Document Created: 23 Apr 2007
Air
& S pace Power Journal-Spring 2008
Where Are the WMDs? The Reality of Chem-Bio Threats on the Home Front and the Battlefield by Al Mauroni. Naval Institute Press (http://www.usni.org/press/press.html), 291 Wood Road, Annapolis, Maryland 21402-5034, 2006, 272 pages, $28.95 (hardcover).
At the outset of his book, Al Mauroni announces that “he has a reputation . . . for sounding off with brash observations and untested concepts” (p. xi). This is not exactly the preferred intellectual foundation for a solid analytical work on a complex, contentious, and highly technical topic. However, with a wide range of practical experience and solid credentials, Mauroni appears well suited to this task of explaining chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) policy development and implementation. A former member of the Army Chemical Corps, he has served as a consultant to the Joint Staff as well as the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for the Elimination of Chemical Weapons and has published a number of books and articles on the subject. Thus, Where Are the WMDs? reflects Mauroni’s detailed knowledge of how the Department Defense (DOD) develops and implements counterproliferation policy and consequence management as well as the operational details of defending our military forces against CBRN threats.
Consequently, this is not the television series 24. Readers will not find a Jack Bauer archetype between these covers chasing terrorists and other evildoers. Instead, they will find conscientious midlevel policy makers, program managers, and operational planners navigating the DOD’s bureaucratic labyrinth in an effort to define a diffuse mix of CBRN threats, set priorities, and design a useful mix of policies, plans, and programs to protect our military forces as well as the homeland.
This bureaucratic tour d’horizon may not be exciting, but it reflects the essential business of strategy development, coordination, and implementation. It is within our national security bureaucracy that the ends (objectives) of national strategy are sliced, diced, strained, and turned into ways (policies) and means (resources). Although a bit unwieldy at times, Where Are the WMDs? will help the diligent reader understand how we got to where we are today and, by providing a road map for understanding the bureaucratic labyrinth, thus avoid roadblocks and culs-de-sac. Therefore, although this book is not for everyone, it is a necessary read for anyone involved in developing policies, crafting operational plans, and providing the resources to deal with CBRN threats.
The author introduces the overarching theme in the first chapter when he correctly asserts that the “very term ‘WMD’ [weapon of mass destruction] has lost any definable parameters that would make it useful for public discussions” (p. 17). “WMD” has indeed become a meaningless bugaboo that frightens the public, obviating analytical rigor and useful risk assessment. Not all threats are equal, and not all unconventional weapons are WMDs. The qualitative and quantitative differences in the range of unconventional CBRN threats packed under the WMD rubric are vast, and each threat presents unique development, deployment, and employment challenges to our adversaries, thus presenting us a range of defensive challenges. For example, vast differences exist among the detonation of a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon in a major American city, an anthrax attack on the scale of what occurred in 2001, and the use of a persistent nerve agent against deployed forces. Mauroni correctly concludes that the United States has a “genericized” counterproliferation strategy that does not make useful distinctions among the range of threats, the defense of the homeland, and military operations (p. 100).
The analytical point of disaggregating the WMD threat is to allow the United States to set clear national counterproliferation priorities for the homeland as well as our military forces and decide what constitutes acceptable risk. This is the crux of the threat assessment and resource-allocation dilemma facing senior policy makers. Unfortunately, the author, despite offering a number of sensible bureaucratic adjustments to our CBRN policy-development process, never steps up and actually offers his assessment of what our national priorities should be and where we should accept risk. His thoughts on this difficult policy question would have added great value to his analysis.
Mauroni’s discussion of the intelligence failure concerning WMDs in Iraq is equally unsatisfying. In regard to the intelligence community’s now-notorious national intelligence estimate (NIE) titled Iraq’s Continuing Program for Weapons of Mass Destruction (October 2002), Mauroni states that the report was “intended not to inform the president . . . but to convince Congress that there was a credible threat” (p. 121). Although perhaps an inadvertent slip of the author’s pen, this suggestion that the NIE was designed to convince Congress of the Iraqi threat implies that the intelligence community deliberately skewed intelligence on Iraq’s WMD program to support a policy end. The facts do not support this implication. The NIE represented a catastrophic analytical failure but not a deliberate attempt to tailor intelligence.
However, anyone who thinks that the military did not genuinely believe that Iraq had the capability to employ chemical and perhaps biological weapons needs to review US Central Command’s detailed preparations, expertly explained by Mauroni, in the months and days leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. One of the great strengths of his book, along with the understanding of bureaucratic organizations and processes, is its depiction of the details of counterproliferation at the operational level of war. Joint planners preparing to deploy forces into an area of operations with potential chemical and biological threats would be well served by reading chapter 6, “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” and chapter 8, “Lessons Learned.”
In sum, this is a valuable work with virtues as well as flaws that perhaps tried to accomplish too much. A book with a split personality, Where Are the WMDs? is strong in its understanding of the CBRN bureaucracy and operational-planning considerations but weak in its appreciation of the strategic context of policy development or in its provision of useful threat assessments.
LTC Richard S. Tracey, USA, Retired
Fort Belvoir, Virginia
Disclaimer
[ Home Page| Feedback? Contact the Editor ]