Can We Deter Terrorists From Employing Weapons of Mass Destruction on the U.S. Homeland?

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Drake ◽  
Warrick Paddon ◽  
Daniel Ciechanowski
Keyword(s):  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
The U.S

Syria under Pressure

2004 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 53-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDERS STRINDBERG
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Economic Sanctions ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Wrong Side ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Sharp Criticism ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

Syria's sharp criticism of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 opened a particularly tense phase in Syrian-American relations, culminating in the May 2004 imposition of U.S. economic sanctions under the Syria Accountability Act. While accusing Damascus of being on the ““wrong side”” in the wars against terror and Iraq, Washington has raised a number of other issues, including Syria's military presence in Lebanon, its support for Hizballah and various Palestinian factions, its alleged ““interference”” in Iraq, and its possible possession of weapons of mass destruction. This report, based on numerous interviews with government officials, analysts, opposition figures, and ordinary citizens, examines Syria's reactions to these allegations, gradual changes in Syrian political culture, and various domestic developments.

9/11 and American Foreign Policy

2019 ◽  
pp. 281-302
Author(s):  
Melvyn P. Leffler
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Threat Perception ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Level Of Importance ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Threat Environment

This chapter emphasizes that 9/11 dramatically altered the threat perception of U.S. policymakers. “The greater the threat,” said the strategy statement, “the greater the risk of inaction.” In this new threat environment, policymakers declared that the old tactics of deterrence and containment could not work. Although the employment of preemptive or preventative action was not entirely new in the U.S. diplomatic experience, the emphasis accorded to it was much more pronounced. Threat perception altered tactics, not goals. To justify the new tactics, President George W. Bush raised the rhetorical trope of democracy promotion to a new level of importance, and this was even more true after weapons of mass destruction were not located in Iraq. For this chapter, 9/11 raised interesting and complicated questions about the relationships between interests, values, threat perception, and the employment of power.

What We Know Now

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. G. Runciman
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Suez Canal ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Intelligence Services ◽  
British Prime Minister ◽  
The Government ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses the information provided by the Hutton Report and the Butler Report concerning the bases of the British government's decision to join the U.S. in overturning Saddam Hussein for his alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It suggests that nothing revealed in the reports could bring an agreement to whether British Prime Minister Tony Blair was right in his decision, but those who have read the reports could surely conclude that the government, the intelligence services, and the BBC fell short of what have been expected of them at a time when Britain was on the brink of being taken into a war. It discusses the similarities between the Iraq War and the Suez Canal conflict.

scholarly journals Cheater's Dilemma: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Path to War

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-89
Author(s):  
Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer
Keyword(s):  
Gulf War ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Principal Agent ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
Cover Up ◽  
The U.S

Between the 1991 Gulf War and the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the Iraqi regime faced a cheater's dilemma: how much should it reveal of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities when each additional revelation made it less likely that the country would be rewarded, while continued denial also prevented the lifting of sanctions. The Iraqi leadership struggled to resolve this dilemma, as elites pursued competing policies and subordinates did not consistently obey Saddam Hussein's orders. These difficulties reflected principal-agent problems that were aggravated by the leadership's initial attempts to deny and cover up Iraq's WMD capabilities. Together, the cheater's dilemma and principal-agent problems explain a range of puzzling Iraqi behaviors that came across as calculated ambiguity to the outside world. These findings offer insights into the incentives and constraints that shape how other authoritarian regimes respond to external pressures to eliminate their WMD, and the extent to which they are willing and able to disclose information about past programs and their past efforts to conceal this information from the outside world.

scholarly journals Os herdeiros de todos os medos: a dissuasão nuclear para os EUA e a Rússia (2000-2005) / The heirs of all fears: nuclear deterrence for the U.S. and Russia (2000-2005)

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-339
Author(s):  
Diego Santos Vieira de Jesus
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Regional Powers ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

O objetivo deste artigo é examinar as perspectivas para a dissuasão nuclear para as duas principais potências nuclearmente armadas - EUA e Rússia - durante os cinco primeiros anos da década de 2000. O argumento central aponta que as duas potências preocuparam-se com a dissuasão de ameaças advindas das principais potências, mas se mostraram mais preocupadas com as ameaças de potências regionais com armas de destruição em massa. Elas reduziram suas forças nucleares desde o fim da Guerra Fria, manifestaram um maior interesse em capacidades não-nucleares para a dissuasão e tentaram definir opções para o uso limitado de armas nucleares.     The aim of this paper is to examine the approaches for nuclear deterrence for the two greatest nuclear-weapon states - the U.S. and Russia - in the first half of the 2000s. The central argument shows that the two powers were concerned with deterrence of threats stemming from major powers, but were more concerned about the threats from regional powers with weapons of mass destruction. They have reduced their nuclear forces since the end of the Cold War, showed a greater interest in non-nuclear capabilities for deterrence and tried to define options for the limited use of nuclear weapons.      

Is Drift a Serious Alternative to Natural Selection as an Explanation of Complex Adaptive Traits?

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 10-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliott Sober
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Adaptive Traits ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Known Unknowns ◽  
Donald Rumsfeld ◽  
The U.S

‘There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.’ —Donald Rumsfeld, 2003, President George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense, on the subject of the U.S. government’s failure to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq

Chronic Misperception and International Conflict: The U.S.-Iraq Experience

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles A. Duelfer ◽  
Stephen Benedict Dyson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Conflict ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Regular Contact ◽  
The U.S

Why did the United States and Iraq find themselves in full-scale conflict with each other in 1990–91 and 2003, and in almost constant low-level hostilities during the years in-between? The situation was neither inevitable nor one that either side, in full possession of all the relevant information about the other, would have purposely engineered: in short, a classic instance of chronic misperception. A combination of the psychological literature on perception and its pathologies with the almost unique firsthand access of one of the authors to the decisionmakers on both sides—the former deputy head of the United Nations weapons of mass destruction inspection mission in the 1990s, the author of the definitive postwar account of Iraqi WMD programs for which he and his team debriefed the top regime leadership, and a Washington insider in regular contact with all major foreign policy agencies of the U.S. government—reveals the perceptions the United States and Iraq held of each other, as well as the biases, mistakes, and intelligence failures of which these images were, at different points in time, both cause and effect.

scholarly journals Getting Deterrence Right: The Case for Stratified Deterrence

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-40
Author(s):  
Brent Talbot
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Regional Powers ◽  
Rogue States ◽  
Strategic Stability ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Potential Level

The potential for hostilities in the 21st Century is not likely to be deterred by a Cold War deterrence strategy. And while nuclear deterrence remains important, regional powers armed with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and accompanying long-range delivery capabilities are a rising concern. New technological breakthroughs in the space, cyber, and unforeseen realms could also provide asymmetric means of undermining deterrence. Moreover, the effort to achieve strategic stability in this day and age has become increasingly complicated in light of the changing relationship among the great powers. Today’s world has become one of “security trilemmas.” Actions one state takes to defend against another can, in-turn, make a third state feel insecure. There is great need for both nuclear diversity (theater and low-yield weapons) and increased conventional capabilities in the U.S. deterrent force to provide strategic stability in the decades ahead. In sum, we need a deterrence construct that both deters nuclear use by the great powers and terminates nuclear use by both regional powers and so called rogue states initiating nuclear wars on neighbors. I propose herein a policy of stratified deterrence which addresses deterrence needs at each potential level of conflict.

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