Biological agents might be the weapon of choice for anarchists. In one of the many biotechnology laboratories at universities or pharmaceutical research institutes, a technically qualified member of an anarchist group could divert peaceful applications to create weapons. And since anarchists, in essence, want to create chaos to destroy the existing order, they need not fret about the unpredictability of untested biological agents. By contrast, a Muslim organization that wants to resurrect the caliphate would be ill-advised to use infectious bio-weapons. By starting a global pandemic, they could cause a boomerang effect that would kill far more Muslims than “infidels.”
How would a small gang of anarchists or one of the doomsday cults want to use a biological weapon? An attractive target would be a summit meeting that brings together many presidents and prime ministers. In recent years, the annual G-8 meetings that gather the leaders of rich and powerful nations have been a favorite target for rowdy demonstrators. Their purpose has been to accuse the wealthy nations of some misdeed and attract media attention with their ranting and chanting. But a twenty-first-century anarchist who made it to the gates of a G-8 summit with a powerful biological agent would have more in mind. He would seek to incapacitate, or kill, the entire political leadership of the world’s most influential nations. Just one such attack, if successful, would inflict great damage on international relations. Keep in mind, a biological agent that is being smuggled into a building is far more difficult to detect than a nuclear bomb. Hence, all future meetings among senior officials would have to adopt massive security measures that would constrain international diplomacy and cramp democratic practices.
Moreover, there is a threshold of civilian deaths and destruction beyond which even the most stalwart society begins to malfunction. Detailed studies from World War II provide empirical data regarding this threshold. British and American air raids routinely attacked urban residential areas in Germany and Japan, not only because they were easier to hit than military targets but because it was assumed that killing civilians would usefully damage “the morale” of the enemy society. At the end of that war, the U.S. Government conducted a survey to assess the effectiveness of these “morale attacks.” The survey found merit in a distinction, introduced by Nazi authorities, between the mood (Stimmung) of the inhabitants in the bombed cities and their deportment (Haltung). If “morale” was gauged by people’s deportment rather than their mood, the bombing of urban residential areas in World War II—whether in Germany, England, or Japan—did not reach the threshold to be to be strategically effective.10
Similarly, Osama bin Laden’s extraordinarily skillful surprise attack of September 11 darkened the mood of Americans with shock, anger, and even a touch of mawkish self-pity (some Americans plaintively asking: “Why do they hate us so much?”). But the attack did not reach the threshold that would have weakened the deportment of Americans. On the contrary, it made the United States somewhat stronger. For many years before 9/11, government experts and high-level commissions knew full well what ought to be done to prevent terrorists from hijacking an airplane. Yet nothing was done to implement their recommendations until the body politic responded to the horrific image of the collapsing World Trade Center, the multiple airplane crashes, and the casualties. Osama bin Laden raised America’s defenses against terrorist tactics to a level that the U.S. Government, left to itself, could not reach.
“What does not kill me makes me stronger.” Friedrich Nietzsche’s apothegm captures a rugged truth.
A Nuclear Power-Grab
The cause of freedom would not have advanced so far but for the strategic folly of the enemies of democracy. “The good news from history is that attackers often fail to win the wars that they start with stunning surprises,” noted Richard Betts, Professor of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.11 This is also true of terrorist attacks. Walter Laqueur’s exhaustive studies of the subject led him to conclude that “in most cases, terrorism, in the longer run, made no political difference one way or another—in some, it caused the exact opposite of what the terrorists hoped and intended to achieve.”12 Terrorist leaders often have the most nebulous strategic goals, or more often, no achievable strategic goals at all. Like many other aggressors, they lack a grand strategy and are prone to strategic folly. The greatest danger for the international order in this century will be the emergence of an aspiring dictator who is utterly ruthless, brilliantly cunning, and possessed of strategic vision. This malignant combination has been exceedingly rare in the past, and we have no reason to fear it will now be more frequent. What will be altogether different in the decades ahead is that such an adversary can gain access to weapons of mass destruction.
