Blink
of an Eye
by William S.
Cohen
(Tom Doherty Associates Book, 368
pages, $24.99)
Former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen has published this,
his second novel, and struck terrifying gold. Blink of an
Eye compellingly presents a nightmare nuclear scenario that
has kept national security professionals and senior political
leadership awake nights since September 11, 2001: a nuclear bomb
detonates, destroys an American city, and the government is having
trouble figuring out who did it. Cohen brings to his novel the
intimate knowledge of a longtime Washington insider and veteran of
countless high-level meetings, negotiations, and political
crises.
His tale wends its way through several surprise turns, as
befits a novel. It also stretches the circumstances under which a
detonation can occur, but not so far as to take for granted the
reader’s suspension of disbelief. The plot weaves in militant
Muslims, right-wing domestic extremists, Israel’s fabled Mossad
intelligence service, a presidential election, and a widespread
panic that follows the havoc caused by the bomb.
If anything, the novel understates the potential horrors
after a nuclear event. Panic surely would be worldwide and
extreme. A 21st century nuclear attack would take place in a global
media environment vastly different from that of 1945. Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were newspaper headlines, and aired on radio broadcasts
and movie theater newsreels. Today’s media are vastly more diverse
and pervasive: global satellite television coverage, billions with
access to the Internet, cell phones, computers, and more esoteric
social media like Twitter and Facebook.
Now imagine that, unlike in Cohen’s book, authorities are
unable to determine who set off the bomb. Nuclear forensics is an
inexact discipline. We rely on data collected from atmospheric
tests to tell us whether a bomb is of U.S., Russian, British,
French or Chinese origin. None of these states is likely to
intentionally sell or give the bomb to terrorist groups. The risks
of confrontation with the U.S. are too great for Russia and China
to contemplate, and Britain and France are our allies. Israel is
not known to have tested a bomb, but its security is such that it
is perhaps the least likely source of a stolen bomb. India could
only be a source if a bomb is stolen, as it has not helped others
proliferate and avoids trafficking with terrorists.
Which leaves “the usual suspect”: rogue states — such as
Pakistan and North Korea — plus Iran, if it joins the nuclear
club. North Korea is a rogue proliferator, whose leadership is
capable of virtually anything. Pakistan is a militantly Islamic
society with intense hostility directed at the U.S. by many leaders
and much of the populace. Iran is a revolutionary state whose
Islamist leadership ardently desires to destroy both the Great
(America) and Little (Israel) Satans, and is seized of millenarian
religious belief in Armageddon.
The author sums up why deterrence of Iran cannot be
counted upon by reference to the Cold War confrontation between the
U.S. and the former Soviet Union:
There’s no such thing as rationalizing with the
irrational…. The reason the cold war stayed cold was the existence
of mutual fear. When two countries share the same nightmare, war is
unlikely. But when one country’s nightmare is the other country’s
dream, well.… It’s clear, once they get nuclear weapons they’ll
blackmail us into submission or actually use them. You can’t
threaten them because they are eager to die. Somebody has to stop
them.
Pakistani and North Korean nuclear tests have all been
conducted underground, as likely an Iranian bomb would be tested.
This makes obtaining a nuclear forensic signature of a bomb’s
characteristics hard, if not impossible to obtain. Should we be
unable to verify the source, our options are stark. Asking
obviously gets one nowhere. We could warn each suspect state that
if it does not comply by giving us full access to determine the
signature of its nuclear weapons, we would treat it as guilty. But
there is no international legal precedent supporting a state’s
legal right to tell several states that they are guilty until
proven innocent, and then if unable to identify the aggressor
attack all for want of cooperation.
If enough Americans are dead the law might not matter. But
our civilizational values would. Are we really able to carry out a
threat to incinerate multiple countries to be sure we get the
guilty party? In doing so we would be massacring millions living in
one or more countries whose governments did nothing. It is hard to
see any President summoning the will to do so, as it goes directly
against our core societal DNA.
Cohen’s book is solid, suspenseful, entertaining and
informative. But in choosing a scenario well short of the nightmare
world that could easily follow a nuclear event, he offers us just a
tantalizing glimpse of the potential mega-catastrophes that could
befall us.
