more than lamely. On the contrary, military support to
Iraq continued, and Western companies assisted Saddam Hussein
with his WMD programmes. In this war, the Iranian Navy was
involved  in  exchanges  of  fire  with  the  US  Navy,  and  naval  air
defence brought down (unintentionally) a civilian Iranian airliner
with a three-figure number of fatalities. Today, Iran is on the super-
power’s ‘axis of evil’ and a declared potential target for US nuclear
weapons. It borders another nuclear weapon state, Pakistan, with
which  relations  have  not  always  been  smooth  during  the  last
decade because of Pakistan’s support of the Taliban. Iran hears
about the unfettered pursuit of WMD by Saddam Hussein and
does not know how long the Iraqi dictator will stay in power, or
whether his successors will be any better with regards to the quar-

104. Op. cit. in note 101.

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rels between Iran and Iraq over territory. Obviously, for all the ills of
its internal dual-rule system and its support for terrorist groups
trying to wreck the Middle East peace process, Iran has massive,
existential security problems to which its supposed WMD and mis-
sile programmes are meant to respond.

The most important conclusion from this is that there is a need
for serious, intense security dialogue with the Islamic Republic as
part of the ‘critical dialogue’ that has been the prevailing EU pol-
icy towards that country, together with specific precautions when
licensing dual-use transfers. Such a dialogue would greatly profit
from a UN Security Council statement promising a sharp, quick
and determined response to any first use of WMD, as proposed
above. The Union could then make clear explicitly that it under-
stands this assurance to apply, of course, to Iran. This statement
should be accompanied with an equally clear expression of regret
for the lacklustre response to Iraq’s use of CW during the Iran-Iraq
war. (It would be extremely useful if the United States were to
decide to make a similar statement.) The prospect of enhanced
economic relations as Iran opens up its (strongly bureaucratised)
economy and freezes activities to acquire WMD-usable equip-
ment could possibly be raised, together with the risk that all eco-
nomic ties will be cut if plans for the Shahab-4, a real concern for
the Europeans, go ahead. Thus, as in the case of North Korea, a
shrewd combination of diplomacy and containment, with a resid-
ual grain of deterrence, appears to be the appropriate approach.

This begs the question whether the Islamic Republic, notably
its more reactionary elements, can be deterred at all. Experience
would suggest that it can. Significantly, even during the revolu-
tionary phase of the regime of Ayatollah Khomeiny, Iran refrained
from any open military aggression against its neighbours. To be
sure, it tried to foment internal unrest and rebellion, and sup-
ported terrorism on a very large scale, but it never took the risk of
going to war against countries allied with the United States (it
came closest to such a move in the ‘tankers war’ in 1984, but even
then no attacks were made on facilities or ships within the territo-
rial  waters  of  its  Gulf  neighbours.  Confronted  with  the  over-
whelming combination of nerve gas, offensive Iraqi forces and the
superpower’s navy patrolling the Persian Gulf, Iran renounced its
initial, far-reaching war objectives and agreed terms. Nowadays,
Iran appears to have reduced its support for terrorism to groups
operating in the Middle East conflict, and has tried not to overstep

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the  invisible  line  that  would  provoke  Israel’s  retaliation.  This
speaks loudly for a very rational core of strategic calculus in Iran-
ian thinking even under Khomeiny and even more so today.105

Iraq
Analysis of the Iraqi problem does not, at the moment, indicate pre-
emptive or preventive action on urgent security grounds. Rather, it
is the history of defiance and undercutting of regimes that requires
a determined effort to move Iraq towards compliance with its obli-
gations.106 What is needed, therefore, is a tailored combination of
containment, enforcement and deterrence; enforcement would
not work – as the last four, or indeed eleven, years have amply
shown – without the prospect of force being used if the Iraqi lead-
ership flouts its obligations.107

Diplomacy, in comparison with the two other cases, has only a
very moderate role to play. It serves mainly to clarify ‘grey area’ sit-
uations that may emerge during the course of inspections, and to
reassure Iraq’s neighbours and the broader Arab and Muslim pub-
lic that their interests are being taken into account and that rules
are being observed thoroughly. That is why going through the
United Nations, contrary to President Bush’s and Prime Minister
Blair’s apparent initial inclinations, was so essential and remains
important as the inspections go ahead. The Security Council must
remain master of the proceedings.

Nevertheless, the role of diplomacy cannot be overstated in this
case. Saddam Hussein is a proven rule-breaker who is primarily
concerned  with  his  personal  domination  over  his  people,  and
would try to extend the reach of his power further if the interna-
tional community let him. He regards WMD as absolutely indis-
pensable for his regional and international standing (and possibly
also as a symbol of personal achievement in internal power strug-
gles). The spectre of him being forced out of power is no doubt a
necessary ‘stick’ to ensure, if at all possible, his compliance.

