Abstract
The possibility that terrorists would acquire or use chemical weapons was, of course, around long before a religious cult went on the rampage in Japan in the mid-1990s. This problem had been discussed for decades, mostly behind closed doors among governments, intelligence and law enforcement institutions. A fact quietly acknowledged then, but broadcast now, is that the world is littered with facilities that contain the very materials and expertise from which chemical weapons can be manufactured. Skyscrapers, sporting arenas and transport networks have been accessible terrorist targets for decades as well. Perhaps the dilemma of terrorists obtaining and using chemical weapons did not cause undue anxiety or headlines until the 1990s because no amount of spending could alter those aspects of the threat in the past. The same is true of the present.
We have seen terrorism emerge as one of the thorniest problems of the post-Cold War era. We have seen that terrorists are always searching for new weapons. It may not happen immediately, but somewhere, sometime in the future, terrorists will use or attempt to use … chemical weapons.
— Donna Shalala, Emerging Diseases1
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Notes
For a succinct overview of the roots of terrorism, see Walter Lacqueur, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction, Oxford University Press (1999), pp. 8–48.
Brian M. Jenkins, ‘Understanding the Link Between Motives and Methods’, in Brad Roberts (ed.), Terrorism with Chemical and Biological Weapons, Arlington VA: The Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute (1997), p. 45.
Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, New York: Columbia University Press (1998), pp. 93–94.
See, Ashton B. Carter et al., Catastrophic Terrorism: Elements of a National Policy, Stanford University, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University (1998); Ashton B. Carter, ‘Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger’, Foreign Affairs, No. 6 (November/December 1998).
Amy E. Smithson, Ataxia: The Chemical and Biological Threat and the US Response, Washington DC: Henry L. Stimson Center (1999), p. 73.
David E. Kaplan and Andrew Marshall, The Cult at the End of the World, New York: Crown (1996), pp. 107–108.
D.W. Brackett, Holy Terror: Armageddon in Tokyo, New York: Wetherhill (1996), p. 116.
F.R. Sidell, ‘Chemical Agent Terrorism’, Annals of Emergency Medicine, 28, No. 2 (August 1996), p. 224.
President William J. Clinton, ‘Interview of the President by the New York Times’, Washington DC: White House Office of the Press Secretary (23 January 1999); Richard Preston, The Cobra Event, Random House (1998).
Stephen Sloan, ‘If There is a “Fog of War”, There is Probably a More Dense “Smog of Terrorism”’, in Terrorism: National Security Policy and the Home Front, Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army War College (1995), p. 51.
Jeffrey D. Simon, Toxic Terror: Assessing the Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons, Cambridge: MIT Press (2000), pp. 17, 73–74.
Amy E. Smithson, Ataxia, op. cit., p. 30; Amy E. Smithson, Separating Fact from Fiction: The Australia Group and the Chemical Weapons Convention, Washington DC: Henry L. Stimson Center (1997).
Office of Technical Assessment, Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office (1993), p. 27.
CIA, The Chemical and Biological Weapons Threat (1996), p. 15.
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© 2005 Kim Coleman
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Coleman, K. (2005). Chemical Terrorism. In: A History of Chemical Warfare. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501836_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501836_7
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