Interview with Professor John Mueller by Brian Pugh

John Mueller is the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at the Mershon Center of Ohio State University. His latest book, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them, was deemed “accurate, timely and necessary,” by the New York Times Sunday Book Review. The following interview was conducted by Brian Pugh and the views presented do not necessarily reflect those of anyone involved with the International Intelligencer.

Q: Some people argue that one of the reasons we have not had a terrorist attack in the US in more than five years is that American Muslims are well integrated and therefore are less likely to sympathize with radicals. There is considerable bitterness among Muslims in Europe, symbolized by the 2005 riots in France. Would you say that in the long run Europe is in greater danger of al-Qaeda terrorism?

A: The 9/11 hijackers stayed away from the Muslim community because that is the lamppost under which the FBI is looking for its lost keys.

If you were doing something big-planning for the next big attack, you would stay away from the Muslim community. The situation in France is not the same. They rioted because they were discriminated against. They wanted to join society. The French case is evidence that terrorism is not prevalent. If terrorism is so easy to do and there are all these discontented Muslims, why isn't there terrorism in France?

Q: Would you agree with the argument that CIA veteran Michael Scheuer made in the book, Imperial Hubris, that al-Qeada's main grievance is with Western involvement in the Muslim world and the belief that there is a systematic effort to oppress Muslims?

A: Yes. The main thing is they don't like American foreign policy in the Middle East. It is what we do, not who we are. The reporter Jim Fallows for the Atlantic Monthly said that there may be security specialists who do not think this, but he hasn't met one yet. However, I would disagree with Schuerer on some things.

Q: Like his call for the "Shermanesque" total war?

A: And that the bodies would be stacked like cord wood. His argument that our survival is at stake-I disagree strongly with that.

Q: Last year John Mearsheimer, from the University of Chicago, and the Academic Dean of the Kennedy School of Government, Stephen Walt, wrote a working paper on the Israel lobby's influence on American foreign policy that was very controversial. Would you count the "Israel lobby" as part of what you call the "terrorism industry" which exploits national security fears in the US?

A: One thing they say fairly strongly is that the Iraq War would not have taken place without the Israel lobby. That doesn't seem clear to me at all. It seems that the Iraq War could have happened without it, though the lobby contributed. I think the environment after 9/11 played a much bigger role. If you were in favor of the Iraq war, you would use 9/11 as a pretext. In as much as the Israel Lobby was for the war, they used it. With anything like 9/11, people who have agendas will use it. They would be crazy not too.

Q: When it comes to domestic policy, there are rival interest groups, like labor unions and business, that counteract each other. Is there anything like that in terms of foreign policy? Are they are any natural allies against the terrorism industry?

A: There may be. I'm trying to find them. I'm going to talk to a group associated with FEMA. I thought I would be walking into the lion's den, but someone told me that the FEMA people are outraged by what they think of as the wasting money on terrorism instead of disaster preparation. At least in theory, the Democrats, because the terrorism issue is bad for them. The greater the public anxiety about terrorism, the worse their electoral prospects are. I've also found a lot of people agree with me and say "I'm glad you said this," especially people that fly a lot, and economists, but I'm not sure if that's a natural constituency or not.

In 2004, Kerry and Bush both accidentally said something right about terrorism before backing away from their statements. Kerry said he wanted to get it back to where it was before 9/11, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives. Bush said something similar and the campaigns jumped all over each other for these statements. Zbigniew Brezinski is the most influential person to speak out on this. Some people in the press have done some things. After the FBI arrested alleged al-Qaeda terrorists in Miami, Richard Cohen in the Washington Post said, "come on, these guys are a bunch of lunies." They said they were going to launch a ground offensive against the US. They might have been dangerous, but to take them seriously as a threat to the US is ridiculous.

Q: If terrorism has been overblown, what is the greatest threat facing the United States? Nuclear proliferation? Global Warming?

A: Nothing right now is much of a threat. There are problems, but no threats. Probably the biggest is China trying to get Taiwan back. Certainly, keeping control over the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a good idea. I don't see anything I would call a threat, there are problems and potential problems. Global warming is something I would see as worth spending time on and trying to get a policy handle on. It's really tricky. 60 Minutes said that to do it seriously, you have to think about nuclear power. If you do everything possible in the US and it's whiped out by new cars in India, then you are just spinning your wheels. Before spending a lot of money and effort, those things should be nailed down as much as possible. Gregg Easterbook has written about this: with human ingenuity, technology has a way of compensating. If the incentives are right, people will adapt.

Q: Changing gears a little, why isn't there more international conflict? Samuel Huntington predicted a "Clash of Civilizations," John Mearsheimer wrote an essay, "Back to the Future", where Europe would suffer instability after the Cold War and that France and Germany would once again become geopolitical rivals, and Noam Chomsky predicted that America and other industrial countries would become locked in great power-style competition. Why haven't these theories been realized?

A: They're wrong. The whole idea that Germany or Japan would naturally want to become nuclear powers never struck me as convincing. What they want is to be rich and fat and wouldn't get nuclear weapons unless they were threatened. There aren't that many international wars. There have been civil wars, but those have mostly come to an end without new ones popping back up. Depending on definitions, the only war going on in the world right now is in Iraq. That isn't to say a lot bad things aren't going on like in the Sudan. Ethnic cleansing is not war, though it may be worse than it. Because one bad thing goes away they all don't go away. As my editor put it, "John, you maybe right, but I still have faith in my fellow man."