For the European Union, the case of Iraq has been disastrous in
that it has exposed the degree to which its major members are
divided on the most crucial issues of world politics.108 The United
Kingdom sided first with a US position that was, to put it diplo-
matically, not exactly in line with mainstream international law,
and modified its policies only after domestic criticism, ranging
from public opinion to the cabinet, had been voiced. Germany
said no to any role in armed enforcement, should it be deemed nec-

105. Shahram Chubin, Iran’s na-
tional security policy: capabilities, in-
tentions and impact (Washington,
DC: Carnegie Endowment for In-
ternational Peace, 1994); Michael
J. Eisenstadt, The Deterrence Series.
Case Study 4: Iran (Washington,
DC:  Chemical  and  Biological
Arms Control Institute, 1998).

106. For a thorough analysis, see
Martin Ortega, ‘Iraq: A European
point of view’, Occasional Paper 40
(Paris: EU Institute for Security
Studies, 2002).

107. IISS, op. cit. in note 74, pp. 5-
9.

108. On the transatlantic debate,
see Philip H. Gordon, ‘Iraq: the
transatlantic debate’, Occasional
Paper 39 (Paris: EU Institute for Se-
curity Studies, 2002).

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essary by the UN, defying not only common sense, which would
suggest that Saddam Hussein has never reacted kindly to soft
approaches, and deviating from its time-honoured policies of sup-
porting the United Nations whole-heartedly. France, to its credit,
fell into line, as its national interests (securing the crucial impor-
tance of its permanent seat on the UN Security Council) coincided
with the general European interest (to avoid unilateralism in one
of the most crucial tests of security policy during the last few
years).

The Europeans must stop this self-denigrating demonstration
of incapability. The Iraq issue – and possibly the whole area of
WMD proliferation – is an area where the full spectrum of instru-
ments of CFSP under the Treaty of Amsterdam, notably common
positions and common strategies, must be urgently applied. And
this  includes  in  particular  some  criteria  and  procedures  that
would help heads of state and government to decide in which situ-
ations the use of force would be unavoidable.

Is Saddam Hussein able to be deterred? As in the case of Iran the
answer appears to be yes. Iraq has used chemical weapons only in
situations where no retaliation was foreseen, against Iran in the
Iran-Iraq war and against Kurdish civilians. In 1990-91 against
superior allied forces they were not employed – apparently because
of an ambiguous US threat – nor did Saddam Hussein order the
launching of BW- or CW-tipped missiles against Israel. The Al-Hus-
sein missiles that struck Israeli cities were conventionally armed.
And Saddam Hussein terminated resistance to allied force exactly
at the moment when the war was clearly lost but before this defeat
could turn into a serious threat to his own regime. While it is
absolutely true that he is willing to take greater risks than the aver-
age Western head of state, it is equally clear that he calculates the
odds and opts for an orderly retreat when the alternative is a risk to
his person.109 Within the limits of this very particular leader’s risk
calculus, therefore, deterrence can be assumed to work. By the
same token, he is most likely to open his Pandora’s box of WMD
widest when he considers he has got nothing more to lose, i.e. pre-
cisely when his very existence, and that of his dynasty and regime,
are facing extinction.110

109. James A. Baker III, The Politics
of Diplomacy (New York: Putnam
Books, 1995), p. 395; Anthony H.
Cordesman, The Deterrence Series.
Case Study 3: Iraq (Washington,
DC:  Chemical  and  Biological
Arms Control Institute, 1998).

110. IISS, op. cit. in note 74, p. 73.

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The post-11 September world
and transatlantic relations

On the basis of the above analysis, it is now possible to put the secu-
rity threat to Europe and the Western world in perspective. The sit-
uation is serious: blood will be shed in Western countries, as it will
be impossible to prevent each and every attack. Some incidents will
take the lives of as many people as the 11 September attacks did. Yet
there is nothing in the threat environment that should force us to
believe that the period of Western ascendancy is coming to an end.
The terrorists are not a majority movement even within their own
culture; their means, even if they may involve some deadly chemical
and biological agents, are limited. Many of them will be caught and
detained in the coming years. The survival of their leadership is all
but granted. It will certainly be a long, hard struggle, but it will not
be a fundamental, deadly challenge to the West.

In the case of ‘rogue states’, this is even more true. Their capa-
bilities  to  threaten  and  to  kill  will  remain  limited  and  can  be
restricted even more by prudent, cooperative Western policies. A
combination of diplomacy and cooperation, where appropriate,
deterrence and containment, where needed, and mandated mili-
tary action, where inescapable, will contain the threat to a man-
ageable order of magnitude. Links between them and ‘megaterror-
ists’ are unlikely and can in any case be handled by a combination
of diplomacy and deterrence.

The conclusion on threat analysis is thus that we have to keep
our guard up and be extremely vigilant, but have no need to panic.
What is imperative is to avoid remedies that make the situation
worse. The most essential thing – and, unfortunately, it is a big
challenge at the same time – is that the leader of the Western world,
the United States, should understand this message.

