How serious is the T in GWOT?

We here at Phronesisaical have long wondered about the realities of the terrorist threat.

This administration understood early that what Robert Putnam called "two-level games" - the mutually influential dynamic between domestic politics and international politics - can be played in two different universes. The domestic audience gets the GWOT rhetoric, draped in the understandable secrecy of "national security." It's a neat feature of politics when you can say there is a threat but also have a reason - national security - for not spelling out how serious it is or whether it even truly exists as a serious threat. This means that citizens cannot make informed decisions themselves about their government's foreign policy. Citizens simply have to trust - thus the (fortunately, diminishing) faith-based community. In this way, the two levels are forced to overlap (the premise of a win-set) - a square peg hammered into a round hole.

At the international level, however, the GWOT and Iraq War serve other sorts of functions that might not be palatable to the domestic audience. These include industrial control of petroleum resources, which is a tough sell as casus belli. But fear,... now that works very well. In the international sphere, the GWOT as packaged for American consumption is looked upon with deep suspicion by other states and by citizens of other states.

If, however, we wish to understand the seriousness of the GWOT, we should be asking the sorts of questions Rodger Payne discusses here:

The question, however, is whether evil, radical, Islamic terrorists have the ability -- not merely the wish -- to capture a state, hold it, and use it not only as a training site, but also as a base of operations.

Consider me a strong skeptic. Conservatives spent years trumpeting the fact that the mighty US had defeated the powerful Soviet state and empire. The Soviets had an advanced industrial economy, millions of men under arms, 1000s of long-range ballistic missiles capable of inflicting tremendous nuclear destruction, and control over a ring of satellite states.

For the right to trumpet al Qaeda as any kind of similar threat is simply outrageous. Even the most hawkish counter-terror experts recognize that al Qaeda's forces are measured in the small number of thousands. It almost certainly does not have a nuclear arsenal and likely does not have a significant chemical or biological capability.

It is time for opponents of the administration to stand up and demand a reality check. Otherwise, I fear that the world's democracies will veer aimlessly from one alert to another over the next months and years, wasting tremendous national resources, ignoring many more serious problems and (re)electing foolish hawks.