Publication

This paper examines the potential security threats from the Middle East toward Europe and the West. The author examines several suggested threats in order to place them into a proper perspective and to distinguish them between either "crying wolf" or "crying havoc." The paper contends that the problems caused by narcotics and organized crime, immigration, terrorism and WMDs do not yet require urgent action by western nations, but that if the threats of Middle Eastern terrorism and proliferation were to be combined into super-terrorism, the result would create a form of asymmetric warfare for which the West would be ill-prepared.