11 September came as a great shock to the United States. That
is, it was not anticipated by the broad public and those sections of
the élite that had not thought through the implications of the
1993 abortive attack on the World Trade Center, the significance
of the growing terrorist intrigue against US targets worldwide,

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and the very clear pronouncements by Osama bin Laden in 1996
and 1998, with threats to take murderous action to the US home-
land, and to kill civilians as well as military personnel indiscrimi-
nately. Those events have changed the American public’s under-
standing of security and have created a window of opportunity for
those sections of the US political and security élite that had a clear
unilateralist and hegemonic agenda even before the attacks.111
With this change in worldview, new requirements are put to Amer-
ica’s allies to which we Europeans are forced to react.112

Terrorism and the threat to America’s allies

The United States is the terrorist’s prime target. It is not only the
leader of the Western world, the signpost of a liberal, consumerist
and largely secular culture (though one should note that Europe is
more secular than the United States, where religion plays a much
more significant part in public and even political life). The United
States is also the leading military, political and economic power
and attracts the feelings of resentment of those whose aspirations
for a better life have been frustrated – as much by the poor per-
formance of their own governments as by the repercussions of the
international economic system promoted by the United States. On
top of the grievances of those who fight the United States from
politico-religious motivations, however, is America’s role as the
protector of Muslim regimes that are perceived as apostatic, and of
Israel, which is seen by the fanatics as an imperial implant in holy
Muslim land by the Jews/Crusaders.

Europe is only second in the line of fire, but it is in the line any-
way. Al-Zuwahiri’s threats to the United Kingdom and Germany,
followed by later confirmation, apparently by Osama bin Laden
himself,  were  a  sobering  reminder  that  the  Europeans  cannot
escape the terrorist threat just by playing dead or acting as Amer-
ica’s  poodle.  In  that  sense,  American  capabilities  in  the  fight
against transnational ‘megaterrorism’ remain an asset for Euro-
pean security. The same is true for the US capacity to serve as a sta-
biliser for regions in which Europe has a strong interest but is not
capable by itself to pacify, such as the Persian Gulf. The Atlantic
Alliance, then, remains an important asset for European security,
even though close allegiance to the United States might attract
more rather than less attention from terrorists. This is a short-

111. See the detailed considera-
tions  of  Pierre  Hassner,  ‘The
United States: the empire of force
or the force of empire?’, Chaillot
Paper 54 (Paris: EU Institute for Se-
curity Studies, 2002).

112. An excellent, detailed analy-
sis of the Euro-Atlantic dilemmas
in security policy is given in Julian
Lindley-French, ‘Terms of engage-
ment. The paradox of American
power  and  the  transatlantic
dilemma  post-11  September’,
Chaillot Paper 52 (Paris: EU Insti-
tute for Security Studies, 2002).

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term consideration that should not overshadow the long-term
common interest that Europe and the United States have in fight-
ing and eliminating the terrorist threat. This interest is based not
only  on  a  claim  to  preserve  Western  dominance,  preserve  the
smooth functioning of a liberal world economic system or just
fight off tremendous physical threats to the state and its citizens.
It is also motivated by the defence of a free society against its com-
plete opposite: a hopeless, totalitarian empire of bigotry in which
the centuries-old achievements of equal human rights, the con-
tainment of state power and an independent judiciary would be
eliminated. This is not just a ‘Western civilisation’ project but one
in which the West shares a distinct, value-based interest. Whatever
divisive elements persist, alas, in the transatlantic relationship, as
is discussed below, this solid rock of commonality must not be for-
gotten.

At the same time, it must be realised that by demonstrating sol-
idarity with America, Europe is consciously increasing the terror-
ist risk to itself. It is highly unlikely that, for example, Germany
would have entered the al-Qaeda target screen were it not for the
presence of German soldiers in Afghanistan. Likewise, Britain is
attracting attention for its role as the staunchest ally of the United
States. Bin Laden’s November 2002 message is quite clear in that
regard and not open to misinterpretation. It is all the more dis-
turbing that leading US conservative intellectuals badly underrate
the military contribution Europe is making to Western security,
despite the gulf between European and US capabilities.113 Even
more disturbing, people advising the US government, such as
Richard Perle and members of the Administration itself, depict
the Europeans as a pacifist bunch of wimps.114 Whether it is sim-
ple autism or a political ego swollen out of all proportion that
explains this ignorance, the Atlantic Alliance will not survive it if
European blood is shed on America’s behalf and yet this arrogant
attitude within the US conservative élite persists.

US hegemonic objectives and the role of the Union

In this context, it would be naive to overlook the risks that the poli-
cies of the Bush administration present to the European project. If
we turn our attention from the issue of the physical integrity of
European  territories  and  their  populations  and  focus  on  the

113. Robert Kagan, ‘Power and
Weakness’,  Policy  Review,  June
2002,  www.policyreview.org/
Jun02/kagan;  for  an  excellent
summary of the European contri-
bution, see op. cit. in previous
note, ch. 4.

114.  Even  as  German  soldiers
were  operating  in  Afghanistan
and bin Laden was threatening
Germany, Perle spoke about Ger-
many being sunk into ‘morally se-
ducing  pacifism’,  Süddeutsche
Zeitung, 14 November 2002.

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integrity of European institutions and the continued development
of European integration, the relationship loses some of its positive
connotations. And beware: this is not simply a reflection of asym-
metric power between the allies, as some would suggest. It has to do
with conscious policy choices in Washington that deviate signifi-
cantly and clearly, not just from what most Europeans prefer but
also from what has been US mainstream policy since President
Woodrow Wilson, and has formed the joint European-American
platform and vision throughout the Cold War and beyond.

