Risks Revealed

Above is a visualization of relative risk from the Risk Register. The Cabinet Office cautions, "Due to the nature of the risks contained within each grouping, it is not possible to represent an exact comparison but only to give an idea of the position of each group of risks relative to others, in terms of likelihood and impact."

On August 8 the British government made public for the first time its Risk Register. Most media reports focused on the relative weight given the Pandemic threat.

In its headline, the Times offered, "Flu pandemic beats terrorism and flood in official table of reasons to be fearful." The Scotsman explained, "A flu pandemic is deemed to be likely to impact on the greatest number of people, with half the population likely to become infected and leaving between 50,000 and 750,000 dead."

Given less media attention was the process of generating the Risk Register and the decision to make public its conclusions.

On March 19, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, "we will openly publish for the first time a national register of risks - information that was previously held confidentially within Government - so the British public can see at first hand the challenges we face and the levels of threat we have assessed." (Prime Minister's Office)

The United Kingdom's Cabinet Office has made the Risk Register and related materials available on its website.

To reach its conclusions the UK's National Risk Assessment process gives attention to three sources of harm:

• Natural events (hazards)
• Potential accidents (accidents)
• Malicious attacks (threats)

Each potential harm is assessed for likelihood and impact. Likelihood is determined using historical, statistical, and expert polling projected five years into the future. The British apply impact in a manner similar to the American use of consequence. Impact takes account of:

• Number of fatalities
• Human illness or injury
• Social disruption
• Economic damage
• Psychological response

The United Kingdom's National Risk Assessment process is related to the generation of Community Risk Registers by localities across Britain. More information on how the British advance their emergency preparedness goals is available at UK Resilience.

Policing and Politics Pushed for Counter-Terrorism

Multiple terrorist bombings rocked India, Turkey and Iraq last week. Above is a photograph of the aftermath of a July 27 bombing in Ahmadabad, India. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)

A preview of the new National Defense Strategy leaked last week (purposefully?) identifies terrorism as the principal threat to the United States:

For the foreseeable future, (the strategic) environment will be defined by a global struggle against a violent extremist ideology that seeks to overturn the international state system. Beyond this transnational struggle, we face other threats, including a variety of irregular challenges, the quest by rogue states for nuclear weapons, and the rising military power of other states. These are long-term challenges. Success in dealing with them will require the orchestration of national and international power over years or decades to come.

The NDS preview concludes, "... winning the Long War against violent extremist movements will be the central objective of the U.S. We must defeat violent extremism as a threat to our way of life as a free and open society and foster an environment inhospitable to violent extremists and all those who support them."

In another report released last week a RAND study, conducted in cooperation with the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, focuses on "how terrorist groups end" - whether in defeat or withering away. The study examined the experience of 648 terrorist organizations operating over the last half-century. According to the report, "... most groups ended because of operations carried out by local police or intelligence agencies or because they negotiated a settlement with their governments. Military force was rarely the primary reason a terrorist group ended, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory. These findings suggest that the U.S. approach to countering al Qa'ida has focused far too much on the use of military force. Instead, policing and intelligence should be the backbone of U.S. efforts."

Does RAND fundamentally disagree with the National Defense Strategy? Not really.

The DOD strategy emphasizes, "The use of force plays a role, yet military efforts to capture or kill terrorists are likely to be subordinate to measures to promote local participation in government and economic programs to spur development, as well as efforts to understand and address the grievances that often lie at the heart of insurgencies. For these reasons, arguably the most important military component of the struggle against violent extremists is not the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we help prepare our partners to defend and govern themselves."

Both reports suggest politicking and policing are usually the most effective measures against terrorism. Military operations can be - even with the most sophisticated planning - a blunt instrument more effective for short-term containment than long-term resolution.

This has arguably been the case with most historical examples, whether the "terrorist" is a 19th Century Anarchist or an 11th Century Assassin of Alamut or a 20th Century freedom fighter. Military power can set some conditions, but resolution has almost always depended on transforming the potential terrorist's sense of purpose to lessen the value of violence.