Sobre este tema entrevistó Der Spiegel [EN] a Zbigniew Brzezinski, viejo halcón de la US Foreign Policy durante la guerra fría. Al preguntarle sobre la diferencia del «peligro» entre aquellos tiempos (los del balance nuclear de poder) y los actuales, donde George Bush hijo demanda una “victoria total” sobre el terrorismo, señala lo siguiente:

SPIEGEL: Dr. Brzezinski, President Bush compares the dangers of terrorism with the dangers of the Cold War. He has even spoken repeatedly of a “nation at war” and will only accept “complete victory.” Is he right or is he using exaggerated rhetoric?

Brzezinski: He is fundamentally wrong. Whether that is deliberate demagoguery or simply historical ignorance, I do not know. For four years I was responsible for coordinating the U.S. response in the event of a nuclear attack. And I can assure you that a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union on a comprehensive scale would have killed 160 to 180 million people within 24 hours.

No terrorist threat is comparable to that in the foreseeable future. Moreover, terrorism is essentially a technique of killing people and not the enemy as such. If one wages war on an invisible, unidentifiable phantom, one gets into a state of mind that virtually promotes dangerous exaggerations and distortions of reality.

Y cierra con algo perfectamente cierto, que es sobre el método que es el «terrorismo». Bien puede ser usado para la lucha política-ideológica, la económica o la religiosa. Es una técnica para matar civiles, causando terror e infundiendo el miedo social, para presionar así a las autoridades estatales. Pienso que la «guerra» contra este fantasma hay que dirigirla atendiendo las causas que la provocan, y no deliberadamente, con costos civiles, contra los efectos que ya lo empuñaron.

[Vía]