Crossposted from: Assessing the Terror Threat

There was an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post this weekend (Overstating Our Fears) by a retired CIA officer with many years of experience working on transnational threat. The author, Glenn L. Carle, essentially argued against overstating the threat. He argues,

We do not face a global jihadist “movement” but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda.

and

Al-Qaeda remains capable of striking here and is plotting from its redoubt in Waziristan, Pakistan. The organization, however, has only a handful of individuals capable of planning, organizing and leading a terrorist operation. Al-Qaeda threatens to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons, but its capabilities are far inferior to its desires. Even the “loose nuke” threat, whose consequences would be horrific, has a very low probability.

and finally

No other Islamic-based terrorist organization, from Mindanao to the Bekaa Valley to the Sahel, targets the U.S. homeland, is part of a “global jihadist movement” or has more than passing contact with al-Qaeda.

Okay.  Let’s disentangle some of this.

First of all, it is absolutely true that we do not face a unified enemy with a clear command and control structure and a definable order of battle.  There are furthermore, few, if any places in the world where jihadists are likely to overthrow an existing government and establish a jihadist terrorist state.  There is no chance of a new caliphate being established, and the notion that the United States might someday be defeated and forced to live under sharia law is laughable.  It is important to make these points at some level because unfortunately they are common arguments in some parts of the Conservative blogosphere and talk-radio community.

Second, what makes AQ and some other groups a threat is not their unity, but their disaggregated capacity.  Certainly, a loose nuke scenario has a very low probability of occurring, but what was the probability of highjackers seizing four aircraft simultaneously and crashing them into buildings in Washington and New York?  That was a low probability as well.  It was also a relatively low cost operation.  There are many, many groups around the world that could today launch attacks on the scale of the Madrid or London bombings, and certainly some that might aspire to 9/11-like events.  The threat is not monolithic, but it is not necessarily less significant for its diversity.  There is a nearly endless supply of would be “martyrs” and ultimately probability is not a shield against groups that are perfectly willing to pay the price of failure in pursuit of their goals.

Third, the fact that many groups that are loosely affiliated with the “global jihadist movement” predate AQ and are based on local grievances is a cause of concern, not of source of comfort.  It suggests that the roots of this violence are deep and likely to persist for an extended period of time.   The fact that groups all around the world with little or no overlap in membership, limited contact, and dramatically different motivations all find some common cause in supporting and plotting violent attacks against the United States or our interests abroad is precisely the most frightening aspect of the threat.

I am sympathetic to the author’s concerns about using the “war on terror” as a key strategic construct, but unfortunately, this is very much a good news/bad news situation.  Each element that demonstrates how the threat has been overstated in some ways illuminates a key element of the threat’s ultimate durability.