The Soft Underbelly of American Primacy: Tactical Advantages of Terror

Abstract

In given conditions, action and reaction can be ridiculously out of proportion…. One can obtain results monstrously in excess of the effort…. Let’s consider this auto smash-up…. The driver lost control at high speed while swiping at a wasp which had flown in through a window and was buzzing around his face…. The weight of a wasp is under half an ounce. Compared with a human being, the wasp’s size is minute, its strength negligible. Its sole armament is a tiny syringe holding a drop of irritant, formic acid…. Nevertheless, that wasp killed four big men and converted a large, powerful car into a heap of scrap. —Eric Frank Russell1 TO GRASP SOME IMPLICATIONS OF THE NEW FIRST PRIORITY in U.S. foreign policy, it is necessary to understand the connections among three things: the imbalance of power between terrorist groups and counterterrorist governments; the reasons that groups choose terror tactics; and the operational advantage of attack over defense in the interactions of terrorists and their opponents. On September 11, 2001, Americans were reminded that the overweening power that they had taken for granted over the past dozen years is not the same as omnipotence. What is less obvious but equally important is that the power is itself part of the cause of terrorist enmity and even a source of U.S. vulnerability.