Perhaps the most relevant historic parallel is Lenin’s power grab in St. Petersburg, in November 1917. With his ruthlessness and extraordinary strategic smartness, Lenin exploited the chaos in post-Czarist Russia to impose his Bolshevik dictatorship. The First World War had dissolved the Czarist armed forces, torn apart the social order in Russia’s countryside, and fractured the civil society in Russia’s capital. This political destruction enabled Lenin to wrest dictatorial power from the short-lived Provisional Government which had replaced Czarist rule in Russia. Aleksandr Kerensky, who presided over that liberal-socialist government, wrote that the word “revolution” was an understatement for what had happened in Russia: “A whole world of national and political relationships sank to the bottom, and at once all existing political and tactical programs, however bold and well conceived, appeared hanging aimlessly and uselessly in space.”13
The First World War was the wrecking ball and sledgehammer that cleared the site for building the Bolshevik regime. A future Lenin need not wait for a third world war to create a social wasteland on which to impose his new tyranny. A few nuclear weapons will do just as well.
But physical destruction by itself, even on a large scale, will not empower the would-be dictator to rule the ravaged country. In the 1990s, Slobodan Milosevic’s violent marauders surely broke apart multiethnic Yugoslavia, but in 2002 Milosevic’s political career ended in the jail of the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, where he died four years later. Pol Pot annihilated the existing regime in Cambodia and inflicted immense casualties throughout the country, but in the end he was driven from power to hide in the jungle where he died a reviled murderer. To achieve a more lasting victory, the aspiring dictator would likely use a stratagem that Leon Trotsky called “dual power.” This stratagem is “the historic preparation of a revolution,” according to Trotsky, and it played a critical role in Lenin’s takeover. For decades since then, it has been used by Communists trying to get a foothold in the West while remaining loyal to Moscow.
As Trotsky explained the concept:
The political mechanism of revolution [or in my story here, the mechanism of a “nuclear power-grab”] consists of the transfer of power from one class to another. The forcible overthrow is usually accomplished in a brief time. But no historic class lifts itself … to a position of rulership suddenly in one night, even though a night of revolution…. The historic preparation of the revolution brings about in the pre-revolutionary period a situation in which the class which is called to realize the new social system, although not yet master of the country, has actually concentrated in its hands a significant share of the state power, while the official apparatus of the government is still in the hands of the old lords. That is the initial dual power in every revolution.14
To make the dual-power stratagem more relevant for our time, replace Trotsky’s out-of-date expression “old lords” by “incumbent leadership,” and “the class called to realize the new system” by “dictator’s followers.” Thus the stratagem simply means that the aspiring dictator implants some of his political followers in the incumbent government—for example, by forming his own legitimate party that gains a minority status in the parliament. Meanwhile, his more brawny followers can be trained to help with the forcible overthrow of the incumbent government.
Successful dictators have spent years on the preparatory campaign to build up (in Trotsky’s words) “the class which is called to realize the new social system,” or put in contemporary language, to build a movement of followers and a political party that can win votes. For Lenin the preparatory campaign started in the 1890s, when he gained an influential position in the clandestine Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. At the Second Congress of that party, in Brussels in 1903, he created his Bolshevik faction, a more militant organization that he led and inspired until his return to Russia in April 1917. By that time, generous German financial assistance enabled him to create a legitimate party press, as well as an illicit network of Bolshevik cells ready to use violence.15 Thus the Bolsheviks, as a minority party in the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, concentrated in their hands a significant share of the state power of Russia’s Provisional Government. At the same time, Lenin strengthened his network of illicit military detachments for the forcible overthrow of the government that his followers had infiltrated.16
For Hitler, the political phase started in 1920, when he became the leader of the new National Socialist Party. He then wrote and propagated Mein Kampf, and gained an ever larger following thanks to his powerful oratory. He promoted an ideology that appealed to German nationalism, and also exploited the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany as a rabble-rousing theme to stimulate hatred and violence useful for his campaign. Although the economic crisis of the Weimar Republic in the end helped Hitler to seize power, his charisma among masses of Germans had deeper roots. He was a relentless and effective campaigner well before he achieved total power. On a single day in 1932, for example, he gave speeches in Aachen, Cologne, Frankfurt, and Wiesbaden. He appealed to a lower-middle class that felt politically neglected; he articulated the social anxieties of this class; and he evoked enthusiasm with the histrionics and pageantry that the Nazis so ably displayed.17 He was thus able to gain a strong, legitimate foothold in the parliament of the Weimar Republic, while retaining control over his storm troopers so competent in using violence. Then the Reichstag fire (more on which below) gave Hitler a double assist. First, it offered a political and legal pretext for Hitler to grab total power; and second, it created a psychological crisis among the German people that made them accept Hitler’s power grab. In the event of a nuclear power-grab, the extreme national security crisis of a sudden nuclear detonation would provide legal justification for the new leader to declare emergency powers, and the profound emotional shock would make the people inclined to tolerate the emergency rule.
