On Deterrence and Counterterrorism

On Saturday, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker argue in The New York Times that "Cold war deterrence theory . . . has in the decade since 9/11 been updated and expanded to offer new and effective methods to help keep stateless terrorists cells at bay."  Although they concede the new strategy includes military raids and drone strikes, they say "it also includes network-disrupting tactics to deter the terror enablers who would not want to sacrifice their own lives to jihad."

The problem with this argument, adapted from their upcoming book, Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda, is that it stretches the definition of "deterrence" into meaninglessness.  Classical deterrence can be briefly defined as threatening that if your adversary does X, you will do Y, which will incur greater negative costs for said adversary than the benefits gained by doing X, so consequently they don't do X.  (i.e. We told the Soviets that if they moved against West Berlin, we would initiate a nuclear war, the costs of which would far outweigh the benefits of gaining West Berlin.)  As an example of this, Schmitt and Sanger cite a program from 2009-2010 in which the U.S. military threatened the hawala bankers in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, that if they continue to allow militants to bank with them, their "families will suffer a drop in well-being."  Technically speaking, this could be construed as deterrence.

However, they offer little evidence to suggest this tactic has been applied more broadly beyond Afghanistan.  Can this effort really be effective in regions where the U.S. does not have a significant military presence (i.e. in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan) capable of credibly threatening the bankers?  Is there anything senior al-Qa'ida leaders (i.e. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Saif al-Adel, etc) value enough that would cause them to forgo attacks on American interests?  Can a foot soldier in the jihad against America be deterred?  It is certainly possible that such a threat and program exists, and if it is classified and successful I'd rather Schmitt and Sanger not discuss it.  But given that The New York Times has not had a problem with exposing classified programs in the past, and the broadness of Schmitt and Sanger's claim, it is surprising they don't offer at least another specific anecdote.

In fact, Schmitt and Sanger specifically cite "a classified tactic used multiple times across the Middle East" as their other example of the new strategy.  (Thanks, guys, I'm sure it wasn't classified for a reason or anything).  In this case, they cite programs to hack into the cellphones of terrorist leaders and spread disinformation throughout the network.  While ingenious and effective, this is not deterrence, but rather disruption.  U.S. military and intelligence officials aren't threatening an action, but actually doing something.

My suspicion is that the authors are so eager to discredit the Bush administration's initial post-9/11 approach(imperfect as it was) -- which assumed al-Qa'ida couldn't be deterred -- that they are eager to wrap every successful counterterror program of the past decade under the rubric of deterrence.  This reaches comical proportions towards the end of the article, when they define counterterrorism deterrence as identifying "vulnerable parts of an enemy's chain of command, operational cells and support network, and take steps that would put them at risk to alter their behavior in your favor."  This definition is reasonable in and of itself, but they then go on to write "The Navy commando raid that killed Bin Laden on May 2 in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was a culmination of the new thinking."

Huh?!?

Well, I guess the SEALs certainly altered bin Laden's behavior in the United States' favor.  But the Abbottabad raid, to include the intelligence trail that led to the operation, has much more in common with the capture and kill missions I chronicle in "Wanted Dead or Alive" and that Schmitt and Shanker decry in their piece's first paragraph.

Schmitt and Shanker are likely correct that in the long run American can not win the War on Terror strictly by capturing its way to victory.  (Donald Rumsfeld himself suggested this back in October 2003).  And I very much look forward to reading their book.  But this article comes off as a transparent to stretch an interesting and novel idea ("we can deter terrorists") way beyond the evidence to support it.