Terrorism Analysis: Can Al Qa'eda Be Defeated? (No.)

Last weekend, the top British military officer, General Sir David Richards, said publicly what officials have been circulating privately almost since the Bush administration stupidly hit on the slogan “War on Terror” to describe their post-9/11 crusade.

This is not a war that can be won in any conventional sense.

The Bush administration's construction was of an effort against all terrorism, something that is by definition unwinnable. But Richards was making a sharper point: even a more narrowly defined effort against al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism is doomed to failure and should not be attempted in the first place: "Do we need to defeat it (Islamist militancy) in the sense of a clear cut victory? I would argue that [the war] is unnecessary and [victory] would never be achieved."

Richards' correct assertion echoes a point I made in the conclusion of my 2007 book, The British War on Terror: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism on the Home Front since 9-11. The future is not about eliminating terrorism but about containing it. Specifically, those in counter-terrorism want a world of 7/7s, as horrible as the London bombings of 7 July 2005 were, and not a world of 9/11s with attacks on an unprecedented scale.

The reality is that it is almost impossible in a free and open society to defend against the efforts of a small group or individual committed to carry out violence. As the Irish Republican Army maintained, in the oft-repeated quote, "We only have to be lucky once; you have to be lucky always."

The answer is to contain the violence, ensuring that the number of dead at worse is in the dozens instead of in the thousands. Contain the threat because you will never eliminate it.

There are signs that this containment, at least in the threat posed to western democracies by al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism, is already occurring. First, there is the inability of al-Qaeda to pull off a spectacular attack to rival 9/11 or even to come close to something on that scale. This failure is a result of security measures taken since 9/11 and also counter-terrorism efforts through a variety of means including, arguably, the drone attacks occurring almost daily in Pakistan.

An attack on a 9/11 scale, while straight-forward, is a major undertaking because of the need for coordination. Counter-terrorist efforts make the coordination much more difficult. Hence, the operations most likely to succeed are the small-scale assaults carried out, as on 7/7, by a handful of individuals largely operating in the same place or by a lone individual.

Al-Qaeda appears to have recognized this reality with appeals to its followers to carry out limited operations: it is better to have a small attack succeed than to have no attack at all.

Despite the danger from this terrorism, there is at least some reassurance that the attacks most likely to succeed are the ones that will do lesser damage. Hence, the effort in the long-term is to ensure that the scale remains small.

Maintaining successful counter-terrorism measures remains one response. The other, as identified by General Richards, is to address “root causes” connected to terrorism, ensuring that the numbers of those willing to participate in attacks or even to offer support for terrorists remains low.

Thus the ultimate danger is not from a repeat of 9/11 but from an attack which somehow manages to be both small-scale and devastating.