Norman, Kenneth Raymond

Spence, Iain

2003

This thesis was completed at a time of dynamic and catastrophic global change. While in a sense the events of 11 September 2001 involving the attacks against the United States' World Trade Centre and Department of Defence did not so much change what is understood of the potential of transnational terrorists, it did fundamentally shift the thresholds in the use of ultra-violence to achieve an outcome. It singularly re-affirmed how little western democracies actually understand of those psychosocial factors and behaviours that influence non-state actors. There are those who repetitively rattle off exhortations of vulnerability and threat, yet confine themselves to vagaries and rhetoric in defining trends and patterns - never committing to analysis beyond the mere prospect of action. Their analysis and predicant claims that terrorist attacks will eventually occur, made in the comfortable expectation they might never be proved wrong based on trends in the historical record, is too often mistaken as analysis and assessment and not the speculation that it actually is. The continuous flow of political, religious, cultural and economic dogma delivered by non-state actors, more often only threatening the use of weapons of mass destruction, yet still resulting in increased societal and government anxiety, must be counter-balanced with not only credible risk analysis, but effective deterrence strategies and ubiquitous counter-measures. This thesis is based entirely on unclassified material and complies with the requirements of the Commonwealth Protective Security Manual 2000. The views expressed throughout this thesis are entirely my own and the information in no part represents Australian Defence or Government policy. Throughout the research a wide range of inadequacies and vulnerabilities, both within international and domestic regulatory controls and anti-terrorist measures, has become obvious. It has not been, however, the intent of this thesis to provide a prescriptive methodology on how to circumvent specific regulatory structures or processes. Caution has been exercised in identifying critical detail in aspects of national vulnerabilities in order to ensure this thesis is neither misused and also to allow it to remain an unclassified research publication. The increased sensitivity to terrorism following the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States reaffirms my intent that this research not provide the potential for misuse or contribute to the already wide array of literature which seeks to disaggregate national security as a public information process rather than as analysis attempting to construct national deterrence measures. ... The relevancy of this thesis has never been greater and in simple terms it has but one desired outcome - to assist in establishing an enhanced theoretical and practical national security framework. The context in which this framework is set critically depends for its efficacy on a range of national and international non-proliferation, counter-proliferation and anti-terrorist controls and an understanding of the nature of non-state development and the micro-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/12810

en

Deconstructing the Risk to Australia: Non-State Micro-Proliferation and the Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Thesis Doctoral

Publication