World at Risk: The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism
Preface
During the course of our fieldwork for this report, the members of the Commission had a near miss—and it served as a reminder of the urgency of our mission and message.
Asked by Congress to recommend ways of preventing weapons of mass destruction proliferation and terrorism, we were on our way to a place where these two concerns intersect—Pakistan. On September 20, 2008, we were in Kuwait City awaiting our connecting flight to Islamabad, where we would be staying at the Marriott Hotel. Suddenly our cell phones began buzzing with breaking news: the Islamabad Marriott had just been devastated by a bomb.
Minutes later, every television set in the airport was showing live footage of our destination. The Marriott was ablaze, a line of fire running its length. The hotel front was a mass of twisted iron and broken concrete. What once had been the lobby was now a huge black crater. More than fifty people lost their lives that day at the Islamabad Marriott, a gathering place for prominent visitors and influential locals. Within hours, the attack came to be known as Pakistan’s 9/11—a frightening reminder that we live in an age of global terrorism.
The world is also imperiled by a new era of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Our Commission was charged with recommending ways of halting and reversing this proliferation. We focused on two categories of WMD—nuclear and biological weapons—because they pose the greatest peril.
The proliferation of these weapons increases the risk that they may be used in a terrorist attack in two ways. First, it increases the number of states that will be in a position either to use the weapons themselves or to transfer materials and know-how to those who might use WMD against us. The more proliferation that occurs, the greater the risk of additional proliferation, as nations that have to this point declined to acquire nuclear weapons will believe it necessary to counter their neighbors who have developed those capabilities. Second, it increases the prospect that these weapons will be poorly secured and thus may be stolen by terrorists or by others who intend to sell them to those who would do us harm.
Terrorists are determined to attack us again—with weapons of mass destruction if they can. Osama bin Laden has said that obtaining these weapons is a “religious duty” and is reported to have sought to perpetrate another “Hiroshima.”
Our Commission is a legacy of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission). The reports produced by these commissions explained to the American people how and why the U.S. government failed to discover that terrorists, operating from Afghanistan, were infiltrating the United States in order to use a most unconventional resource—commercial airplanes—as weapons that would kill thousands of people. We have a far different mandate: to examine the threats posed to the United States by weapons of mass destruction proliferation and terrorism in a world that has been changed forever by the forces of globalization.
The United States still wields enormous power of the traditional kind, but traditional power is less effective than it used to be. In today’s world, individuals anywhere on the planet connect instantly with one another and with information. Money is moved, transactions are made, information is shared, instructions are issued, and attacks are unleashed with a keystroke. Weapons of tremendous destructive capability can be developed or acquired by those without access to an industrial base or even an economic base of any kind, and those weapons can be used to kill thousands of people and disrupt vital financial, communications, and transportation systems, which are easy to attack and hard to defend. All these factors have made nation-states less powerful and more vulnerable relative to the terrorists, who have no national base to defend and who therefore cannot be deterred through traditional means.
One of the purposes of this report is to set forth honestly and directly, for the consideration of the American people, the threat our country faces if terrorists acquire weapons of mass destruction. We also present recommendations of actions that the United States can undertake—unilaterally and in concert with the international community— to make our homeland and the world safer.
Though our recommendations are primarily addressed to the next President and the next Congress, we also envision an important role for citizens. We want to inform our fellow citizens, and thereby empower them to act. We call for a new emphasis on open and honest engagement between government and citizens in safeguarding our homeland and in becoming knowledgeable about and developing coordinated public responses to potential terrorist attacks.
In every terrorist strike anywhere in the world, to every innocent life lost must be added thousands more who were just hours away from having been at that ground zero, from having become innocent victims—a point powerfully underscored by the Commission’s near miss on September 20, 2008. In those moments of danger, we are all, first and foremost, citizens of a world at risk, with the common cause of protecting the innocent and preserving our way of life.
It is our hope to break the all-too-familiar cycle in which disaster strikes and a commission is formed to report to us about what our government should have known and done to keep us safe. This time we do know. We know the threat we face. We know that our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing. And we know what we must do to counter the risk. There is no excuse now for allowing domestic partisanship or international rivalries to prevent or delay the actions that must be taken. We need unity at all levels—nationally, locally, and among people all across the globe. There is still time to defend ourselves, if we act with the urgency called for by the nature of the threat that confronts us. Sounding that call for urgent action is the purpose of this report.
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