First, the Bush administration has continued the traditional
US policy of trying to impede progress in European foreign and
defence policies when such progress threatens to challenge Amer-
ican preponderance. The origins of this US stance go back a long
way: from Henry Kissinger’s claim to US representation in ‘Euro-
pean Political Cooperation’ to the harsh refusal of the 1981 Venice
Declaration by the Council on the Middle East conflict and the
virtual prohibition, a few years later, of consultation on SDI, the
most important security issue at the time, within the WEU frame-
work, to Madeleine Albright’s ‘three D’s’ in European defence pol-
icy (no duplication, no decoupling and no discrimination),115
notably a duplication of those capabilities, such as command and
communications and satellite surveillance, that could give Europe
a truly independent operational capability, there is a consistent
strategy: to welcome European efforts as long as they are embed-
ded in a framework that gives the ascendancy to US preferences,
but to react with hostility if a common European political will or a
capacity to act independently appears to be emerging. 

The post-11 September policy betrays a clear language. The US
accepted NATO’s invocation of Art. 5 of the Washington Treaty
but dealt with the military requirements not through the Atlantic
Council but on a one-to-one basis with those allies who, in the
American view, had something to offer. The campaign, as well as
politico-military  preparation  for  the  follow-up  confrontation
with Iraq, was conducted in close cooperation with the United
Kingdom, sidelining the rest of Europe from the beginning. 

The build-up to the Iraq crisis was also, significantly, prepared
by Washington with Britain, but without proper consultation
within the North Atlantic Council or, more generally, on a broader
basis. Germany was under pressure because of its previous impru-
dent decision to comply with US demands to put a BC defence
unit  and  related  equipment  (Fuchs  ‘sniffer’  light  tanks)  into

115. Stanley R. Sloan, ‘The United
States and European defence’,
Chaillot Paper 39 (Paris: WEU Insti-
tute for Security Studies, 2000),
p. 16.

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Kuwait, where their only conceivable mission would be to serve as
a back-up in a war against Iraq. When the discussion in Washing-
ton on a unilateral, anti-regime war took off without any consul-
tation,  Berlin  felt  it  was  being  taken  for  granted  and  reacted
sharply. Carried away by favourable public opinion, the Chancel-
lor then took the decision not to participate in a campaign in any
circumstances, even under a UN mandate and independent of any
actions Saddam Hussein himself might take, thereby effectively
forestalling a common European position. Prime Minister Blair,
emulating  the  US  position  and  turning  to  the  UN  only  after
strong objections reflected in public opinion polls and the media,
in his party and even within his cabinet, prevented European unity
from the other side. Almost by default, France alone pursued a
position that should have been the European one. It is not as if the
European countries were innocent of this imminent disaster for
European common foreign and security policy. But it is equally
true  that  Washington  played  a  game,  well  and  probably  con-
sciously, that would keep the Europeans divided, as it effectively
did.

Second,  The  National  Security  Strategy  has  formulated  its
rationale in a way that leaves no room for misunderstanding:116
the United States must forestall the emergence of every serious
contender  for  power.  Measured  in  terms  of  population,  GDP,
financial capabilities, technological advancement and aggregated
military power, the European Union comes closest to this state.
Enlargement will bring this position only into sharper focus: with
450 million citizens, Europe will surpass the US population by
more than fifty per cent. GDP will be within about 10 per cent of
that of America. If the experience of previous accessions, namely a
fairly rapid catching-up by the newcomers to average per-capita
GDP, is repeated, EU GDP will surpass that of America within a
decade or so after enlargement becomes effective. This will most
likely also strengthen the position of the euro against the dollar, as
the economic space supporting the euro will become larger and
stronger. 

Of course, Europe would not be a rival on a par with China (if
China emerges into what some US security analysts fear it will).
But a Europe that spoke with one voice on important world polit-
ical issues and could field significant military power could not be
taken for granted but would have to be taken seriously. Talking 

116. The National Security Strategy of
the United States of America (Wash-
ington, DC: The White House,
September 2002).

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with an adult, even one of smaller size than oneself, is definitely
different from speaking to fifteen dwarfs. 

Washington is trying to avoid this. It is for this reason that it
tries to force its own priorities upon Europe. One of them is to
spend more money of defence, an idea that understandably gets a
sympathetic hearing in European defence circles. But again, look-
ing at aggregate defence spending in the Union – and taking into
account variations in exchange rates and therefore buying power –
Europe spends somewhat less than half as much on defence as the
United States, and that is after all still an enormous sum. Europe
does not have the same needs. It does not need to maintain a four-
figure number of nuclear warheads with corresponding means of
delivery, and a much larger reserve force. It does not need twelve
aircraft carrier groups, and would probably not in the next few
years spend very large sums on a territorial missile defence system.
It is quite probable that Europe can meet its security needs within
the limits of its present and foreseeable aggregate defence spend-
ing. It will not meet these needs, however, with the present spend-
ing  structure.  With  fifteen  staffs  and  fifteen  procurement
processes, Europe’s armed forces are too manpower-heavy in the
most expensive personnel sector – staff officers and highly quali-
fied  civilian  staff.  The  personnel:investment  ratio  in  defence
budgets is biased towards the first item, and while some countries
(Britain  and  France  in  particular)  have  started  streamlining,
Europe as a whole has not. By depending on largely national pro-
curement procedures, with the exception of some spectacular col-
laborative projects, they fail to benefit from possible economics of
scale and spend more per defence item than they would in a uni-
fied market. Increasing defence expenditure nevertheless leaves
these redundant structures intact, thereby keeping Europeans
from integrating their defence policies.

