Paranoia

Castle on the coast of Estonia. Does this symbolise what we're afraid of?

In the last few days there have been the usual breathless news headlines associated with terrorist threats: small bombs originating from Yemen, addressed to a synagogue in Chicago were found (following a tip-off) in cargo planes. One of the planes landed in Britain and the bomb was located there. This allowed the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, to express the view that it was possible the bomb(s) was intended to explode while the plane was over Britain. I wonder if he had any evidence whatsoever for that suggestion? I doubt it. Like every politician, and most of the media, Cameron seemed to find it necessary to feed the paranoia about terrorism that appears to be universal in western countries. Of course there might have been some benefits to Cameron in playing the very common game of the politics of fear; it would provide him with an opportunity to strut his stuff as the defender of public safety. (‘Look how concerned your government is…!’)

Yes, there are terrorist threats, emanating primarily from Muslim countries. And yes, we have to combat that terrorism and, as far as possible, take whatever actions are necessary to ensure that planned attacks are not successful. But do we have to hit the panic button to the extent we do whenever an attempted bombing is foiled – or even when they’re successful? The panic and system gridlock in the United States after 9/11 was unadmirable. If I was a terrorist and wanted to disrupt the economies and pattern of life in western countries I would, every now and then, ‘leak’ to the western media hoax warnings that attacks were imminent giving vague, but convincing, information about their type and probable targets. There would be a good chance that these would result in a flurry of excited reports in the media, and possibly shut-down of airports and all sorts of expensive searches and precautions. (I assume that this is, in fact, fairly common. We frequently hear of plane delays etc. because or warnings about non-existent bombs.)

The point is that our responses to such threats, whether real or mischievous, are out of proportion to their implications. But, but, but… I can hear the outrage! People could be killed! Yes, indeed they could, and probably will be. The chances are that there will be more successful attacks such as those on the Twin Towers in New York (9/11), on restaurants in Bali in 2002, on commuter trains in Madrid in 2003 and on the Underground in London in 2005. But does paranoia help solve the problem? Clearly not. And should the prospect – or the reality – bring our societies to a grinding halt? Equally clearly, not. Western security forces have to keep working in the background to foil these things, as they frequently do, and we do need security at airports (although whether that should run to full body scans and searches is arguable), but in most cases we don’t need to shut up shop and cause enormous inconvenience and expense. Life must go on.

Let's get this in perspective. The most successful of modern terrorist attacks (9/11) killed about 3000 people. But every year Americans kill about 10,000 of their fellow-citizens with handguns, and wound another 50,000 – not to mention about 20,000 accidental woundings and 15,000 gunshot suicides. Yet the  vociferous and successful gun lobby manages to persuade the congress (and the Supreme Court) that owning a gun is an inviolate right under the (2^nd amendment of the) Constitution. We might also look at things like road death statistics in most western countries, and deaths from avoidable self-abuse like smoking. Where’s the logic in it all? Why don’t the Americans wage a war against their own bizarre (lack of) gun laws instead of against Iraq, where they killed a few hundred thousand people and destroyed the government of a country (albeit a rotten dictatorship) in the course of President George W Bush’s ‘war on terror’? It’s also hard to argue that the war in Afghanistan, intended to control/reduce terrorism, is serving that purpose. And why isn’t cigarette smoking banned? (The answer is obvious.)

I’d like to make two points: one concerns the question of probable risk; the other – peripheral to my main argument here, but of some interest – concerns how terrorism might best be fought.

I don’t have data quantifying probable risk but there’s no question that, for the average person, the chance of being killed or injured in a motor accident is hundreds of times higher than the risk of being killed or injured by a terrorist bomb. We accept that, and many other risks, and live with them because we value our cars and are prepared to take our chances and pay the price. I wonder what the economics of road safety campaigns are: how much is spent per life lost on the roads, relative to the economics of public paranoia about terrorism – i.e. how much is spent on security, how  much time is lost and inconvenience caused, per life lost to terrorist bombs?

Our paranoia is not confined to the risks from terrorism: we are obsessed with safety and risk avoidance in every aspect of our lives. There are constant demands for precautions against all manner of real and imagined hazards, ranging from absurd regulations against asbestos in buildings (even if it’s covered in paint and tucked away somewhere) to safety at work provisions that range from the sensible to the ridiculous, and the endless strictures on the packaging of almost everything we buy. Considerable imagination is sometimes required to think of how an item can be dangerous, but you can be sure the manufacturers will warn against every real and imagined hazard in their eagerness to cover their asses against legal action by idiots who are convinced that life should be free of all risk, but who have managed to hurt themselves and want someone to pay for it. (Those same idiots will die, in due course, like everyone else.) The problem is finding the right balance between sensible precautions and acceptable risk, but, there’s no indication that our societies are likely to find that balance – if we got anywhere near it there would be a good chance special interest groups would protest vociferously that their particular obsessions must have exceptional treatment. Balance doesn’t look like a sensible option through the blinkers of uncritical bias!

And so I could go on, but let’s get back to terrorism. If you read books or articles by people who understand the problem – its causes and scope and the best ways of combating it – the general opinion is that the most effective counters are not high-tech surveillance (although that has a place) but recruitment and training of people familiar with the language and customs of groups who may be considered threats. These people are introduced into the societies we are concerned about, to ‘keep their ears to the ground’. Like terrorist ‘sleeper’ cells our agents may be in place for years without taking action. But we need lots of them. The point made at the beginning – that the most recent bomb threats were ‘defused’ (!) as a result of a tip-off – supports this argument. We should also be studying the societies of concern, learning to understand their concerns and aspirations, helping to solve their problems. Agents and diplomacy and well-targeted aid (if that’s not an oxymoron) are cheaper and more effective than bombs and cruise missiles and predator drones, which frequently make the problem worse; they can legitimately be regarded as terrorism by those – often innocent, like western victims of terrorist attacks – who are their victims, or the relatives and friends of those victims.