Strategy and Threat for Public Alerts in America and Europe

The recent news of threats emanating from Pakistan and Algeria have spooked the American and European public milling about in great and famous cities.  But the reasons behind the news that seems to single out machinations wrought in Pakistan remain murky, as they must by dint of the ways and means of intelligence.

However, given that there is a horse and cart problem here.  Are the leaks meant to warn people or are they meant to persuade governments to rally with American moves against insurgents?  The underlying message: “We have actionable intelligence and we will move on our enemies.  Our enemies are also your enemies.  Move against them with us.”

Here’s how it cuts:

“Another French official speculated that the leak of Washington’s concerns about attacks in Europe by the Pakistani Qaeda and the Taliban was meant to justify the increasing drone attacks on targets in Pakistan, to press Pakistan to use ground troops more aggressively in the tribal areas and even to prepare the way for using American ground forces, covert or otherwise, in Pakistan.”

This passage has been lifted directly from last Wednesday’s Times reportage of the heightened and sustained alerts, rung from the foreign ministries in America and august Europe, clamored about in the evening news.

The threats are very likely very real but they are a daily phenomena.  The impact on lives, local and foreign as a matter of course, is likely immeasurable.  But these threats always abound from every direction, every day, and each such threat must be treated, as it is always, with commensurate seriousness. Moreover, French intelligence claims that they are much more worried about threats emanating from Algeria.  Al Qaeda in Pakistan and its Taliban compatriots are beyond their immediate concern, though they certainly are a source of danger whatever the circumstance.

In this sense, given the nature and type of terrorist threat, telling people to be alert about suspicious activity is tantamount to alerting hospital patients that they must be alert for antibiotic resistant infections.

So, the strategy to leak urgent alerts on threatening Mumbai styled guerilla activity, delivered for now from one German source, suggests some element of persuasion in endorsing the threat warnings.  For there must be many more such threats, each one equally worthy and unworthy of public disclosure. The timing of the leak, however, suggests a political move.

There is no obvious answer to that question.  There are arguments and interpretations.  But no easily read-off answer.