Op-ed: Nuclear terrorism — the greater dangers —M V Ramana

The ability to credibly indulge in nuclear blackmail and project terror is ultimately at the heart of the strategy of deterrence. Such policies pose a greater threat to the world, as does the use of the terrorism bandwagon to prosecute greater or smaller wars by the US and other violent countries

It has become commonplace to assert that the most likely use of nuclear weapons in the post-cold war world is by terrorists. It is impossible to decide if this statement is true since there is no real firm evidence of the desire and ability of some ‘non-state actor’ to indulge in such an action. But constant repetition of this assertion only makes it easier for elites around the world to turn the focus away from real nuclear threats made by states. At a time when the ‘sole superpower’ has used an inflated threat of terrorism to justify a global war, and regional hegemons have used the same idea to prosecute their own pet wars, over-emphasising this uncertain threat of nuclear terrorism is a prescription for greater threats to world and regional peace from such violent countries.

To start with, the idea that terrorists are the most likely to use nuclear weapons is tautological. The Webster’s dictionary defines terrorism as “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.” Nuclear weapons can cause massive death and destruction; any population faced with this possibility would be terrorised. So under any fair and just definition of terrorism, anyone who uses a nuclear weapon would be a terrorist.

The second matter of definition is that of the word ‘use’. When can a nuclear weapon be considered as having been used? There are two ways to use a nuclear weapon, just as there are two ways a gun may be used. First a gun could be used to fire a bullet into a person. Second, even without firing, it could be used in armed robbery, for coercion. In the latter sense of the word, nuclear weapons have been used many times since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. None of these uses was by a non-state actor. It has always been states, led by the US, that have resorted to nuclear blackmail.

Nuclear blackmail is a pejorative term; therefore in ‘respectable’ discourse, it is reserved for ‘non-state actors’ or ‘rogue nations’. When nuclear weapon states threaten others, it is given a more polite sounding name — compellence. The use of proxy words to refer to problematic or potentially embarrassing concepts, of course, extends to the entire nuclear discourse.

Compellence is closely related to an even more respectable and commonly used term — deterrence. To quote Thomas Schelling: “‘Compellence’ is coercion meant to induce desired change in enemy behaviour, by forcing him to do something he does not want to do, whereas deterrence is the obverse, meant to prevent undesired change by forcing the enemy to do something he might not want to do.”

But is there much difference between the two concepts? During the Cuban missile crisis, for example, did the US practice a strategy of deterrence or compellence? From the US perspective, their actions were meant to prevent an undesired change — Soviet storage of nuclear missiles in Cuba. But from the Soviet perspective, the US strategy forced them to do something they did not want to do — withdraw their missiles from Cuba. The difference between compellence and deterrence is in the eye of the beholder.

Ultimately both deterrence and compellence, i.e. blackmail, are based on making nasty threats. Which term is used depends on whether one is making the threat or facing it. Thus, following the military crisis that began with the December 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, Pakistani leaders referred to their strategy as deterrence, whereas Indian leaders called it nuclear blackmail.

The ability to credibly indulge in nuclear blackmail and project terror is ultimately at the heart of the strategy of deterrence. The safety that it is supposed to derive from deterrence is, as Winston Churchill proclaimed, ‘the sturdy child of terror’. (That it may not be so sturdy after all is a different matter.) That people have become accustomed to living with this terror, and ceasing to think actively about it, does not make it any more right than nuclear terrorism. And similarly just because it is states and political leaders rather than ‘terrorists’ who threaten the world with nuclear weapons, it does not follow that this should be acceptable.

This brings me to the first set of drawbacks that come from hyping up nuclear terrorism by non-state actors — it diverts attention from states, which base their policies on the threat of nuclear death and destruction, and the urgency of disarming them. Worse still, pro-nuclear advocates in the US have called for developing smaller yield nuclear weapons to use against ‘regimes involved in international terrorism’. And instead of sending them to lunatic asylums, the US government is acting on their advice.

Thus the nuclear terrorism bandwagon has become a convenient rationalisation for continued possession of nuclear arsenals by states. Finally, by emphasising that non-state actors are crazy and irresponsible, the discourse of nuclear terrorism allows the mindset of political elites, who are capable of far more death and destruction in the pursuit of grandiose aims (‘vital national interests’), to go unchallenged.

There is another related danger that comes with discussions of nuclear terrorism. It is the high and the mighty that decide what is branded terrorism and what is not. This is why they seldom offer any useful or fair definition of the term terrorism. They also decide what is to be done about it.

Speaking to an American audience, the late Eqbal Ahmad once said disapprovingly, “We may not define terrorism, but it is a menace to the moral values of Western civilisation. It is a menace also to mankind... Therefore, you must stamp it out worldwide. Our reach has to be global. You need a global reach to kill it.” What Eqbal referred to has come frighteningly true with the Bush administration’s global war on terror. This war is a far greater danger to peace and security everywhere. To talk about nuclear terrorism by non-state actors at a time like this essentially ends up intensifying this insecurity and make it last longer.

M V Ramana is a physicist and research staff member at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream

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