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Editor's
note: The opinions expressed in this article
are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of NDU,
the Department of Defense, or the government of the United States.
 can
now reveal some details about the first confirmed anthrax attack
on the homeland of the United States. The perpetrators were two
brothers, one of whom was reportedly a medical student at Johns
Hopkins. They were operating as part of a global network with centers
in Berlin, Madrid, Buenos Aires, and Havana. Their U.S. base of
operations was a Maryland safe house near the Chevy Chase Country
Club. The anthrax was smuggled into the United States in a doctor’s
luggage. It was distributed by sprinkling it in their victims’ food
and water, and even by jabbing them with hypodermic needles.
And by the
way, these events took place 85 years ago. The perpetrators were
German agents, their target: horses and mules, which at the time
were critical requirements in the logistical system of the Allied
armies in World War I. The details of these bio-attacks emerged
during postwar suits filed by the victims of German domestic sabotage,
particularly companies that suffered losses from bomb attacks. The
lawyer representing Germany denied the existence of a systematic
sabotage campaign, and while the fact of the saboteur network is
fairly well established today, back then Germany was found not to
be culpable. (A key data point for those who think Osama bin Laden
should be put on trial.)
What is remarkable
about these proceedings is that, while denying the bombings, the
Germans freely admitted the anthrax attacks. The lawyer defending
Germany downplayed them by noting that the effectiveness of the
attacks was “not established by any evidence,” and besides, “so
far as I know, anthrax germs are not dangerous to human beings.”
You might think that an official admission of this sort would cause
a public outcry. But the event dropped quickly from sight. A State
Department review of the editorial pages of 600 newspapers after
the results of the proceedings were announced found only 17 with
opinions on the issue, and of those only one, the Indianapolis Star,
found germ warfare worthy of mention, and then only in passing.
Actually it makes sense that few people would care. The attacks
were on animals, they did little damage, and in a war in which chemical
weapons were widely used and caused thousands of gruesome casualties,
what mattered a few sick mules?
Well, that
was then; 21st Century bioweapons aren’t your Kaiser’s anthrax.
As Americans are now well aware, there are many deadly organisms
out there that could be weaponized for use against us. It is becoming
increasingly clear that the United States is under some form of
biological attack, using envelopes as delivery systems. I won’t
dwell on the prospective horrifying medical aspects of it all, many
people have already written about that. I’m concerned with an operational
question: What do the terrorists gain from bioterror? You may well
ask what they gain from any terror, a worthy question for
a future essay. I’m not sure how the terrorists think they would
benefit from a successful anthrax attack, especially targeting journalists,
whom most enemies of the free world try to suck up to. Didn’t al
Qaeda learn anything from the Tet offensive? Of course the purpose
of terrorism is to terrorize, and the mere possibility of biowar
has accomplished that. It is ironic to have members of the eastern
liberal establishment seeing the world through the eyepieces of
gas masks for the first time since their “college radical” days.
I don’t know
what the terrorists would gain from a biological attack, but I know
what they would lose. There are many lines in warfare which, when
crossed by one side or both, change the qualitative nature of the
struggle — upping the ante, so to speak, on rules of engagement.
Although rarely explicitly documented, these limits are always widely
understood. In the First World War, for example, an infantryman
captured with dum-dum bullets or a notched bayonet would be shot
on the spot. In the rules of trench war, a brutal, vicious exercise
to begin with, these weapons were considered unacceptably cruel.
From all accounts, this variant of deterrence works fairly well.
Comparable status has been attributed to various rogue weapons du
jour, including submarines, napalm, and the crossbow, which
was deemed too deadly for civilized warfare and banned by the Pope
in 1139.
In recent
decades the same has been true of nuclear, biological, and chemical
weapons, usually referred to collectively as Weapons of Mass Destruction
(WMDs). Nuclear weapons have only been used twice in war, both times
by the United States, and have been reviled and respected ever since.
Few countries stockpile chemical and biological weapons openly,
and most have signed international protocols banning either their
manufacture or use, or both. Chem-bio weapons have become so repugnant
to the international community that no country wants to own up to
possessing them, and allegations of their use become topics of fierce
dispute. The Iraqis, despite photographic and eyewitness evidence,
denied accusations of chemical attacks in the Iran-Iraq war and
against the Kurds to the contrary. Evidence of Soviet use of chemical
weapons against the Mujahedin in Afghanistan was explained away
by American scientists as feces from massed swarms of bees, a ludicrous
theory willingly and widely adopted by many in the American academic-journalistic
complex. Countries will openly employ many types of weapons that
stay within the understood bounds; but use of WMDs raises the specter
of rapid escalation. This is why, in most cases, WMDs are used only
against enemies who can’t respond, or at least can’t respond effectively.
The United
States is not such a foe. Right now the attacks, if they are attacks,
are at about the level of effectiveness of the bio-incidents during
World War I. But suppose thousands of people begin to die from anthrax
or other pathogens? If it could be shown conclusively that al Qaeda
or any other terror group had engaged in large-scale biological
warfare against the United States or any other country, the implicit
and explicit boundaries of the current war would change. It would
become practically unlimited, a Total War. All bets would be off,
and any action taken by the United States afterwards would be justified
by the nature of the provocation. Other states might object to the
U.S. response, but none would get in the way. The only limits would
be those dictated by our national will.
The question
is, how to communicate this to the terrorists? How to make them
know that, as savage as they have been and as forceful as our response
has seemed, they could be more barbarous--and the United States
could respond with unfathomable lethality. Here the mechanisms of
deterrence come into play. I noted with interest a report a few
days ago that as part of a deal between Presidents Bush and Putin
the U.S. had deployed tactical nuclear weapons in the theater of
operations. Maybe this is true, maybe not. But in either case it
is a signal that the United States will maintain escalation dominance.
If the terrorists turn to WMDs, we will as well. This should prevent
the worst from happening, if deterrence works as it should.
There is one
problem with this train of logic. Deterrence models assume that
the people on both sides of a conflict are rational actors, that
is, that they will respond pragmatically to threats to their lives
and their interests. This is hardly a sure bet when dealing with
someone like Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. A recent story
in the London Sunday Telegraph, based on an interview with
a man claiming to be Omar’s doctor, reported that the Mullah suffers
brain seizures (visions, he says), and goes through alternating
fits of depression and childlike behavior. That explains a lot about
Afghanistan — but it should also give us pause. Mullah Omar
does not sound like the kind of person the game theorists had in
mind when they coined the term “rational actor.” Because we cannot
be certain the terrorists will not be deterred from escalating past
the WMD firebreak, the United States should be ready to respond
credibly should the worst happen.
Maybe nuclear
weapons, which for years have been the ultimate retaliatory measure,
would make no impression on the terrorists. After all, what would
we target? How would we deal with the consequences, the fallout,
radiation sickness, the grim litany of nuclear war effects? I can’t
see it helping the image of the United States in the world, and
it may not even get the bad guys. If nuclear weapons are the wrong
recourse, the United States would be forced to seek other ways of
sending this particular message. Our enemies need to know that there
are worse things than losing power, worse things than “martyrdom.”
The mind reels contemplating exactly what those things are, but
if we begin to see scores of Americans dropping dead every hour
and an epidemic in the making, the United States must inflict them.
If we lack the will to do so, if the terrorists find a line we will
not cross, they will continue to charge across it with enthusiasm.
In that case look for DKNY to come out with a designer line of Bio-wear:
trendy, protective, available in business-appropriate colors, spike-heel
attachment optional.
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