Book Description

Terrorism: Commentary on Security Documents is a hardbound series that provides primary-source documents and expert commentary on the worldwide counter-terrorism effort. Among the documents collected are transcripts of Congressional testimony, reports by such federal government bodies as the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and case law covering issues related to terrorism. Most volumes carry a single theme, and inside each volume the documents appear within topic-based categories. The series also includes a subject index and other indices that guide the user through this complex area of the law. Volume 119, Catastrophic Possibilities Threatening U.S. Security, discusses the nightmare scenario of a catastrophic attack on the United States. While the U.S. national security apparatus remains focused on the "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and appears to be postulating a future international security environment defined largely by threats increasingly posed by weak, failing, and failed states, astute strategists are not discounting the possibility of a catastrophic attack on the United States. In this volume, Douglas Lovelace presents a number of documents that help describe, explain, and assess the nature and severity of the threat of a catastrophic attack. Offering expert commentary for each section, Lovelace groups the documents into three categories: Catastrophic Potentialities in the International Security Environment, Countering the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Materials, and Catastrophic Cyber Attack. Documents include a Department of Defense overview of the four categories of strategic challenges, a Government Accountability Office report addressing weapons of mass destruction and the actions needed to allocate resources for counterproliferation programs, and an insightful overview of the threat of catastrophic cyber-attack by the Department of Homeland Security. The commentary and primary sources in Volume 119 will apprise researchers and practitioners of international law and national security of the perils of a catastrophic attack against the United States posed by terrorists, radicals, state failure, and humanitarian disasters.