The Future of Terror

In the wake of the London bombing, John Mueller discusses how to manage

Tim Cavanaugh | July 7, 2005

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Reason: What do you make of the fact that the U.S. has, with some exceptions, been mostly free from major terror attacks since 9/11?

JM: The question is whether the terrorists exist in the United States. The FBI has not been able to find a single true terrorist cell in the U.S. So you get the head of the FBI saying that he's really bothered by the things we're not seeing. That's Descartes updated: I think therefore they are.

Clearly it's not the case that every single terrorist is so busy over in Iraq that they can't bomb Brooklyn. But terrorism is a very rare thing that mostly doesn't do much damage. 9/11 is obviously an exception to that. But the total number of people killed by international terrorism is small. So it's not that common a thing in many respects.

Reason: How would you assess the current state of the war on terror, both on President Bush's terms and according to your own thesis of war's increasing obsolescence?

JM: In general it's going pretty well. After 9/11 there was this big increase in cooperation among states. The fact that terrorists have been bombing places like Saudi Arabia means that every state sees them as a danger. So you're not seeing much of the old-fashioned state-sponsored terrorism. The cooperation is imperfect, but a lot better than it was. It's not clear how massive al Qaeda really is. Many people argue it's not really an organization but just a movement. Five different websites have now claimed they did the London bombing, and all of them claim they're connected to al Qaeda. Maybe they are mentally, but it's hard to imagine they are in any organizational sense.

So I think it's in pretty good shape. But the crime rate is also pretty good. That doesn't mean crime doesn't happen.