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Beating the Odds

In the War on Terrorism, It Takes Both Skill and Chance

By James A. Thomson

James Thomson is president and chief executive officer of the RAND Corporation.

PHOTO: DIANE BALDWIN

According to conventional thinking, al Qaeda terrorists or their jihadist proxies should have hit the U.S. homeland again long before now. More assaults are coming, we’ve heard terrorism experts predict since the first hours after the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked on September 11, 2001. Al Qaeda is merely biding its time.

But a quick look at RAND’s online catalog of terrorism incidents around the world suggests that different factors might be at play. The terrorism incident database, compiled jointly by RAND and the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, reveals that more than 21,000 terrorist incidents occurred worldwide from mid-September 2001 through October 2007, an amount exceeding nine incidents a day.

That’s a big number, even taking into account the near-daily bombings in Iraq. Terrorists have been far from quiescent.

So what’s at work here? If terrorism incidents have become part of the world’s daily landscape, why — six years on — has there been no repeat attack on U.S. soil? Have the United States and its allies been smart and assertive in preventing a follow-on attack? Or have we been just lucky?

My answer is that we have been both nimble and lucky. That said, we can’t let down our guard.

Without question, luck plays a large part in counterterrorism efforts. To reduce the odds of another attack, the United States and its allies need luck on their side: to have a terrorist’s backpack bomb fail to detonate as planned, to have an unexpected traffic jam or airport delay interrupt a plot, or to have an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent grow suspicious at just the right time.

But more often than not, luck is the byproduct of solid planning and adept policy implementation at home and abroad. And our efforts on many fronts have succeeded. Afghanistan no longer is a sanctuary or training ground for al Qaeda. Despite the recent flare-up of Taliban activity there, its days as jihad’s Grand Central Station ended in late 2001. Gone, too, is much of Osama bin Laden’s command infrastructure. A host of his key lieutenants have been eliminated; others reside in Guantánamo.

More often than not, luck is the byproduct of solid planning and adept policy implementation.

We have been equally effective at home. Federal, state, and local authorities are much more aware of intelligence matters and are more willing to share information than they were before September 11. Our intelligence-gathering capabilities are much improved. Ditto for our efforts to harden America’s airports, seaports, borders, and public and private infrastructure. In the main, these assets are far more secure today than they were six years ago.

Unfortunately, developments over the past year have diluted these successes. The Internet has proliferated as a center for training and recruitment, fueling the power of the jihadist narrative to pull young recruits into the cause. The border areas of Pakistan have emerged as a jihadist training site, partially reversing the loss of the Afghanistan sanctuary. Taliban forces, financed by a bumper opium crop, have regained a foothold in Afghanistan. The result: al Qaeda’s resurgence.

Reversing these trends won’t be easy. We’ll have to devise policies to eliminate the sanctuaries, especially those in Pakistan, and to quash the Taliban revival in Afghanistan. At home, we’ll need to continue strengthening intelligence and policy coordination and to do a better job of allocating homeland security dollars to areas and enterprises that face the greatest threats.

Our luck hasn’t run out. But to lower the odds of another attack on the U.S. homeland still more, we’ll continue to need nimble policies that create conditions conducive to luck. The nimbler we are, the luckier we’ll be.