War of Nerves: The Domestic Terror Threat and the Belgian Army

Timely exposure of a secret project: Which activities to monitor?

“…The third finding, finally, advocates for not only focusing on those activities that are easiest to detect, but to take into account also the timing of eventual detection. This contrasts with recent efforts in both counter‐terrorism (Lasoen, ) and the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons (Kemp, ), where considerable attention goes to monitoring tasks that are relatively easy to detect but occur late in the project.…”

“…In response to the terrorist attacks in Paris early 2015, a number of European countries, notably France and Belgium, decided to deploy soldiers on the streets for guarding against new aggressions. Referring to the field manual of the Belgian operation, Lasoen () reports that the objective is “to prevent, deter and defeat threats or aggression by terrorists by providing assistance to the police […] in order to buy time for the latter to intervene.” But in the whole chain of events preceding a terrorist attack, troops on the streets are only able to intervene at the very last step: the attack itself. And even though soldiers successfully prevented an attack in Brussels by shooting a suspected terrorist (Rawlinson, Boffey, & Rankin, ), Lasoen () mentions that “the threat should have been neutralized long before defensive action or consequence management is necessary.”…”

“…But in the whole chain of events preceding a terrorist attack, troops on the streets are only able to intervene at the very last step: the attack itself. And even though soldiers successfully prevented an attack in Brussels by shooting a suspected terrorist (Rawlinson, Boffey, & Rankin, 2017), Lasoen (2018) mentions that "the threat should have been neutralized long before defensive action or consequence management is necessary. "…”