It is prudent to remember not only the horror of Hitler’s well-known abominations but also the danger of his political-psychological skills that carried him from victory to victory—from 1932 until 1941. Only late in 1941 did Hitler’s strategic folly emerge, first in his conduct of the campaign against the Soviet Union following the German army’s Blitzkrieg advances to the outskirts of Moscow and Leningrad, and shortly thereafter Hitler’s absolutely fatal mistake—the unnecessary declaration of war against the United States.
The dual-power stratagem has been widely used by insurgents and terrorist organizations. It has been used by the Basques, who fomented terror attacks to seek independence from Spain but also established a legitimate political party, Batasuna, allegedly independent of the Basque terrorist organization ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or “Basque Country and Freedom” in Basque language). The Spanish government tolerated this duplicitous game for many years until in 2002 it finally outlawed the Batasuna Party. That decision has since been criticized by many European newspapers as “undemocratic.” In Ulster, Sinn Fein continues to function as a legal political party allegedly independent of the Irish Republican Army (the militant IRA feared for its terrorist acts). Sinn Fein has successfully cast itself as a peaceful political movement opposed to terrorism but sympathetic to some of the “just” goals of the IRA. It has made itself the principal interlocutor with the British Government. The well-known connections between the IRA and Sinn Fein have hardly spoiled this “dual-power stratagem.” It is no secret in Ireland, England, and the United States that Sinn Fein’s leader Gerry Adams belonged to the IRA in the past and had been in charge of the Belfast IRA operations at a time when its units killed fourteen soldiers as well as civilians.18 Adams refused to condemn several IRA bombings that caused grievous casualties, yet his party obtained millions of dollars in private contributions from well-meaning Americans who want Ulster to be fully independent of London, in a unified Eire. The dual-power stratagem (backed by conventional explosives) might yet work for Sinn Fein, if it is willing and strong enough to maintain a compromise settlement, and if both camps in Ulster can convince their extremists to end the use of violence.
The availability of nuclear weapons, of course, would transform the dual-power stratagem. The aspiring dictator could prepare to employ two or three nuclear weapons for maximum political impact, without mounting a military campaign across national borders and without support by another nation or by a foreign terrorist organization. He would not provide the attacked nation any targets for a counterattack. He would thus render useless the most advanced offensive weapons and the most powerful nuclear deterrent forces of the victimized nation. He would heed Machiavelli’s advice: “Any harm you do to man should be done in such a way that you need not fear his revenge.” He would seem to be nowhere and everywhere.