Third, competing visions in Washington and Brussels on the
Union’s character and role correspond to their competing visions
of world order. Washington has come to think in strictly hierar-
chical  terms,  with  a  strong  emphasis  on  military  power.  The
United States stands at the top of the order, enforcing stability, if
need be by force, on the basis of a national decision. US freedom of
action must not be constrained. As Pierre Hassner has succinctly
put it: ‘ . . . the absolute right that the United States currently 

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claims to make sovereign judgments over what is right and what is
wrong, particularly in respect of the use of force, and to exempt
itself with an absolutely clear conscience from all the rules that it
proclaims and applies to others . . . The Americans are absolutely
against  any  encroachment  on  their  own  sovereignty,  but
absolutely in favour of intervention against others.’117 Seen from
this  particular  standpoint  on  order,  and  with  the  exceptional
place the United States has within it, the renunciation of multilat-
eralism makes sense. The refusal to join the anti-personnel mine
ban of the Ottawa Convention and the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty, the fight against amending the Biological Weapons Con-
vention and against the International Criminal Court, the disin-
terest in negotiating rules of the road for the military use of outer
space and the decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty are a
reflection of this view of the world. 

American unilateralism and the European concept of
world order

At the same time, US aversion against multilateralism goes beyond
the strategic aim of preventing international rules from encroach-
ing upon America’s exceptional position of unbounded leadership
and extends to the preservation of broader American preferences
(notably  explicitly  conservative  ones):  US  abstention  from  the
Kyoto Protocol underwrites America’s idiosyncratic from of energy
consumption,  the  determination  not  to  ratify  the  Biodiversity
Convention secures the right of US pharmaceutical companies to
exploit the South’s bioresources while protecting their patents
derived  therefrom,  and  the  lacklustre  approach  to  any  serious
effort to tackle the roots of the abundance of small arms around
the globe defends the unrestricted right of Americans to bear arms
under the Second Amendment and pleases the National Rifle Asso-
ciation, a powerful domestic lobby organisation and staunch sup-
porter of conservative Republicans. The US vision of world order,
therefore, not only serves to maintain a given hegemonic hierarchy
of international relations with a view to preserving stability and
peace together with American dominance, but is also instrumental
in pushing through idiosyncratic, substantial political positions
that  emerge  from  a  certain  narrow  spectrum  within  the  US
polity.118

117. Op. cit. in note 111, pp. 46,
47.

118. For a strong US-based criti-
cism, see Michael Hirsh, ‘Bush
and the World’, Foreign Affairs Sep-
tember/October 2002, pp. 18-43;
John G. Ikenberry, ‘America’s Im-
perial Ambition’, ibid., pp. 44-60.

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This vision of the world thus comes into conflict with Euro-
pean preferences on two counts. The Europeans think more in
terms of partnerships (however unequal), with a central role for
international  law,  multilateralism  and  international  organisa-
tions. They accept the inevitability of coming to arrangements
with states that are not (yet) democracies and may have divergent
– but not necessarily violently antagonistic – views and interests
from the West. The Europeans are for the time being more pre-
pared than their American partners to find ways to accommodate
those interests and views in a culturally and politically heteroge-
neous world, rather than deal with them through isolation, con-
frontation, and unfettered power asymmetry. This is not a world
without violence; Europeans have lived too long at the eye of the
storm to be naive about this. But they wish the use of force to be
subject to law, not to be the instrument of an unconstrained (how-
ever  benign)  hegemon.  It  is  over  this  particular  relationship
between power and law that the evolution of US thinking and
action over the last two decades has produced the major and most
substantial rift between the approaches to world politics on either
side of the Atlantic. Historically, this is an irony. The law/power
approach was very much pushed forward by the United States as
from the end of the First World War, while the Europeans were
stubbornly continuing with nineteenth century power politics or
(in the case of Germany) even worse. Now, the roles appear to be
reversed, with the US exploiting the window of opportunity of the
‘unipolar moment’ for a return to classical power politics while the
Europeans – however tentatively and timidly – push forward with
extending the rule of law.

This view is clearly expressed in the Presidency Conclusions of
the European Council in Helsinki (1999): ‘The Union will con-
tribute to international peace and security in accordance with the
principles of the United Nations Charter. The Union recognises
the primary responsibility of the United Nations Security Council
for the maintenance of international peace and security.’119 The
Union’s emerging security and defence policy is solidly embedded
in  the  international  legal  and  institutional  environment,  as  it
exists. 

