The Ultimate Terrorists

by Jessica Stern

As bad as they are, why aren't terrorists worse? With biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons at hand, they easily could be. And, as this chilling book suggests, they soon may well be. A former member of the National Security Council staff, Jessica Stern guides us expertly through a post-Cold War world in which the threat of all-out nuclear war, devastating but highly unlikely, is being replaced by the less costly but much more imminent threat of terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction.

According to SternThe Ultimate Terrorists depicts a not-very-distant future in which both independent and state-sponsored terrorism using weapons of mass destruction could actually occur. But Stern also holds out hope for new technologies that might combat this trend, and for legal and political remedies that would improve public safety without compromising basic constitutional rights.

Genres: Terrorism, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Jessica Stern is a Lecturer in Public Policy and a faculty affiliate of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. From 1994-95, she served as Director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, where she was responsible for national security policy toward Russia and the former Soviet states and for policies to reduce the threat of nuclear smuggling and terrorism. In 1998-99, she was the superterrorism Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and in 1995-96, she was a national Fellow at Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She also worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Stern received a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in chemistry, a master of science degree from MIT, and a doctorate in public policy from Harvard. She is the author of the New York Times Notable Book, Terror in the Name of God and The Ultimate Terrorists, as well as numerous articles on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. She lives in Cambridge, MA.

Reviews

[Andrew Bonney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was the first academic study of terrorism I’ve ever read. I appreciated the attempts to define terrorism, as well as the technical explanations of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) terrorism. This book was published in 1999, so 9/11 and the War on Terror had not yet factored into the author’s (or America’s thinking). The focus was on millenarian cults and white supremacist groups. That was fascinating, as I’ve grown up always associating terrorism with Al-Qaeda and the like. At times, book was a little too technical for my liking. That said, I would recommend it to anyone wanting an introduction into a rational study of an irrationally scary subject.

[Edmund Chattoe-Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was quite surprised by this as something written by a Harvard academic and published by Harvard University Press. The book seems to lack an overall vision and/or a clear target audience. There are chunks of "Fission 101 for Political Scientists", sort of case studies loom out of the murk (though the choices seem to be pretty much arbitrary) and there's lots of that thing where you enumerate all possibilities in a slightly ponderous way and try to make it sound like you've actually said something. Finally, the conclusion mostly seems to be to spend more money on the problem (but of course every problem needs more money and politicians have to prioritise.) The book has a few interesting bits (why unrecorded fissionable material keeps turning up in the USSR for example - very scary!) but there's mostly a strong sense of deja vu from other reading. I'm also worried, though this may be unavoidable in some areas, that some parts of this argument won't take much weight. So an academic cites a think tank which cites a military document which is based on local intelligence. This sounds like a. big heap of "respectable" source material but is really just gossip in a ring binder.