IN A LITTLE NOTICED speech on February 8, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley announced that the United States had recently adopted "a new declaratory policy to help deter terrorists from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States, our friends, and allies." This policy would threaten with retaliation "those states, organizations, or individuals who might enable or facilitate terrorists in obtaining or using weapons of mass destruction."
I missed this. Or forgot it. I did address this exact topic on deterrence, however:
Not every state that provides nuclear material to a terrorist group that hits us should be hit in retaliation. If the British are identified as the source of the nuclear material used in the terrorist bomb, I think we can safely assume that London was not plotting to hit us. If Iran complains that "rogue" elements of their government provided the material, I'm not convinced of their innocence.
So we must probably hit the supplier of the nuclear material--though not necessarily.
We must hit whoever hosted or supported the group with money or other resources.
We must hit whoever helped the terrorists get to America or an American target overseas.
And we must hit the terrorist group itself.
This does not mean we slaughter civilians like our enemies did. We hit the leadership or military forces associated with providing the nuclear material, aiding the terrorists group, or assisting the attack itself (or the military forces most threatening to us in the future), and any base area of the actual terrorists. We can supplement nuclear weapon(s) with conventional forces, but conventional forces alone cannot be the sole military response.
Further, we must do this quickly. Delay too many weeks and the world will get over the shock of seeing a mushroom cloud over Charleston and insist we show restraint. We will only have a narrow window to strike back and we must take it. Will it be weeks? Probably. Months? I don't know. Years later is definitely too late.
If we fail to strike back with the second nuclear weapon to be used in the Long War, nations and not just terrorists will learn to discount our nuclear forces if we can't rouse ourselves to act with the ruhtlessness that the situation requires. Our nuclear deterrence dies the very first time we are hit with an atomic device and fail to respond with a nuclear strike.
The terrorists are just the retail salesmen in the chain of losing a city to a terrorist atomic attack. They can't be deterred. But the supply chain for the terrorists offer more hope for deterrence. I'm not happy with deterrence for this type of threat, since I'm not sure every nation can be deterred. Such nations could either be led by fanatics or believe they can escape detection or even deter us with their own nuclear weapons.
But it is better than the notion that we can deter al Qaeda.