Europe’s different vision cannot be divorced from what the
project of the European Union is in itself. After all, the Union links
sovereign national entities in an ever denser multilateral, and, on
some issues (Pillar 1) supranational framework. If the work of the

119. Reproduced in Maartje Rut-
ten (comp.), ‘From St-Malo to
Nice.  European  defence:  core
documents’,  Chaillot  Paper 47
(Paris: Institute for Security Stud-
ies of WEU, 2001), p. 82.

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Convention on the Future of Europe so far indicates anything, it
augurs for more movement in that direction. For Europeans, it
appears highly conducive for the security and stability of this
endeavour to shape their environment in the same mode. The
United States, in contrast, despite its membership of many inter-
national organisations, is much less entangled and bound by mul-
tilateral commitments. And the instincts of the present ruling
élite,  as  discussed  below,  go  exactly  in  the  opposite  direction,
thereby clashing head-on with what the Europeans believe to be a
benign environment for their own project.

As these traits of US policy did not start with, but have become
much  more  pronounced,  since  11  September,  it  is  becoming
increasingly  harder  to  dodge  the  issue.120 Since  they  are  torn
between the need to stick to their own project and identity and
keep their viable and friendly relations with a highly valued ally,
and since public demands, the personality of leaders, and national
traditions vary, Europeans, facing this vexing dilemma, come up,
nationally,  with  different  answers  (or  still  try  to  avoid  it  alto-
gether). Consequently, the further development of their foreign
and security policy is stagnating, and a vicious circle of stagnation
or even roll-back of what has been achieved is looming.

The conclusion at this point comes as something of a shock. It
is indisputable that, in the fight against terrorism and in the com-
mon  endeavour  to  keep  proliferators  at  bay,  alliance  with  the
United States is a clear and obvious net asset. On the one hand,
there is no point in bemoaning the fact that being associated with
the United States does increase the risk of becoming a target for
terrorists. It is equally true that this risk would not be zero anyway
even without this connection. On the other hand alignment with
the United States is indispensable for fighting the terrorist men-
ace, which will not go away by itself, and for containing the emerg-
ing threats stemming from proliferators, which will remain a con-
cern  for  security  planners  for  a  long  time  to  come.  This  is  a
dilemma Europe cannot escape.

If, however, we go beyond the yardstick of territorial security
and broader geopolitical interests of Europe’s nation states and
look at the ‘European’ aspect – the identity, project, and institu-
tional cohesion of the European Union – US policies appear in a
very different light. Indeed, at the European rather than member-

120. Peter Rudolf, ‘Wie der 11.
September  die  amerikanische
Aussenpolitik verändert hat. Bi-
lanz nach einem Jahr’, SWP-Aktuell
33 (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft
und  Politik,  2002);  Ernst-Otto
Czempiel, Weltpolitik im Umbruch.
Die Pax Americana, der Terrorismus
und die Zukunft der internationalen
Beziehungen (München  :  Verlag
C.H. Beck, 2002).

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state level, they appear as a risk, even a threat. It does of course
amount to breaching a taboo to talk about transatlantic relations
in those terms. However, if we do not face the facts and continue to
brush it under the carpet, as NATO communiqués tend to, the
West will face the same sad fate as the Warsaw Treaty Organisa-
tion, whose considerations, deliberations and pronouncements
became so detached from reality that reality bounced back with a
vengeance. In order to devise a sober (if painful) European effort to
rescue this endangered but immensely valuable relationship, real-
ity must be confronted.

Washington’s  explicit,  official  ambition  of  unchallenged
supremacy and Europe’s aim of becoming a more cohesive politi-
cal actor pursuing jointly chosen objectives with a broader per-
spective reaching beyond the European periphery and with some –
however moderate –military muscle, appear incompatible. So do
the American predilection for deciding unilaterally what is good
for the world, and Europe’s clear preference to work through mul-
tilateral settings that have a broad set of participants – notably
through the United Nations – to take such decisions.

To counter the unilateral American momentum, the Euro-
peans will just have to stick steadfastly to their chosen objectives
and say no to the United States from time to time when US policies
run counter to core elements of the European project, or when US
demands  and  proposals  are  consciously  devised  to  pre-empt,
defuse or dismantle a step in integration that Europeans view as
essential but Washington believes would – in the short or long
term – challenge its hegemonic position. Not playing poodle but
staying one’s course instead tends to lead to grumbling in Wash-
ington DC in the short term, but in most instances to earn respect
and to lead to reconsideration later on. UNSC Resolution 1441 is
in many ways a case in point. Initially abhorred by American hard-
liners, it became inevitable under the combined assault of a shift-
ing US public opinion, a Prime Minister Blair who was forced by
his domestic political base to go that route, and shrewd French
negotiating skills that produced a result that was more compati-
ble  with  the  European  vision  of  international  order  than  had
appeared possible in the beginning. Nevertheless, the very need to
risk tactical confrontation with the big ally on some issues consid-
ered important on either side of the Atlantic is in itself a divisive 

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element within the Union. Again, a vicious circle is beginning to
emerge. Europeans may well, with the aid of the US ally, be suc-
cessful in confronting the substantial and horrible physical threat
posed by terrorism. Will they also be capable of confronting the
possible risks emerging from Washington’s policies themselves?
The jury is still out, and will remain so for a while.

