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Review date: 16/12/2025
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The Coming Storm, by Gabriel Gatehouse
The world is becoming plain odder. Not only does that make life more difficult for the security manager – what threats will come through the door, physical or online; it creates work for some in security, on the intelligence-gathering and risk-forecasting side. Perhaps the world is only odd to those aged about 35 or more, who grew up before the internet and mobile phones; to the young, the world is simply what they know. The catch; thanks to generative artificial intelligence, the prospect is in a few years if not already, you don’t know when online what’s real. That matters to security managers because online talk has real-world effects, such as famously the belief that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump led to people dying when a mob stormed the US Capitol. Strange that no-one has suggested that Trump win in November 2024 was a ‘steal’. Numerous books have sought to warn us, or to explain this phenomenon. The former BBC journalist Gabriel Gatehouse has brought out The Coming Storm, sub-titled ‘A journey into the heart of the conspiracy machine’. After covering US politics he concludes that while it’s ‘a perilous moment’ for America, and the world, we just don’t know what’s next, any more than a peasant in the Middle Ages could have known about the American Revolution or the internet. To that we can add the pace of change has accelerated; whereas the sort of change from working the land to the modern era took centuries, now society is changing as drastically well within living memory; as evidenced by Gatehouse’s own career; he’s now become a ‘podcaster’, something that wasn’t dreamed of when he started work.
Downward Spiral, by John Bowers KC
Another rich seam that numerous authors and commentators have mined is that Britain is in a state. In Downward Spiral, John Bowers KC writes of ‘collapsing public standards and how to restore them’. He asks, in a play on words, if the Westminster political system has ‘too few balances and too many cheques’, neatly querying whether those in office are checked by Parliament or a framework of rules, and hinting that politicians are enriching themselves or their allies. We’re not at the stage of South Africa’s corruption and cronyism, as written about by Lord Peter Hain in his 2020 book Pretoria Boy. What hampers such works as Bowers’ and the campaigner Carol Vorderman’s (Now What) is that while the proper working of democracy is important, something so principled can be dry and vague. Bowers writes (page 205) that ‘the thin tissue of trust is corroding’. He begins with the argument that the Boris Johnson years in 10 Downing Street were the most corrupt since Lloyd George, a century before. The problem, as Bowers sets out, is that lobbying of ministers, how they procure, are regulated by conventions, rather than ‘hard law’. At least arguably, the system worked: Johnson (and his henchmen and entourage) ignored convention, for example shrugging off a penalty notice for breaking the law on social distancing during covid. His own parliamentary party (eventually) ousted him. At least as pressing the problem is how someone like Johnson could reach the top, when numerous other Conservative politicians with more of a sense of standards (to stay with Bowers’ terms) were around, and indeed became prime minister before him. Sir Anthony Seldon’s book Johnson at 10 gave the thumbs-down to Johnson as PM; indeed, that verdict is justified partly because Johnson’s own memoir Unleashed grapples so little with what Seldon and Bowers set out.
Does Counter-Terrorism Work? by Richard English
Prof Richard English is already the author of Does Terrorism Work. He’s now written Does Counter-Terrorism Work. He looks into three examples: the ‘war on terror’ led by the United States after the attacks of September 11, 2001; the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland; and the Israel-Palestine conflict. As he sets out, while the study of counter-terrorism exploded (pardon the pun) after 9-11, and continues, few have studied the efficacy of counter-terror, whether strategy (the campaign to defeat a terrorist group or at least deny success to the terrorist cause) or tactics (protection of premises, gathering of intelligence to capture or kill terrorists, particularly leaders). Campaigns against terrorist groups, English points out, seldom completely succeed or fail, whether strategically or tactically. The reality, as English says, is that a society becomes more able to contain acts of terror, and endures, even if (we can add) it may appear callous for politicians and society to accept an amount of atrocities and deaths, and carry on regardless. As that implies, it’s not so much the acts of terror that have a political impact, but the reaction of those in power (to take an historical example of English’s, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 didn’t lead to the outbreak of war; rather the response of Austro-Hungary to Serbia did). In other words, the stakes can be high indeed.
Right wing
As for the USA, English notes the ‘gruesome twist’ of domestic, right-wing terror, notably the assault on the US Capitol in Washington DC in January 2021. Such terrorism, vehement and of wide extent, some don’t like to admit to. He concludes, wisely but frustratingly, by saying that ‘prediction is very difficult’. He does say that some things seem more prob able in the future than others. As for cyber threat, and the damage that terrorists might do, the terrorists may simply lack the skills; ‘but the possibilities for more extensive cyber-terrorism do exist’. Given the sheer unpredictability of the future, English wisely argues that ‘responsive agility will be required’. He also points to the relation between terrorism and countering it; the Troubles in Northern Ireland appeared insoluble for decades, then in 1998 came the Good Friday Peace Agreement. Having taken an historical approach, English closes on a human note. We can and should hope for a minimum of human suffering. Countering terrorism requires, among other things, ‘realistic goals, consistently pursued’; a society ought to be honest with itself, about how difficult it is to counter terrorism, without causing more hatred that may serve as a recruiting sergeant for terrorists; and ‘we should not mistake the terrorist symptoms for the more profound issues that are at stake’.
