Proliferation2: Why Europe should be tackling the ideological core of terrorism

As much as the EU, terrorists are likely to have set their own objectives for 2020. Are we prepared? How do you stop terrorists getting nuclear materials? At the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, the best that the presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers and other representatives from 47 states could agree on was a non-binding agreement. Europe's founding fathers said that a supranational solution was the most effective, but our leaders are not listening.

Is Washington's vague hope of internationalism sufficient to block a disaster? Will it guarantee Europeans their safety? Would you put your trust in the hope that some "businessman" somewhere was not willing to make a fortune selling whatever technology and materials terrorists needed? Would you trust governments with your life?

Some like Pakistan and its bomb-maker, Abdul Qadeer (A Q) Khan, loaded with the nation's highest honours, actively sought nuclear proliferation for ideological reasons. Khan admitted on national television that he had actively proliferated nuclear bomb technology and designs. But he did not act alone. Nothing could be done without governments and the military to build the bomb.

A Q Khan was trained in Germany, Belgium and above all Holland. He stole the secrets of uranium centrifuge techniques while working in the Netherlands. That careless nuclear security by Europeans has had disastrous results for us all.

Pakistani Government deals were made with China to get bomb plans. Pakistani officials then proliferated uranium technology to Iran, North Korea, Libya and who knows who else. Libya was a big surprise to many when it confessed it had nuclear weapons. A ship had been inspected and was found to be loaded with Pakistani uranium centrifuges.

What of non-State terrorists with a fanatically destructive religio-political motive? Crude bomb plans were also found in an Al Qaida camp in Afghanistan.

"Terrorist networks such as al-Qaida have tried to acquire the material for a nuclear weapon, and if they ever succeeded, they would surely use it," President Barak Hussein Obama told the Washington Nuclear Security Summit. "Were they to do so, it would be a catastrophe for the world, causing extraordinary loss of life and striking a major blow to global peace and stability."

Look what terrorist groups did without atomic weapons. Eleven Saudi young men (and one from the Emirates) died in the four planes aimed at Washington and New York on 9/11. For this suicide mission they did not have to spend millions for their weapons. They did not import complicated technology. For the cost of a few dollars they caused damage estimated at equivalent to knocking out major countries of the EU.

How? cheap knives for opening cardboard boxes. The world market economy itself can be rapidly cut to ribbons by the hands of suicide bombers wielding cheap box knives. The events of 11 September 2001, make it clear that the profitable functioning of a global market is itself the TARGET of suicide fanatics. The opposition for them is the market of the world devourers and US power.

The well-organized destruction of the market and self-destruction of a "consumer" defy the very premises of economic logic usually employed in internationalism. (Economics and trade sanctions is based on the materialist premise of personal economic benefit).

Nonetheless, suicide for religio-political motives affects the market and will continue to threaten the market into the foreseeable future. A score of 'consumers' having bought a few dollars worth of box knives caused an immediate $100 billion worth of damage to New York.

Reuters reported the loss of value in one week on the New York Stock Exchange as $1.2 Trillion. Then as the truth sank in, US stock values plunged with a loss of $6.6 Trillion over the previous 18 months, in parallel with the sudden oil price hike. This sum, said Reuters, was equivalent to the combined economies of Japan, Germany and France.

This was foreseeable. In 1998 Osama bin Laden together with Jihadist groups in Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh, announced their intentions in a 'Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders' (that is the West). Terrorists are interested in far more than the market. Anyone who calls the West 'Crusaders' has a complicated and erroneous agenda.

The most important factor is not the weapon, the box knives. It was the ideology. What motivates the decision of young people to die in what they considered martyrdom? In reality it was nothing other than the manipulation of their minds and their inability to understand truth. Why were they fired up with a corresponding ideological hatred of the West?

Europe must decide. Is it going to continue to be a victim of threats of violence? Will its foreign policy be dictated by violence and blackmail? Or will it reassert its values on open discussion, debate and in-depth analysis of the flaws of such religio-political ideologies aimed at domination.

The religio-political ideology at the core of Europe's present danger is much more insidious than the Soviet ideology of dialectical materialism. That saw Europe threatened by both internally fomented violence, atomic warfare and the lies about a unreal, workers' paradise. It fell apart because of communism's internal contradictions, lack of logic and moral bankruptcy. It took some brave people to stand up against it, both inside and outside the Iron Curtain. The same could be said about Hitler's violence and Nazi propaganda, his ersatz for truth.

Truth will out. Today we need to expose the lies about suicide bombers' false paradise in an open discussion with all the institutions of Europe's democracy. Terrorists are sometimes ignorant and ill-educated on what they profess to be their main motivation: Islam and the Koran. This ignorance represents a major danger to the rest of us. Bad Islamic theology, unreason and prejudice has to be tackled and dismantled as Communism was -- by exposing its fallacies and untruth. Europeans must make clear that threats and violence are not an acceptable alternative to debate. For that challenge Europe must strengthen its own physical, mental and spiritual resources.

Euratom with its huge potential for democratic involvement and a supranational Community must be a fundamental part of this debate. It deals more than controlling nuclear proliferation but democracy, the rule of law, human values, serving one another, the basis of any sane society.