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Terrorism, proliferation:
a European threat assessment

Transnational terrorism is a clear and imminent danger to Euro-
pean security. The fight against this threat will require a complex
set of instruments, of which military power is only a tiny part.
Besides armed force, intelligence and police, there are legal, finan-
cial, developmental, political, social and cultural measures to be
employed, and employed in a way that does not sacrifice liberal
democracy on the altar of the fight against terrorism. All theses
instruments need attention and, above all, adequate resources. The
present struggle against terrorism as led by the United States tends
to overemphasise the military tools to the detriment of the others.
Europeans should strive to correct this imbalance.

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their
means of delivery presents a second, distinct danger. This danger,
while incrementally increasing, does not yet appear to pose an
immediate  threat  to  the  European  Union.  This  assessment
includes the case of Iraq. The risk that the two threats converge lies
less in any premeditated collaboration between ‘rogue states’ –
who  have  their  own  interests  in  keeping  their  distance  from
‘megaterrorism’ as long as their back is not totally against the wall
– and terrorists than in the possibility that terrorists produce their
own (of necessity relatively unsophisticated) chemical, biological
or radiological weapons or succeed in acquiring materials and
expertise. Proliferation, in turn, can only be curbed and mitigated
by a combination of diplomatic, economic, political, legal and, as
ultima ratio, military means. Deterrence and compulsion play a
legitimate role among the more forceful of these instruments,
legitimate, that is, within the context of the multilateral regimes
that have been established to assist in the fight against WMD pro-
liferation.

The security situation differs from that in the past in that the
risks and threats facing Europe combine traditional ones emerg-
ing from states and their particular policies with those originating
in substate, transnational networks with an extraordinary, partic-

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Terrorism, proliferation: a European threat assessment

ularly strong and violent motivation, based on a perverted reading
of a world religion’s prescriptions for the faithful. A minority
within that religion, the followers of this violent political theol-
ogy, must be taken absolutely seriously, and the campaign against
them seen as a long-haul challenge in which there are no easy vic-
tories just around the corner and no quick panacea can replace the
prudent use of the complex mixture of instruments mentioned
and, above all, perseverance.

Europe shares these security interests with the United States.
And US resources are an asset for America’s European allies. At the
same  time,  the  present  US  government  is  employing  those
resources – and the new threat environment – with a view to pur-
suing its own agenda for world order in the form of American
hegemony. This comes at the cost of both the former Western, now
European project of a law-based world order grounded in multi-
lateral decision-making, and an independent, strong role of the
European Union within that order. The present government is
very evidently following a policy of ‘divide and rule’, regarding not
only the world as a whole but in particular its European allies.

US policies thus challenge both the European vision of world
order and the European identity as a political Union. In this sense
it presents a challenge to European security as well, as the integrity
of the integration process is at stake. For Europeans, this experi-
ence is not without bitterness, as the solidarity shown with Amer-
ica in the campaign against al-Qaeda has increased the acute phys-
ical risks that European countries are facing. Nevertheless there is
little point in papering over the clear direction of American policy:
NATO communiqués, steamrollering over all political realities
and ignoring existing differences known to everybody should be
no gospel.

For the Europeans, getting down to formulating Common
Positions, Joint Strategies and Joint Actions, not on the secondary
issues of world politics but on the central questions, is the first
answer to the present challenge. Preparing the required instru-
ments – in the sense of a comprehensive security policy – for the
difficult security issues of the day is the second. And the third but
still  important  challenge  is  to  get  the  European  defence  act
together. It is less an issue of higher spending and much more one
of throwing out obsolete structures (not the least the overempha-
sis on manpower at the expense of investment). Stalin once asked,
‘The Pope! How many divisions has he got’, and, ironically, it is

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Conclusion

now in the US capital that this question is posed first (slightly
amended in terms of ‘useful divisions and air forces’). Rather than
giggling about history’s jokes, Europeans should be prepared to
come up with a good answer.121 Because it is that answer, and little
else, that will get us a serious hearing in Washington, DC.

121. See, for example, François
Heisbourg et al., ‘European de-
fence: making it work’, Chaillot Pa-
per 42 (Paris: Institute for Security
Studies of WEU, 2000); Christoph
Bertram, Joachim Schild, François
Heisbourg and Yves Boyer, ‘Start-
ing Over. For a Franco-German
Initiative in European Defence’,
SWP-Studie (Berlin: Stiftung Wis-
senschaft und Politik, 2002).

