The Terror Trap

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The Terror Trap
Chris Leithner
The Âwar on terrorÊ is disturbingly similar to the Âwar on povertyÊ and Âwar on drugsÊ, and seems destined for the same ignominious failure.
he Australian government is mobilising huge resources to join the ‘war on terror’. This war, like the ‘war on poverty’ and the ‘war on drugs’ that preceded it in the United States, is inherently unwinnable. The cost of the government’s overreactions to last year’s tragic Bali bombing—our September 11— will exceed the benefits, and may actually increase rather than decrease the inconsequential risk that such attacks pose to Australians. The shock of that event, and the emotional intensity of the images published and broadcast in its immediate aftermath, should not overwhelm dispassionate thinking about its causes and consequences. Historical context Other events transpiring on a single day at a specific place have killed large numbers of Australians. On 19 February 1942, for example, Japanese air raids at Darwin killed 243 people. Between 23 October and 4 November 1942 at El Alamein, the 9th Australian Division suffered 2,694 casualties, including 620 dead, 1,944 wounded and 130 taken prisoner. The record of World War I is even bleaker. At Gallipoli, roughly 10,000 Australians and New Zealanders—and almost 50,000 Britons and Frenchmen and even more Turks—fell. As with Britain and Canada, Australia’s single blackest day occurred in July 1916: at Fromelles, on the Somme, 5,533 Australians became casualties within 24 hours. On 16 February 1983, 75 people died, 2,545 buildings were destroyed and more than 390,000 hectares of country laid waste by massive fires in Victoria and South Australia.
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With the exception of the Ash Wednesday fires, then, the loss of large numbers of Australian lives on a single day as a result of a single incident tends to occur during wartime. Considered as a single event, the Bali bombing on 12 October 2002 killed more Australians than any other event since World War II. Despite the unprecedented number of deaths not only at Bali but also in the World Trade Center (WTC), terrorist incidents kill very few Australians per year. Not since 13 February 1978, when a bomb exploded outside The Hilton in Sydney (the site of that year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting), killing three and seriously injuring several others, has such an incident occurred in Australia. It is true that every year a handful of Australian tourists travelling overseas are kidnapped; thankfully, however, most are released. But not all of them are. On 26 July 1994 the Khmer Rouge attacked a train and kidnapped (among others) an Australia, a Briton and a Frenchman. Each was subsequently murdered. And on 28 December 1998 armed militants kidnapped a group of tourists including 12 Britons, two Americans and two Australians travelling in Yemen. Three Britons and one Australia died in the rescue attempt by Yemeni officials. Including these incidents and the WTC and Bali attacks, and assuming that up to 100 Australian nationals perished at Bali, during the past ten years terrorist attacks have killed an average of 11 Australians per year and 55 per year during the past two years.
Chris Leithner is Director of Leithner & Co., a Brisbane-based private investment company.
Policy vol. 19, no. 1
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A statistical outlier For its part, Canberra appears to be more than ready Given that the resident population of Australia is to oblige. Asked whether the Bali bombing would projected to be 19,767,520,1 that 11 Australians per prompt the Commonwealth to increase its defence year, on average, have died in terrorist incidents during budget, Mr Howard said ‘I think it is inevitable that the past ten years and assuming that this toll will we will have to spend even more on defence. I feel it in continue into the future, it follows that the likelihood my bones. It is just elementary that when some that a randomly-selected individual will die under such transforming event like this occurs, you have to go back circumstances during a given year is 0.0000006 (that into your critical infrastructure in a whole lot of areas. is, a chance of 6 in 10 million or 1 in 1.7 million). That’s just inevitable’ (The Australian Financial Review Further, given that 55 Australians per year, on average, 24 October 2002). The 2002-2003 budget, presented have died in terrorist incidents during the past two to Parliament in May last year, unveiled a range of years, and assuming that WTC and Bali-like incidents counter-terrorism measures that will cost $1.3 billion continue and therefore that this greater toll will over five years. The defence budget is presently $13.1 continue into the future, the annualised risk of death billion; that is, 7.7% of the Commonwealth’s $170 from terrorism will increase to 0.000003 (that is, 3 in billion of annual expenditure. 1 million or 1 in 333,333). This risk compares to the odds, over A curious kind of war the course of an average North Since 11 September 2001, American Relative to the American life span (let us assume that politicians have told Americans that major killers of these odds are roughly comparable to their country is at war. Australia, too, their counterparts in Australia), that according to many of its politicians Australians, the one will die from pesticide poisoning and journalists, has been at war; and ‘terrorist threat’ is (1 in 200,000), a lightning strike (1 the frequency and stridency of their in 30,000), a motor vehicle accident declarations have increased markedly minuscule. (1 in 60), and disease caused by since 12 October 2002. But this ‘war smoking one packet of cigarettes per day on terror’ is peculiar. It is seemingly, (1 in 6).2 Relative to the major killers of Australians, the given the indistinct nature of the enemy, a war with no ‘terrorist threat’ is thus minuscule; and to assert that clear objective, no strategy to achieve this objective and terrorism poses a grave threat to our safety is simply no criterion to determine whether it has achieved its false. end. But all of its proponents agree that it will last Pundits and politicians, however, say almost years and cost an enormous amount. What kind of war is unanimously and unequivocally that it is a significant that? It sounds suspiciously like a Great Society programme, threat. ‘There can be no doubt that we have entered a and in that respect there are disturbing precedents. period of extreme and violent anarchy, perhaps Wars on such ‘enemies’ as poverty and drugs are comparable with that at the turn of the previous century endless wars because poverty and drug addiction, like when anarchists committed widespread acts of terrorism prostitution and xenophobia, are ineradicable. When a in Europe’ (The Australian 24 October 2002). government declares ‘war’ on poverty or drugs it means They also assert that the Commonwealth that the government decrees the mobilisation of Government is able to do something about it. ‘Taxpayers taxpayers’ money and ‘committed’ bureaucrats. In will have to face paying at least $1 billion extra a year practice, it also signifies the government’s implicit to meet the greatest challenge to Australia’s security since admission that it cannot improve matters but that that the Cold War, Paul Dibb, the country’s leading strategic it may (and sometimes does) do much to worsen them. thinker, has warned.’ Further, ‘NSW Premier Bob Carr Indeed, in the names of ‘compassion’ and ‘commitment’ will today ask Prime Minister John Howard to create a governments have repeatedly caused disasters where ministry of homeland security . . . Carr also wants a big none previously existed.3 Allowing for the innate and perhaps insuperable boost to resources given to the task . . . Our situation is difficulty of the tasks to which they are charged, the not good and is in need of rapid repair . . . The top US intelligence agencies (the CIA, NSA and FBI) were priority must be a massive infusion of new resources unable to alert Americans of the approach of suicideinto the human intelligence side of counter-terrorism, hijackers; and ASIO, ASIS and other Australian especially ASIO . . . (The Australian 24 October 2002).
