Counterterrorism Priorities and Policy

Deployment of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in the US requires that someone bring them across our borders. In box 2 of the article, the authors addressed the difficulties of checking the entry of 540 million people at more than 420 ports of entry. But Davis and Prosnitz wrote nothing about the thousands of miles of wide open borders across which more than half a million people, along with tons of drugs and machines, illegally cross each year.

To reduce the probability that WMDs will be used in the US, we must terminate illegal immigration and seriously crack down on all smuggling across the border. We cannot have homeland security with open borders.

Presently, it is much easier to monitor and prevent the entry of people than of WMDs. It is ludicrous and self-defeating to claim, as some do, that border enforcement is impossible. Significantly fewer resources would be required to defend our borders than to wage war and engage in nation-building in the Middle East or elsewhere.

A national poll conducted in mid-2002 by the nonpartisan Chicago Council on Foreign Relations found that 60% of the general public regards the present level of immigration as a "critical threat to the vital interests of the United States" (http://www.worldviews.org/detailreports/usreport). However, the poll also showed that only 14% of our nation's leaders hold the same view. As a result, our level of national insecurity remains the same as before September 11th, 2001.

Many people are haunted by the saying that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Yet a repeat of September 11th would be like a picnic in the park compared to the effects of a nuclear bomb. We must secure our borders now.

In their article, Jay Davis and Don Prosnitz use the now common phrase "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs). I have yet to see a working, decisive definition of the term.

According to some sources, a Scud missile with a conventional high-explosive warhead is a WMD, but a flight of B-52 bombers carrying tons of high explosives apparently is not. What about a bunker-buster bomb, or an artillery shell with a mustard-gas warhead? In public policy debates, especially those regarding warfare, clear definitions of the key words or phrases would be helpful. What is a WMD? What do the experts mean when they use this term?

Many thanks to Jay Davis and Don Prosnitz for fascinating insights into both the technicalities of keeping a nation safe from terrorism and the role physicists may play in that effort. However, the article is written from the viewpoint that contributes to global instability--introspection without a global outlook.

Australians applaud the efforts of the US to counter terrorism. We have also suffered significantly in the past few years: Several Australians were victims of the September 11th attacks, and 89 Australians were killed on 12 October 2002 in the Bali bombings. Our troops have subsequently gone to war on several fronts in response to terrorism threats.

Terrorism cannot be stamped out simply by protecting ourselves from it or by attempting to destroy those who initiate it. Countering terrorism means tackling the political and social origins of the problem worldwide, not just understanding what the authors call the "fundamental technical basis of the threat."

Physicists, and scientists and mathematicians in general, can contribute in an enormous way. Science has a long history of international cooperation strengthened by global communication and travel. Scientists are in a unique position to promote international cooperation. They recognize the value of their trade to society; the combination of knowledge, a common language, and the ability for ethical and moral discrimination is a force capable of breaking down political, racial, and religious barriers.

The precedents of terrorism are, I think, inequality, social suffering, intolerance, and lack of understanding. Physicists need not just concentrate on defending the potential victims of terrorism. They can develop better ways to ease suffering, reduce famine, provide more equal distribution of resources, prevent civil unrest, and accommodate the world's diversity in our social outlook.

Davis and Prosnitz reply: As Ben Zuckerman points out, border control is certainly an issue in counterterrorism, although immigration and smuggling present different threats that require different responses. The technical means used to detect dangerous materials at choke points and elsewhere will also strengthen efforts to counter drug smuggling. The US Border Patrol, which is responsible for 6000 miles of land borders and 2000 miles of coastal waters, is working closely with the national laboratories and other technical organizations to conduct an end-to-end review of its operations. The border patrol is also using advanced battlefield simulation tools to determine optimum use of such technologies as advanced sensors, data fusion, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The longer-term economic, social, and cultural issues of immigration are central to any rational border control policy, but are properly part of a larger national debate and were certainly beyond the scope of our article.

Henry Heatherly raises a definitional issue that admits of no clear precision. Commonly, and legally,¹ weapons of mass destruction are defined to include nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and large explosive devices capable of killing great numbers of people. The Oklahoma City and Nairobi bombings fall in this category; the USS Cole and Olympic Park bombings do not. A single Scud with an explosive warhead would probably not qualify as a WMD; one with a chemical warhead probably would. A single chemical round probably would be considered a tactical threat. A nuclear bunker buster might be a WMD by some definitions, because of its capability to produce a large number of prompt or delayed casualties, depending on its target. The most useful definition comes from an Office of Technology Assessment study in 1993, which characterizes WMDs by the "large scale and indiscriminate nature of their effects, particularly against unprotected civilians. . . . These weapons can give small states or subnational groups the ability to inflict damage that is wholly disproportionate to their conventional military capabilities or to the nature of the conflict in which they are used."²

Finally, we agree with Martin Ebert that the most effective defense against terrorism is removing its causes. That is one of the few situations in which one can be active and on the offensive, rather than be reactive and on the defensive. But we do not think we were suffering from either an exclusively introspective or national viewpoint. In an article for physicists, it was useful to outline relevant technical solutions and to point out their limitations; the value of the social efforts, whether conducted by physicists or anyone else, we regarded as self-evident.