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annex

a

Abbreviations

ABM
BC
BW
BWC
CFSP
CW
CWC
EMIS
ETA

EU
G-8
GDP
GIA
IAEA
IDF
IRA
IRBM
ISI
NATO 
NPT
PLO
RAF
SDI
SLV
UN
UNSC
UNSCOM
US
WEU
WMD

Anti-Ballistic Missile (Treaty)
Biological and Chemical
Biological Warfare/Weapons
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention
Common Foreign and Security Policy
Chemical Warfare/Weapons
Chemical Weapons Convention
Electromagnetic Isotope Separation
Euzkadi ta Azkatasuna (Basque: ‘Basque Homeland and 
Liberty’), separatist organisation
European Union
Group of 8 leading industrialised nations
Gross Domestic Product
Armed Islamic Group (Algeria)
International Atomic Energy Agency
Israeli Defence Forces
Irish Republican Army
Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile
Inter-Services Intelligence (Pakistan)
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
Palestine Liberation Organisation
Rote Armee Fraktion (German: Red Army Faction)
Strategic Defense Initiative
Space Launch Vehicle
United Nations 
UN Security Council
UN Special Commission on elimination of Iraqi WMD
United States
Western European Union
Weapons of Mass Destruction

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58-outside cover-ENG.qxd  24/03/2003  17:18  Page 3

Chaillot Papers

All Chaillot Papers
can be accessed via the Institute’s website:
www.iss-eu.org

From Laeken to Copenhagen — European defence:
core documents, Volume III
compiled by Jean-Yves Haine

International terrorism and Europe
Thérèse Delpech

What model for CFSP?
Hans-Georg Ehrhart

February 2003

December 2002

October 2002

The United States: the empire of force or the force of empire?
Pierre Hassner

September 2002

Enlargement and European defence after 11 September
Jiri Sedivy, Pal Dunay and Jacek Saryusz-Wolski;
edited by Antonio Missiroli

Terms of engagement. The paradox of American power and 
the transatlantic dilemma post-11 September
Julian Lindley-French

From Nice to Laeken - European defence: core documents,
Volume II
compiled by Maartje Rutten

What status for Kosovo?
Dana Allin, Franz-Lothar Altmann, Marta Dassu, Tim Judah, Jacques Rupnik and
Thanos Veremis; edited by Dimitrios Triantaphyllou

Enlargement: a new NATO
William Hopkinson

Nuclear weapons: a new Great Debate
Thérèse Delpech, Shen Dingli, Lawrence Freedman, Camille Grand, Robert A. Manning, 
Harald Müller, Brad Roberts and Dmitri Trenin; edited by Burkard Schmitt

From St-Malo to Nice - European defence: core documents
Compiled by Maartje Rutten

The southern Balkans: perspectives from the region
Ismail Kadare, Predrag Simic, Ljubomir Frckoski and Hylber Hysa;
edited by Dimitrios Triantaphyllou

Military intervention and the European Union
Martin Ortega

Between cooperation and competition:  
the transatlantic defence market
Gordon Adams, Christophe Cornu and Andrew D. James; 
edited by Burkard Schmitt

June 2002

May 2002

April 2002

October 2001

October 2001

July 2001

May 2001

April 2001

March 2001

January 2001

European integration and defence: the ultimate challenge?
Jolyon Howorth

November 2001

n°57

n°56

n°55

n°54

n°53

n°52

n°51

n°50

n°49

n°48

n°47

n°46

n°45

n°44

n°43

S
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li
t
m
c
d
t

th
it
t
t
th
m
e
r
t

o
th
r
t
o
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p
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fo
th
g
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s
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58-outside cover-ENG.qxd  24/03/2003  17:18  Page 4

Since 11 September, the security debate has been refocused. A brand
of  terrorism  inspired  by  a  militant  political  theology  that  sets  no
limits on the violence it employs, the spread of weapons of mass des-
truction  (WMD)  and  their  means  of  delivery  to  extremist  govern-
ments, and the combination of both, have become the main security
concerns  within  the  Western  world  that  influence  the  preventive,
defensive, and responsive instruments with which states and societies
try to preserve their security.

The countries of the European Union are affected by both security
threats. The al-Qaeda network is present in Europe and, according to
its own pronouncements and practices, is targeting European coun-
tries. It is essential to understand as well as possible, the ideology, stra-
tegy, and structure of this new type of organisation in order to adopt
the  best  countermeasures  available;  for  this  organisation  is  by  no
means invulnerable. Broad cooperation among European countries is
essential for an effective anti-terrorist policy. In the fight against ter-
rorism, it is essential to bear in mind that democracy must be protec-
ted and preserved, and basic civil rights not encroached upon.

The proliferation of WMD is confined to a relatively small number
of countries. Given the means of delivery available to them now and in
the foreseeable future, they do not at present constitute an acute secu-
rity risk for the countries of the European Union. In the long run, as
technologies become more sophisticated and the range and accuracy
of missiles are extended, the danger might grow. Europeans would be
well advised to develop a broad spectrum of policies to deal with this
risk,  ranging  from  military  preparations  to  a  strengthening  of  non-
proliferation  regimes  and  a  diplomatic  approach  to  those  prolifera-
tors whose WMD programmes signal acute security concerns rather
than simply aggressive intent.

The terrorism/proliferation axis has become a very sensitive subject
for  the  transatlantic  partners,  even  though  one  might  expect  that
their common interest in combating the risk would lead to a conver-
gence of policies. The sharp unilateralist turn in recent US policies on
arms control and non/counter-proliferation have divided the member
states  of  the  European  Union.  Strangely,  an  additional  security  risk
emerges here to the European Union — not to the physical integrity of
its member states but to the coherence of its institutions, and thereby
to greater European integration.

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