Autumn 2003
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organisations were unable to anticipate bombers at Bali. In belated response, politicians and various ‘experts’ have clamoured that more money, staff and power be allocated to these agencies. Similarly, the ‘war on drugs’ has failed to reduce the consumption of drugs; in response, politicians and their advisors have greatly escalated the war’s reach, intensity and destructive effects. The perverse logic of this ‘if at first you don’t succeed’ approach is that major programmes that do not achieve their objectives and generate unintended consequences will be rewarded with more resources. Consider the impact upon bureaucrats’ incentives when their political masters in effect tell them: ‘if you succeed we’ll ignore your success; but if you fail spectacularly then (abetted by an uproar in the media and among the general public) we’ll quickly conclude that you’re “underfunded” and shovel more resources your way’. Australia’s politicians fall into the terror trap War, as Gwynne Dyer noted in an excellent article,4 can and does devastate whole societies. Terrorism is not war: it is an essentially marginal activity, undertaken by the relatively weak, that succeeds only if it can provoke its much stronger nemesis into drastic overreaction. Dyer notes that from 1942 to 1945, after all the major participants had joined the carnage, World War II caused deaths at the rate of more than 1 million per month. That is equivalent to a Bali bombing every 10 minutes, day and night, for four years. By that horrible standard and whatever its cause, terrorism is a localised, minor and tolerable (except, of course, for those whom it kills, injures and traumatises) phenomenon. Statistical reasoning ignores the intense emotional reaction of governments, journalists, ‘experts’ and members of the general public to events that kill many people in a single place. But because politicians watch television, read the newspapers and participate in talkback radio, they, like most Australians, react instinctively and emotionally to heartrending accounts in mainstream media—and not dispassionately from deductions from first principles using hard data. Terrorism, then, is viewed in a unique light and its risk is exaggerated. As a result the Commonwealth Government is prepared to spend many times—probably several hundred times—more in response to one death from a terrorist attack than it is in response to one death from (say) heart disease, an accident in the home or a car crash. And most voters, journalists and ‘experts’ strongly support this prioritisation. Human beings obsess about threats that they falsely think they (or governments) can reduce, minimise or eliminate; at the
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same time, they discount or ignore dangers that they falsely think they can do little to control. The result is the common reality of a (say) a middle-aged man who eats too much of the wrong things, exercises too little, drinks too much, smokes and drives long distances without rest breaks—and, whilst slouching in front of the TV, frets about anthrax, the Ebola virus and terrorism. Terrorists seem to understand this principle and use it ruthlessly to their advantage. Hence, according to Gwynne Dyer, the first objective of any competent terrorist is to attract the attention of the target government and to make himself a primary focus of public concern and government policy. It is by provoking that far larger and more powerful society to over-react drastically and in ill-considered and self-defeating ways that a terrorist seeks to achieve his objective. Conclusion Empathy with those who lost friends and family on 12 October (and, indeed, on any other occasion) and the rightful demand that the perpetrator(s) of those murders are apprehended and punished should not distract attention from the fact that the risk to Australians posed by subsequent attacks is minute. The ‘war on terrorism’ is inherently unwinnable. Australian politicians’ responses to the Bali bombing will increase rather than decrease the inconsequential risk that such attacks pose to Australians. The challenge to Australia’s politicians is to learn the rudiments of risk and probability, and to acquaint themselves with the history of drastic and disastrous over-reaction to minuscule risks. To fail this challenge is to embark upon a futile and misguided crusade that may expend much energy for little gain. Endnotes
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As of 25 October 2002. For the latest count see, the ABS Population Clock at http://www.abs.gov.au James Walsh, True Odds: How Risk Affects Your Everyday Life (Silver Lake Publishing, 1996); see also Joel Best, Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists (University of California Press, 2001); and Aaron Cohl, Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death? How Pessimism, Paranoia, and a Misguided Media Are Leading Us Toward Disaster (St. Martin’s Press, 1997) See in particular Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, 10th anniversary edition (Basic Books, 1995); Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation As a Basis for Social Policy (Basic Books, 1996); Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional? (Hoover Institution Press, 1993); and Eric Schansberg, Poor Policy: How Government Harms the Poor (Westview Press, 1996). ‘Falling into the Terror Trap’, The Toronto Star (17 October 2001).
Policy vol. 19, no. 1