He might have his nuclear bombs smuggled into the nation he plans to attack, or he might have them assembled within that nation. To employ the weapons, he could use a single two-man sabotage team, which would be nearly impossible to detect with the means available to a democratic government (unless it had an effective system of sensors, an issue I shall address in the next chapter). The two members of this team would have to be totally loyal to the aspiring dictator, and compulsively secretive. Once in possession of a couple of nuclear bombs, they would never have to think about becoming suicide bombers, they would never need any flight training, and to deploy their bombs properly they would not have to reconnoiter the target and thereby risk being detected. They could transport the nuclear bomb in a harmless-looking van, park it legally in the center of the city to be destroyed, trigger the detonation from a safe distance, and thus conveniently melt down their fingerprints, the automobile license, and all other evidence. After the first nuclear detonation, the aspiring dictator would rely mainly on his legitimate organizations and his popular influence to seize political power by exploiting the chaos, havoc, and psychological shock he had deliberately caused.
Many nondemocratic governments will be more vulnerable to a nuclear power-grab than well-established democracies. For example, authoritarian leaders of Central Asian republics seek to avert the establishment of fundamentalist Islamic societies. Yet a more fundamentalist religious order is favored by large and well-organized population groups in these countries and might gain the support of the majority. In Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan, over 80 percent of the population are Muslim. One nuclear bomb detonated in the country’s capital could eliminate the authoritarian leader and much of his power structure. This awful shock might enable a militant religious leader to mobilize his followers and seize control of the nation. In Iraq the young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr recently demonstrated that a skillful and assertive Muslim leader can rapidly gain a dominant political role.
In Russia, a successful nuclear power-grab would cause an immense international crisis, given its size, cultural importance, economic weight, and above all its large nuclear arsenal. The chronic insurgencies in the North Caucasus region—well within Russia’s borders—could be a seedbed for Muslim terrorism. In addition, Russia’s messianic cults (such as the White Brotherhood) and political extremist groups (such as the National Bolshevik Party) might come under the spell of a leader who wants to carry out a nuclear power-grab.19
To attempt a nuclear power-grab in a well-established democracy would require different tactics. In the dual-power stratagem the aspiring dic
tator would have built up his the lawful political role by propagating a seemingly benign new ideology that appeals to youthful groups, to the nation’s underclass, and to leaderless activists thirsting to be recognized as an emerging political force. He would have to be half-witted—and hence unsuccessful in the end—if he tried to campaign on jihadist themes, or on “neo-Nazi” themes in the manner of those European politicians of the far right who manage to attract huge counterdemonstrations against themselves. Instead he might seek to recruit followers among restless minorities. In a West European nation the minority of choice could be disaffected youths among second-generation Muslims, in the United States it could be illegal Hispanic immigrants or unassimilated legal ones. But initially, an aspiring dictator attempting a nuclear power-grab might present himself as a compassionate, liberal “antiracist” who cares about the welfare of all minorities.
He would make sure that any organization with which he is openly connected is perfectly legal. To this end, he might build up his own political party, or start a faction within one of the major existing parties. He could also establish a think tank, the better to collect all sorts of information openly and to disseminate sophisticated propaganda. He would thus gain influence within the legitimate political establishment as a candidate prime minister (or president). When a critical election approaches in which the incumbent leader campaigns to be reelected, the aspiring dictator would promise more effective policies to avert a clandestine terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon.
Then, when the election date is near, he would order his two henchmen to detonate one of the low-yield nuclear bombs, perhaps in the capital. Television and radio networks would instantly converge on the aspiring dictator as the candidate who had warned against precisely this attack. Now a recognized candidate, he would gain nationwide publicity. As soon as he wins the election—or even if he can only assert that he won by exploiting the uncertainties of an utterly chaotic votecount—he will order his “Heinrich Himmler” or his “Feliks Dzerzhinski” to organize a secret police skillful in the use of violence to intimidate political opponents. In 1918, Lenin had Dzerzhinski staff his secret police with Latvians and other foreigners. In the same manner, the new dictator, to consolidate his nuclear power-grab, might staff his secret police partly with thugs and assassins who had been trained by one of the foreign narcotics cartels. This devilish gambit might help him stir up hatred against minorities and thus create a despairing, divided society—people whom a brutal tyrant can easily rule. In this grim new world, democracies would be at risk everywhere.
Annihilation from Within Page 8